Jaws part Deux.

I’ll tell you what. There is nothing more difficult than ballet choreography. Why and how I know such is a longer story, becoming a book, but my goodness and wow. The moves are all in French, impossible to do, rapid fire and must be exact. Exact. Not one toe out of place. Not one finger wrong. Toss in dizzying spins, inhuman flexibility, a brain able to sort the specifics then add grace and flow.

Hollywood acting, I’d imagine, much easier but maybe not for Great White Sharks as their brains are only 60 centimeters long and, thus, a Great White was practicing her simple choreography very near Southern California in a possible indication that the world’s most famous Great White Shark role, Jaws, is being recast.

Per news reports, Nikki Brant Sevy and Euan Rannachan of the Be A Shark diving operation were off Guadalupe Island snapping headshots when they saw “Nicole” working her routine.

“When sharks are serious about getting a hang bait they often make a fast vertical approach from the depths.” Sevy told The New York Post. “I saw Nicole approaching from below and was able to visually track her as she instigated her approach. She rose up directly in front of me and I knew I had the chance at a Jaws movie poster shot. There were a lot of mackerel around that day, and I was worried they ruined the photo by getting between me and Nicole, or that they pulled focus from her. Checking your photos underwater is difficult, though, so I crossed my fingers and went back to photographing Nicole for another hour. It wasn’t until the trip was over that I downloaded my images and realized I got the shot.”

Ugh.

Would you like to audition for “surfer getting eaten” in the re-deux?

Easier than ballet, I’ll tell you that right now.

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.

According to Honolulu Civil Beat:

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.

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.”

The whole business is worth reading but, more importantly, the rise of the kook.

They are everywhere these days.

The CIA’s fault?

From what I witnessed today it would make too very much sense.

Many surf hats.

Tin foil adjacent.

More as the story develops.