In ominous beginning to 2022, Los Angeles beaches close after 4 million gallons of untreated sewage escape into ocean!

"You come all this way and you don’t get to play in the sand or the ocean? That doesn’t seem fair. We were so looking forward to this change in scenery, but like everywhere, there’s catastrophe.”

I am now in Florence, having rung in the new year just hours ago in a quaint piazza, many carabinieri milling about. I asked one where the party was going to be after finishing my meal of linguini all’astice and Negroni. He responded, “Nowhere. There is no party. Go home and go to sleep,” though laughing. Whilst walking back to the 19th century hotel on the banks of the Arno, I realized they were actively breaking groups of people up, Covid etc., but this being Italy, the party happened anyway.

Back in Los Angeles, a different sort of party was taking place on the banks of the Pacific as 4 million gallons of untreated sewage escaped from a 48-inch wide pipe, fleeing into the Dominguez Channel then losing itself in the ocean.

Beaches all over the county were immediately shuttered as water safety inspection teams raced in to assess the damage.

This is the second major sewage spill in the region in the last six months after 17 gallons of sewage spewed into Santa Monica Bay this July. Officials say “climate change creates perfect storm of raw sewage and rainfall in the cities that can least afford it” but the sentiment does nothing to salve the wounds of tourists.

Sandi Williams, who traveled to Southern California from suburban Massachusetts for the holidays, told the Los Angeles Times, “You come all this way and you don’t get to play in the sand or the ocean? That doesn’t seem fair. We were so looking forward to this change in scenery, but like everywhere, there’s catastrophe.”

There’s no catastrophe in Florence. Things very wonderful and Ms. Williams should think about just coming here.


Horror New Year’s Eve cliff collapse at Bells Beach kills one, injures three

Four hit by falling debris. Three suffered minor injuries, the unnamed man died in a rescue chopper en route to hospital in Melbourne. 

A twenty-eight-year-old man is dead after a cliff collapsed pouring debris onto a group of six at Southside, there on the southern side of the Bells Beach headland one hundred clicks from Melbourne.

The accident happened around 2:15 when the group was showered by debris falling from the eroding hundred-foot high bluff above ‘em.

Four were hit. Three suffered minor injuries, the unnamed man died in a rescue chopper en route to hospital in Melbourne. 

Anyone with a long memory will recall a similar accident in 1996 when five adults and four kids were killed while sheltering from shitty weather under a limestone overhang during a surf contest at Huzza’s, across the bay from North Point in Western Australia’s south-west. 

If you’ve ever surfed South Point y’might’ve seen the memorial, built above the collapse site. 

Skye Thompson was twelve when her Dad, the noted surf coach Lindsay, waved goodbye before the cliff collapsed.

“I had just finished surfing and was about to leave the beach and that’s when the cliff actually fell,” she told ABC news at the twenty-fifth memorial in September. “I was standing right alongside it and saying goodbye to my friends and my father. That’s a difficult memory.”


Hawaii radically alters approach to visiting hordes focusing on a “more sustainable, less colonial” experience as native Hawaiians take over tourism authority!

Aloha.

Hawaii, gorgeous 50th state, onetime monarchy, has always been in a real pickle when it comes to tourism. On one hand, visiting hordes are the islands’ lifeblood. On the other, visiting hordes really mess the place up. Tourist impact has long been viewed through the simple lens of money in coffers but, for the first time in history, the tourism authority is now majority native Hawaiians and things are going to drastically change.

According to a report in Bloomberg the new plan “relies heavily on community involvement and visitor education.”

“In the past, visitors were spoon-fed what outsiders thought they wanted,” Kainoa Horcajo, founder of the Mo’olelo Group, a Maui-based consultancy that helps hotels to reimagine their cultural experiences told the financial paper. “Now, it’s time to take a risk, challenge the visitor, and give them something real.”

Alterations include:

-Needing a reservation to visit most popular places like Maui’s Wai’anapanapa State Park or Oahu’s Hanauma Bay.

-Hefty ticket prices to hike trails etc.

-A “crash course” on how to be a “good tourist” with required educational videos and staged productions.

-A “conservation fee” to be paid on arrival.

-An encouragement to “give back.”

“In the past, tourism fed into the stories marketing executives thought White people wanted to hear,” Clifford Nae’ole, cultural adviser for the Ritz-Carlton Maui, Kapalua, and former president of the Native Hawaiian Hospitality Association told Bloomberg. “Hawaiian food was pineapple pizza and spam; a luau was just about girls dancing in grass skirts. Now, chefs are proudly incorporating native Hawaiian ingredients such as ulu, or breadfruit, into dishes, and luaus have become historical lessons about the Polynesian migration to Hawaii just as much as they are entertainment.”

Spam musubi is, honestly, one of my favorite foods on earth but I suppose I’ll see it go for the good of Hawaii.

No word on how surfing will be affected by the changes.


No surfing at Morro Bay.

Surfers return to California’s Morro Bay after deadly Christmas Eve attack by Great White on Sacramento bodyboarder; Salmon Creek surfers “pursued” by “aggressive” Great White!

Whites going wild in California… 

Six days ago, Sacramento man Tomas Butterfield died a lonely death while surfing a joint called The Pit, a beachbreak a mile or so north of Morro Rock.

No one saw the attack, no one heard any screams; surfers found the forty-two-year-old’s body and board. Sheriffs had to go through the parking lot to figure out who was killed “based on cars still parked” while paramedics put his body on ice.

The joint was closed for 24 hours as per protocol.

But, now, surfers have started to return to Morro Bay, although numbers are down and virtually no one is venturing down to The Pit.

“Yesterday, nobody was in the water,” Perry Shoemake told the San Luis Obispo Tribune on December 28. “I’ve been surfing for 55 years. I know (a shark attack) is always a risk. But it’s something I don’t think about much. If it happens, it happens.”

Xavier Gonzales told the Trib’s reporter as he readied to paddle out, “Sometimes when I’m out there with just one or two other people or even by myself, you get a certain feeling that something’s a little off, and those are the days you never want to come across… The chances of getting attacked are pretty low, but that’s what you sign up for when you surf. I feel sorry for that family and that they lost somebody they love. I pray for that family.”

Kevin Grochau of North Morro Bay wasn’t going near the joint, howevs. He watched from the beach.

“I see as many as 25 or 30 people out in the water here sometimes,” he said. “There are some good waves today. But most of the morning, there have been anywhere from three to five people surfing.”

Gonzales, meanwhile, did admit to getting het up by nerves.

“I’m pretty nervous, for sure. But after I paddle out and catch my first wave, I’m sure I’ll be stoked. It’s always nice to go out with somebody versus alone.”

A few hundred miles north at Salmon Creek Beach, where Eric Steinley was hit by a Great White in October, surfers reported an aggressive twelve-foot Great White on December 22.

“Holy crap, we were terrified because it was not backing off,” said Timothy Reck, who was chased, along with another surfer, into shallow water by the White. 

Thirty minutes later, another surfer, Nate Buck, said he saw a Great White, also around twelve feet, six feet from him,

“It felt like I could’ve leaned over and almost touched it,” Buck said, adding two sightings in one day was pretty “significant.”

Cue expert referencing death by killer bee more likely etc.


Much-loved world number two surfer becomes public face of anti-vax movement headlining “Freedom Rally” near Margaret River, “I’ve had a gutful and I have to speak up… something sinister is happening!”

“We've gotta steamroll this thing and wake people up. We don’t need people to get jabbed."

Seven months after warning his 326,00 Instagram followers of the “poisonous needle” former world #2 Taj Burrow has headlined a “Freedom Rally” at Bunbury, a small city an hour’s drive north of Tez’s award-winning “nautilus shell” house in Wardanup Crescent, Yallingup.

Tez, who is forty-three and a daddy of two, has been pretty vocal, along with a few other high-profile surfers of his opposition to mandated vaccines, mask-wearing and so on. 

In a speech to a crowd of a hundred-ish, (around the one hour fifteen mark), Tez, first, said he was a little wary of putting his opinion under the spotlight. 

“It was pretty tough. I hated the scrutiny. The scrutiny you cop is horrible. I questioned whether I should be doing it or not but it got to the point where I’d had a gutful and had to speak up. I don’t have a boss to answer to, my job’s not threatened.”

“You know,” said Tez, “in the early days when I started to question things, I was hoping his bloody jab was a money-making scheme. I was fearful it was something more sinister. I do feel like it’s something quite sinister that’s happening. I gotta stand up and talk about it.” 

Tez said it “blows my mind that we have to have this conversation about kids taking this experimental needle they have no need for whatsoever. Too much risk and no reward, in my opinion.” 

Rallying the crowd, Tez said he was “here to stand up and talk about it and spread the word. We need to wake people up but we’ve got to do it in the most loving, peaceful thing you can. You gotta come at this whole thing with love. As pissed off as I get with people walking down the street like zombies with masks, scanning everywhere, it pisses me off and I feel like a stranger in my own town, I tell myself, relax, try and plant the seed, show some love, maybe ask ‘em to question things. That’s what we should be doing. Our so-called leaders I do not trust.” 

Tez added he’d joined world surfing champ Barton Lynch and ironman Trevor Hendy’s Voices4Choices, an anti-mandated vax group. 

“The cracks are appearing,” said Tez, “We’ve gotta steamroll this thing and wake people up. This is not about being healthy. We know how to look after ourselves. We don’t need people to get jabbed and this shit.”