Decades after popularizing removable fin systems, champion surfer Kelly Slater concludes they are great environmental evil; launches new “green” removable fin system!

Chas Smith

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We live in the futures.

Surfing can, in many ways, be broken up into B.K. and A.K. Before Kelly and Anno Kelly. B.K., everyone had glass on fins and purchased paper surf magazines. A.K. everyone rides removable fin systems and has paper surf-adjacent catalogs junk mailed to their homes.

And where would we be if Slater had not popularized FCS? In a world of hurt is where but, decades later, it has been revealed that removable fins are actually bad for the environment and end up littering reefs etc. The 11-time surfing world champion, never missing an opportunity to wash the world a new, glorious shade of green, has taken it upon himself to launch a more eco-friendly alternative to those fin systems currently on the market.

Introducing Endorfins.

Per the press release:

Kelly has always had a deep relationship and passion for fins being that they are a critical component of board design and performance. We wanted to bring this to life by launching a fin brand driven by Kelly’s vision of performance and eco responsibility. We believe as surfers we have a responsibility to make fins as eco-friendly as possible and ensure we keep our ocean floor free from “Lost and Broken fins.”

The design of these fins are the culmination of Kelly’s many years and extensive experience with a variety of designs and templates. This unique flex pattern is created by a carbon twill, layered with an ultralight carbon veil over a P.E.T core. The P.E.T core is 90% air resulting in Fins so light they float on water. Combining that knowledge, and several rounds of testing and adjusting over the past year and a half, we are excited to present Endorfins to the world.

The fins work in either FCS or Futures boxes and will float out to the great plastic garbage island in the sea instead of getting buried with sand.

Progress.

"Lemme heal you."
"Lemme heal you."

In wild twist no surfer saw coming, generally misanthropic sharks possess protein that acts as antibody to dreaded Covid virus!

Chas Smith

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A paradigm shift.

What a time, no? Filled with so much upside down oddity, so much counter-intuitive strange. Who could have ever thought that pumping tons and tons of free money into an economy makes the price of goods go up? Who would have ever dreamed that shark, generally misanthropic, hold the secret to curing mankind of its current dreaded ailment?

Not surfers, certainly, but a new study just released in the scientific journal Nature Communications makes it entirely clear that sharks, broadly man-eating, have proteins that act as antibody to Covid-19 and its variations.

Care to sample?

Single-domain Variable New Antigen Receptors (VNARs) from the immune system of sharks are the smallest naturally occurring binding domains found in nature. Possessing flexible paratopes that can recognize protein motifs inaccessible to classical antibodies, VNARs have yet to be exploited for the development of SARS-CoV-2 therapeutics. Here, we detail the identification of a series of VNARs from a VNAR phage display library screened against the SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain (RBD). The ability of the VNARs to neutralize pseudotype and authentic live SARS-CoV-2 virus rivalled or exceeded that of full-length immunoglobulins and other single-domain antibodies. Crystallographic analysis of two VNARs found that they recognized separate epitopes on the RBD and had distinctly different mechanisms of virus neutralization unique to VNARs. Structural and biochemical data suggest that VNARs would be effective therapeutic agents against emerging SARS-CoV-2 mutants, including the Delta variant, and coronaviruses across multiple phylogenetic lineages. This study highlights the utility of VNARs as effective therapeutics against coronaviruses and may serve as a critical milestone for nearing a paradigm shift of the greater biologic landscape.

I am almost loathe to share the wonderful news, as sharks have long been a natural deterrent to the VAL invasion but maybe no longer.

Maybe many soft toppers will head out to the lineup hoping to catch a little nibble along with the other great passion of clogging the inside.

The shark proteins have not been tested on humans yet but will be soon and I think surfers, for all the frontline work done amongst the toothy beasts, should be first in line.

Sensible.

Coke, good for kissing!

Forty-six kilos of “pure white cocaine”, worth millions, found on beach at Jeffreys Bay! “Until you’ve got your mouth full of cocaine, you don’t know what kissing is”

Derek Rielly

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Cocaine's a hell of a drug etc.

A forty-six kilogram shipment of “pure white cocaine”, compressed into bricks and sealed in black plastic, was found on the beach at Jeffreys Bay last Wednesday and handed into local police by a couple walking their dog. 

“The suspected drugs were seized for forensic examination and the docket was referred to Hawks Serious Organised Crime Investigation team based in Gqeberha for a further probe,” said the local head cop. “No arrest at this stage pending the ongoing investigation.”

J-Bay coke.

It’s about now you play that little game of what-would-you-do? Forty-six kegs ain’t an amount to be trifled with. 

Cut into one-gram bags, street value in Australia $400, let’s say it’s diluted by fifty percent, and that’s thirty-six million dollars. (Unless my maths ain’t functioning.)

Yeah, South Africa is a hell of a lot cheaper. And, yeah, that’s someone else’s coke and they ain’t gonna be happy if you’re schlepping it around.

So what would you do?

Hand it in?

Cut a piece off for personal use, maybe a little extra for pals?

Go full Pablo Escobar?

Me?

Ain’t my favourite treat although I do subscribe to Aleister Crowley’s take in Diary of a Drug Fiend.

“Until you’ve got your mouth full of cocaine, you don’t know what kissing is. One kiss goes on from phase to phase like one of those novels by Balzac and Zola and Romain Rolland and D. H. Lawrence and those chaps. And you never get tired. You’re on fourth speed all the time, and the engine purrs like a kitten, a big white kitten with the stars in its whiskers.”

Dirty Water: Surfing rock star turned Bruce Lee of technique Brad Gerlach talks “rubber dicks” and how to bring “Voodoo spirits” into your game!

Derek Rielly

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"I wanted to give you my cherry! Take it now, it's yours!"

I’ve always felt an exquisite tenderness towards Brad Gerlach, an almost world champ, who rubbed his heady gristle against the tour’s stiffening dingus in the late eighties, early nineties.

Gerlach is the son of a Hungarian Olympian who later became a stuntman, and who became famous, in 1971, for jumping out of a hot air balloon and into a three-foot thick foam pad.

Gerlach retired from the tour at twenty five to pursue the “the artistic side of surfing”.

He was one of the first surfers to ride Cortes Bank, one hundred miles out to sea, and and, in 2005, won sixty-eight thousand dollars by riding a sixty-eight foot wave at Todos Santos. 

He is even lovelier now than when he was at his professional surfing peak in the eighties and nineties. 

He wears fiery little hats in bottle green, spectacles that shave years off his biological age and his lean body betrays a carnal fluency.

(And click here to examine his Wave Ki surf technique.)

Passion.
Passion.

Calls grow for World Surf League to formally apologize to Federative Republic of Brazil after using stereotypical trope in describing surf fanbase!

Chas Smith

By

Much passion.

Days ago, it was announced that the World Surf League, headquartered in Santa Monica, California, had signed a stunning television rights deal with Latin America’s largest network, TV Globo out of Rio de Janeiro. Per the press release:

Today the World Surf League (WSL) announced that, beginning in 2022, Globo will be the official media partner in Brazil. The new three-year media deal will be effective from 2022 through 2024, providing multi-platform coverage that will be amplified on Globo TV, Globoplay, ge.com, and Canal OFF. This new media deal will give the passionate Brazilian audience the opportunity to watch the world’s best surfers in action, including all of the Brazilian athletes that are on the forefront of competitive surfing.

Questions immediately rose as to the use of the word “passionate” as it is the one and only adjective used to describe Brazilian surf fans and has, therefore, become a stereotypical trope. Racist-adjacent.

Why can’t Brazil’s fanbase be “informed” or “dedicated?”

“Loyal?”

In any case, calls are growing for the World Surf League to issue a formal apology to the federative republic. David Lee and I discussed, on yesterday’s podcast, and also discussed Neo-punk music. Worth your time, I think.

Photo: Jack English
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