Open Thread: Comment Live day two of the
Michelob Ultra PURE GOLD Haleiwa Challenger!
By Chas Smith
Crack a green one.
Well, the jig is up at least for now. The World
Surf League has made all its contests un-embed-able. Because the
audience is so huge, I’d imagine, and turning folks away is the
only sensible option.
Fuck them.
The Haleiwa boys, and girls, are in the water anyhow. Watch here, or don’t.
Comment below.
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"Howzit, I'm from Albuquerque and have been here for
two-weeks. Local kine."
Honolulu responds to livid North Shore
residents’ pleas, introduces bill to severely restrict short-term
housing thereby threatening the migrant surfer’s way of life!
By Chas Smith
Howzit.
North Shore residents are mad as heck and not
going to take it anymore. Inundated with folks buying homes then
flipping them into short term rentals has choked streets with
traffic and turned one-time friendly neighborhoods into zombie
zones where two-week vacationers from Albuquerque greet one-week
vacationers from Cincinnati with shakas and “how-zits.”
So mad as heck, in fact, that a bill is being introduced to the
Honolulu City Council that would seek to kill the short term rental
situation with taxes.
Under Bill 41, which has already passed a first reading at
the Honolulu City Council, short-term rentals would be taxed at
higher rates than residential homes, among numerous other changes
to the city’s land use law.
Properties where the owner lives on site would be taxed at
the bed-and-breakfast rate.
Transient vacation rentals, investment properties for owners
who live off-site, would be taxed at the same rate as hotels and
resorts – almost four times the lowest residential rate.
Seemingly wonderful except caught in the net would be longterm,
and legendary, residents like Mark Foo’s widow SharLyn who has run
Backpackers for decades, a hostel that allows migrant surfers to
follow seasonal swells and sleep cheap.
“They keep saying they’re going to leave the existing, legal
NUCs (or non-conforming use) alone,” Foo told Civil Beat, “But what
they’re really trying to do is put everybody out.”
Her taxes would soar from $27,000 a year to over $90,000 coupled
with many fees.
The residents and long-time hostel/bed and breakfast
owner-operators are trying to find a solution wherein they are not
hit with a sledgehammer while, also, ridding the fabled 7-plus mile
miracle of illegal rentals.
Any ideas?
Will the mainland-dwelling North Shore income property owners
fight back?
More as the story develops.
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Flynn (pictured) blowing the left.
Former National Security Advisor and
mid-length enthusiast Michael Flynn repurposes most popular surf
term to describe QAnon subscribers: “I have always believed it was
a disinformation campaign to make people look like a bunch of
kooks!”
By Chas Smith
A disinformation campaign.
As an applied linguist (masters degree ’01), I
am perpetually aware of words, how they’re being used, how meaning
shifts and so when former National Security Advisor of the United
States of America, and known mid-length enthusiast, Michael Flynn
described subscribers of the popular QAnon theory as “kooks,” I was
all ears.
You, as a grump local, are certainly aware of the “kook.” The
uninformed male, female, non-gendered surfer that does not
appropriately roll with our complex, but not difficult to
understand, code of conduct.
I was out today, for example, with a heap of surf hatted folk on
surf tractioned soft tops trying to go right on lefts.
Kooks.
The etymology is less clear.
Some scholars believe it was derived from the word “cuckoo” or
“strange bird.” Others, smarter including surf historian Matt
Warshaw, trust the root is “kūkae” from the Hawaiian language
meaning “feces.”
In either case, Flynn recently dropped it in a recorded
telephone conversation with popular former president Donald J.
Trump lawyer Lin Wood, saying, “I always believe that QAnon was a
disinformation campaign to make people look like a bunch of
kooks.”
From what I witnessed today it would make too very much
sense.
Many surf hats.
Tin foil adjacent.
More as the story develops.
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View from the bird.
Quiksilver sells iconic beachfront North
Shore house after five years on the market and slashing price by
$15 million!
By Derek Rielly
A real smart buy!
It’s hardly scandalous to say that Quiksilver, birthed
in 1970 in
Torquay, Victoria, and responsible for the evolution of the modern
surf industry, ain’t the company it once was.
After going bankrupt in 2015 and being bought by Oaktree
Capital, along with Billabong, it now exists as a sort of
mainstream heritage label.
All tip and no iceberg, y’could say.
Now, after five years on the market, Quiksilver has finally sold
its team house at 59-367 Ke Nui Rd, the pretty wooden joint
next door to the old Volcom house.
Quik sold the place for $US4,950,000, a sharpish discount on the
twenty mill they were chasing when it was first listed at the end
of 2016, although even at five it ain’t a bad capital gain
considering they bought it in 2009 for $1.4 mill.
(Property taxes are twenty-five gees a year, if you’re
wondering.)
Over the twelve years they’ve had it, Clay Marzo, Reynolds, Jez
Flores, probs Craig Anderson if he ever went to Hawaii, not sure if
he has, all stayed there.
Only a handful of surf spots in the world share the same
reverence that Banzai Pipeline has. And when it comes to Pipe,
there are even fewer properties that can claim they truly front
this iconic surf break. For that reason, we’re proud to present
59-367 Ke Nui Road…otherwise known to locals and surfers as the
Quiksilver House.
A property steeped in North Shore lore and witness to the world’s
greatest surfing events. Perched roughly 15’ above
Sunset’s sand, this property includes 6,740 sqft of land that sits
in the premium position on Sunset Beach. Bring your architect to
design a one of kind property worthy of this prime position or
simply refresh the quintessential North Shore beach
cottage. Either
way, you’ll own a piece of Surfing history and be a part of Banzai
Pipeline for generations to come.
Five mill seems real cheap, at least to me. Where I live that
only buys you a two-bed semi-detached joint four hundred metres
from the beach and devoid of sunlight until around three in the
afternoon when a little yellow beam creeps in from the
north-west.
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Johnny go hard!
Question: Can vintage John John Florence
break the spell of a decade-plus run of World Surf League
championship trophies swapping back and forth between Gabriel
Medina and Italo Ferreira?
By Chas Smith
We need The Match.
The Michelob Ultra PURE GOLD Haleiwa
Challenger, stop one of the Vans Triple Crown of Surfing
presented by Monster Energy, is on hold for the second day giving
us all a chance to pause, to reflect on a seemingly rehabilitated,
rejuvenated, re-inspired John John Florence in association with
Florence Marine X and also Monster Energy.
A near perfect score in his heat, the highest heat total of the
day.
Imagine with me now that the North Shore’s second favorite son
(following Jamie O’Brien) is all the way back. Engaged. Head in the
game. Will he be able to pause the inevitability of the World Surf
League Championship Tour trophy swapping back and forth from
Gabriel Medina’s Brazilian mansion to Italo Ferreira’s Brazilian
mansion for the next decade-plus?
Or have the Stormers put enough distance between themselves and
Florence to keep professional surfing green and gold forever?
As much as I enjoy watching Ferreira surf, enjoy observing his
stoke-ed, the best rivalry the WSL has is Florence vs. Medina and,
to be honest, I do not for the life of me understand why a separate
three stop tour, say Pipeline, J-Bay, _____, isn’t instantly
conjured pitting only the two of them against each other.
Best two out of three.
Do you follow golf?
I don’t but followed The Match
between Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau because rivalry is
interesting and rivalry is fun.
The World Surf League acting like heat formats, tour structures
etc. were etched in stone tablets atop Mount Barney by Rabbit
Bartholomew himself, inspired, then brought down to the masses is
ridiculous.