World Surf League flexes hard on long-suffering fans, forces them to enter “foil king” Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse in order to experience professional contest surfing!

By Chas Smith

3 years ago

Boss moves.

I met Adam Silver, the commissioner of the NBA, many years ago in New York and was impressed by both his vision and his approach. He seemed to know where the future of sport was headed and was guiding basketball there, turning its stars into international sensations. He was also very aware that he had an opportunity to grow a fanbase far beyond the United States of America’s borders. People watching, engaging, following the world over was what mattered and so he pivoted hard from the NFL and MLB models of restricting access to certain channels, suing wildly when logos, team names appeared anywhere unsanctioned etc. and let people take games, highlight clips, all of it and do what they pleased.

A winning strategy and now the NBA has more fans than the once all-powerful NFL.

Well, the World Surf League has decided that it has too many fans and, days ago, followed the iron fist model refusing for its surf contests to be embedded anywhere not Facebook, YouTube or worldsurfleague.com.

Forcing its fans to live inside “foil king” Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse.

Completely idiotic, I think. Santa Monica should be begging for any sort of engagement they can get, any sweet boy or girl to care about Conner O’Leary somewhere, anywhere. They should be trying to hide their player on each and every surf or surf-adjacent website out there but no, I suppose. Too many fans already, I guess.

David Lee Scales and I discussed Ben Gravy’s wedding for about three-times as long as we did Haleiwa yesterday, in any case. Maybe another worrying sign co-Waterperson of the Year Dirk Ziff and crew.

Listen here.

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Surf Journalist taps in to bounty of data science and research, utilizes personal digital fitness and health coach to steal waves off the woefully unsuspecting!

By Chas Smith

3 years ago

Knowledge is power.

It truly is the most wonderful time of the year and I defy you to challenge me there. Defy you to tell me, straight faced, that when you enter a store and Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas” is playing a shiver of pure joy don’t rush right up your spine.

Glitter.

Pure magic but a slight problem exists for us grumpy locals, we guardian angels of the sea.

The holiday season means that work is pushed down the daily list of “things that must get done” leaving ample time for the stoked-adjacent to head to the beach, paddle out and clog already choked lineups.

What to do?

Well, for the first time in my life I have a WHOOP strap, a personal digital fitness and health coach, that teaches me to be my very best and, moreover, employs a cadre of scientists and researchers to parse data, codify behaviors.

The team recently looked at holiday behaviors and, maybe shockingly, discovered that people drink more and sleep more during the time of year.

Per the just-published report:

To understand the relationship between holidays and changes in WHOOP data, we compared the population averages on each holiday and holiday eve to a baseline. We didn’t want any seasonal or weekday effects to muddy the results of our study, so our baseline consisted of the average of 8 other days–the 4 days of the same day of week preceding the holiday or eve, and the 4 days of the same day of week following the holiday or eve.

Using the baseline averages and the holiday averages, we found the average change in sleep and alcohol prevalence on each of the federal holidays and their eves. This illuminated which holidays correspond with significant differences in sleep patterns and alcohol prevalence and which seem to have little changes at all.

Bed time changed by around 16 minutes on average during holidays and their eves. Most differences in bed time were later bed times, when it was on average about 22 minutes later than usual. Each of the holidays with an earlier average bedtime were Monday holidays, indicating that members were likely taking advantage of the day off to catch up on some sleep during the work week.

Wake time changed by almost 25 minutes on average. Most holidays were associated with sleeping in and on those days the average change in wake time was almost 33 minutes later. Similar to bed time, the only holidays that were associated with an earlier wake time were Monday holidays.

As the changes in bed time and wake time indicate, WHOOP members were getting more sleep around the holidays. The average change in sleep duration on holidays and eves was 2.1%. Of the 20 holidays we analyzed, 15 corresponded to an increase in sleep duration for an average increase of 2.5%. Only two holidays corresponded to significant decreases in sleep, one of which was New Year’s Eve. Overall, holidays were associated with varying changes in sleep consistency–about half had an increase in sleep consistency and half had a decrease.

Genius and I realized all I need to do is keep my recovery in the green, or “ready for optimal performance,” during this crucial time, wake up an hour earlier and, thereby, catch so many more waves all by myself.

A Hanukkah gift that gives for more that seven, ten, even thirty days.

Worth every ounce of investment because how will you know, otherwise, that you have not succumbed to the inertia of this festive season?

Healthy sleep, recovery, strain data equals more waves.

You’re welcome.

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Del, although cool in his own right, leaned a bit sad-sack as well. At the beginning of Barefoot Adventure, he steps in a fresh pile of dog shit and responds with nothing more than a weary "why me" tilt of the head.

San Diego surf icon, shaper and pioneer of Waimea Bay, dead at 85, “He was known as the boy-next-door barefoot adventurer who would pretend to step in a mound of poo for our lowbrow comedy pleasure!”

By Matt Warshaw

3 years ago

Rode Waimea in '57, hand-crafted gorgeous surfboards.

Dale Velzy is the first surfer Bruce Brown introduces in Slippery When Wet, Brown’s 1958 debut movie. Del Cannon is second.

The camera loves both, but for very different reasons.

Dale, with his crooked smile and Boozefighter haircut and a merchant marine tattoo on his bicep, is the lovable hustler on his way to a near-career-killing beatdown by the IRS. Cannon is handsome and innocent and reserved, with a hint of Buster Keaton around his soulful eyes. Dale was never again seen in a Bruce Brown movie.

Del was featured in most of them. It’s easy to see why.

Del looked and surfed like Phil Edwards’s understudy—Phil was every surf filmmaker’s go-surf surfer at the time, Bruce included—but was more accessible, more relatable, easier to identify with. Brown recognized the value of ground-level charisma.

Phil was a surf god. Del, although cool in his own right, leaned a bit sad-sack. At the beginning of Barefoot Adventure, he steps in a fresh pile of dog shit and responds with nothing more than a weary “why me” tilt of the head.

“Del was a San Diego guy, a good surfer and a great swimmer,” Bruce Brown later recalled, “but he was really great actor! He had screen presence. He could get a lot done with just the slightest expression. And he’d do anything you asked.”

Bruce, as you can see from the video here, was happy to film Del riding waves—but he was even happier filming him in the short comedy bits that popped up every ten minutes or so during the running time of a surf flick, as a way to break up the wave-riding action.

Cannon was among the group of surfers in ’57 who rode Waimea for the first time, and was later known for making high-quality surfboards.

Following his move to Hawaii, around 1970, he was a mostly-uncredited shaper for Lightning Bolt. But back in the sport’s pre-Beatles age, when hair was short and comedy was corn-filled, Del was known and appreciated as the boy-next-door barefoot adventurer who would pretend to step in a dog crap for our lowbrow comedy pleasure.

He was one of us.

(Matt Warshaw is the editor and archivist at his Encyclopedia of Surfing, where this story first appeared. It costs three bucks a month for the keys to surfing’s wild history. Essential.)

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WHOOP is a heartless bastard who don't care for your excuses why you can't surf, too crowded, waves bad etc.

Fitness tracker intervenes in surfer’s existential crisis thus averting a new instalment of quit-lit!

By Derek Rielly

3 years ago

WHOOP strap is a wordless drill sergeant, a heartless bastard who doesn't care for wearer's apathy or excuses.

WHOOP, my dear WHOOP, I reflected as I stood on the beach in the rain, lashed by wind, feeling cold and tired and wretched.

There was nobody in the water. It was two foot at best, a south wind hammering down the remnants of a north-east swell. Surfing, in this instance, was a hopeless business. A terrible return on investment.

And here I was, ready to surf, a pretty pink surfboard made by Matt Biolos wrapped under an arm, a hell of a surfboard, mostly unused despite it being six months old.

Six months earlier, I’d started to fall out of love with the game or at least my version of surfing: find a window in the city crowds of soft-tops, SUPS and VALS across the two, sometimes, three banks on my beach, catch three waves, avoid trouble if I could although sometimes this was not possible and come home exercised and a with little sun on my face.

Surfing had gotten real old.

Six or seven surfs a week had turned into four turned and then into three.

A flat spell came and I didn’t surf for six days. It was the longest time I’d had out of the water since I was a kid back when I couldn’t get to the beach unless I rode twenty miles.

Is this how it ends, I wondered?

Not with a bang but with the gentlest whimper?

No grand “I quit!” gestures, no rage against the dying of the light, but going gently into the post-surf phase.

Around that time, I got the WHOOP sent to me. The app told me how little I was sleeping, and how poorly, noted the times I got up and cruised to kitchen or bathroom, offered pretty good advice on when to train and when to take it a little easier.

But more than that, the data collected provided a picture of how my body reacted when I surfed, the heart spikes on a wave, the meditative lows between sets, the slightly elevated rate on the paddle back out, and all backed by a strain figure that demonstrated how hard I pushed myself during a surf.

And the wildest thing?

It made me want to surf, however grim the conditions, however dense the crowd.

A wordless drill sergeant, a heartless bastard who didn’t care for my apathy.

My new master.

It filled my glass with surf and now I drink again, fast, defiantly, just to watch the numbers soar.

Buy here, fifteen percent discount if you use the code BEACHGRIT at checkout.

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Over-dramatic shark explodes out of water behind two extremely chill Puerto Rican surfers forcing one to paddle slightly down the beach!

By Chas Smith

3 years ago

They build 'em tough on the Island of Enchantment.

Many years ago, I wrote “Men go to Hawaii and boys go to Puerto Rico” which was rude then and ruder today especially in light of just-surfaced video depicting two Puerto Rican surfers becoming lightly surprised by an over-dramatic shark exploding out of the water behind them, one choosing to paddle down the beach, keeping a nice tight form, the other just chilling atop his board.

The incident occurred just off Middles in Isabela with Jorge Benitez filming from the sand. He told news outlets that this was the first shark he had seen though they are known to be around the area. “They have enough food, apparently, so we barely have incidents if any.”

Mainstream media described the scene as “heart-stopping” with the surfers in the water “desperately trying to flee” and “panicked” but watch the footage for yourself.

Eat beach grit spam!