Elo on the offensive against hard-core surf fans and world champ!

It isn’t a stretch to describe Ain’t That Swell and its hardcore Swellian followers in the same way historians talk of the brave Apache, Aboriginal or Inca; the last remnants of a brave and brutal culture subsumed by something barren and unlovely and feeble and bland. 

Colonialists, VALS, ain’t no difference. 

During the taping of a recent episode at Torquay during the Bells Beach event, part of Ain’t That Swell’s epic Children of the Corn tour of Australia, Swellians welcomed WSL CEO Erik Logan with a volley of boos.

Show principal, Vaughan Blakey, a dignified and sincere man who don’t like hate, tried to hose down the rogue Swellians, “Who’s booing? Who was that? Fuck mate! Free contest free tour, fuck!, wake up!” 

Following suit, even Mick turned on his former boss, telling Logan he isn’t into the mid-tour cut, scissoring the SUP aficionado with “Personally, I wouldn’t do it”.

The smiling face of Logan, broadly benignant, was in no mood to back down, hosing away Mick’s claim that “rookies can’t establish themselves” with a stunning retort, “I think Barron (Mamiya) would disagree with that, he seems to be doing fine.” 

A wildly effective coup de grâce.

Mick, wounded, retreated into a series of “Look, look” etc. 

Logan, again, very good on the offensive, “I always come back to the fact, we get to a place where we’re focussing on crowning a world champion,” he said. 

Vaughan hoots, “Shirts off and into the octagon boys!” 

Good times! 

A friend in need...

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you are well aware that the long-simmering issue of abortion has exploded to the forefront of American polemics. A leak out of the Supreme Court earlier in the week, confirmed to be accurate, has suggested that the justices will abandon Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 ruling that protected abortion as a national right.

Passions have run hot for days with all-comers taking to social media, sharing their important opinions including celebrities and extreme sport announcer Sal Masekela.

The latter posted a simple black square with repeating white words reading “men should not be making laws about women’s bodies” adding “It’s pretty simple” as his caption.

Support was near universal with public figures and professional surfers weighing in with an assortment of “raise the roof” emojis, 100 emojis and heart emojis.

Big wave surfer and one-time movie star Shane Dorian also lent his backing though with a slight addendum and shaka emoji.

“Agreed! And they shouldn’t be allowed to compete against them in sports,” referencing the almost equally hot button issue of trans individuals playing games as their chosen gender as opposed whatever nonsense was listed upon a birth certificate.

Uh oh.

Condemnation was swift with @evo_robbie_oh telling Dorian it was “cool sliding in your transphobia” and Masekela, himself, declaring “seems a strange comment on an abortion convo brother.”

Dorian was quick to attempt clarification, replying, “Yeah I can see that. I wasn’t trying to change the subject at all. Women’s rights is the topic and what I said is on that topic. My apologies. Also, what I said isn’t transphobic at all, what someone chooses to hear when they read it is their trip, and that is totally fine.”

Cue living surf legend Kelly Slater. The 11x world champion and current number 13 spared no appeal to comment sense when rallying to his wonderful friend’s defense.

“Explain what part of his comment says anything about him being scared of trans people.”

Slater, who also happens to be godfather to Dorian’s son, continued to have his back, fending off weak jabs here, small parries there, proving himself to be the best sort of pal there is. One who rushes headlong into danger without regard for personal safety.

Bravo and if Dorian and Slater ever choose to revive their acting careers, I would love to see them in a World War II film, together in a fox hole, handsome and brave.

Academy Award material.

"Hey WSL, what is wrong with you guys?"

We surf fans, we watchers of webcasts and listeners to Joe Turpel, have now had a month plus to really sink our teeth into the World Surf League’s “mid-year cut.” Theoretically, I suppose, we knew it was on the boil some time ago, or at least before Covid, but was shelved until this year though still, I didn’t think about it until Bells where the professional surfers, themselves, tried to stage a coup.

It was quashed by Erik Logan’s rusty cudgel and on to Margaret River everyone marched, we surf fans, we students in shades of Rabbit Bartholomew, wondered which of our gladiators would live and which would die gruesome public deaths.

And yet, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum.

Mainstream media, for reasons either unknown or related to the new Apple television series “Make or Break,” have taken a precious moment to turn eyes away from war in Ukraine, Johnny Depp, Amber Heard to focus on the plight of those professional surfers who died those deaths and/or were sent back to the salt mines of Snapper.

De-leagured as it were.

The Guardian’s headline screams, No one really likes it’: brutal rule change breaks hearts in World Surf League with Kolohe Andino quoted as saying, “It’s just kind of hard the whole cut thing. No one really likes it. We’re all friends on tour and we all love each other, so you don’t want to knock the guy off tour. It just seems like it’s a TV show a little bit, like drama all the time. Watching the women’s the other day it was just heartbreaking with the girls that were losing. They were crying all day.”

Yahoo! Sports ups the ante by declaring, ‘Devastated’: Surfing world shattered over ‘heartbreaking’ scenes with legendary surf photographer Jimmy “Cane” Wilson adding, “Watching Owen Wright’s interview and he has a day and a half to make a decision on his career. Is this mid-year cut supposed to be fun and exciting, cause all I feel is sadness?”

Others weigh in too, begging the WSL to stop the cruelty and asking WSL leadership “What’s wrong with you guys?”

Etc.

But who could have guessed the plight of guillotined professional surfers would rank amidst the sufferings of the world and/or Johnny Depp + Amber Heard?

Did the World Surf League overplay its hand here? Will public perception turn sharply against?

Wild times.

“There was nothing we could do and it was a helpless situation. It was terrifying.”

In the Deschute River in Bend, Oregon, is a pretty wild construct, twenty-six air bladders stuck on the river bed that can be manipulated in real-time to create a rideable wave.

The Bend Whitewater Park was created in 2015 following “tenacious dedication, community support through a 2012 bond measure, general fund tax revenues, grants and private contributions.”

Idea was real simple: Add a little tech to nature and you get a cheap wavepool for landlocked shredders, paddlers, kids on rafts and so on.

Gerry Lopez, who lives nearby, digs it.

Now, the joint is closed following the death of seventeen-year-old local surfer Ben Murphy on Saturday.

Murphy was held underwater for six minutes, trapped by the underwater panels that make the wave, and only removed from the water when he was washed downstream after the wave was shut off.

Despite CPR on the scene and cardiac shock treatment at the hozzy, Murphy was pronounced dead. Howevs, a faint heartbeat was detected shortly after and the kid was moved to the ICU for treatment.

“The St. Charles staff was more than amazing and worked to keep Ben comfortable and his vitals slowly improved for the first eight hours,” Ben’s dad Patrick Murphy wrote on Facebook. “He was on oxygen, tons of medication and was sedated to keep him comfortable.”

A TV news report told viewers the teen had survived, although Ben’s organs gradually began to fail and he was pronounced dead, hours later, by hospital staff.

The Oregonian reports witnesses saying they saw Murphy fall and get his foot stuck in one of the underwater gates. After a minute Murphy came to the surface, took a breath, before disappearing.

Surfers jumped into the river in attempt to pull Murphy out.

Another local surfer, Stetson Talley, who’d previously worked as a lifeguard and who was one of a group of surfers who tried to free Murphy said, “There was nothing we could do and it was a helpless situation,” he said. “It was terrifying.”

Talley, who’s been surfing the wave or the past three years, said it wasn’t unheard of for surfers to get their feet caught in the cracks between the grates and that all of ‘em had been able to get their feet out before being sucked under.

According to The Oregonian, “At least six fatalities have been reported at standing wave features on other rivers in the U.S. and Canada in recent years.”

Three years ago, Dylan Graves surfed the place with Gerry Lopez as part of his Weird Waves project with Vans, the short explaining the mechanics behind the wave.