Medina, bow, Toledo, stern, in happier times.

Latin surf fans vow to create chaos at next world tour event in Brazil following Filipe Toledo’s controversial loss to Californian in El Salvador, “The biggest protest in history in Saquarema! Bring banners, balloons planes, boo all the time! Make them leave due to emotional stress!”

"Saquarema fans already know what to do!!! Protest now!"

The World Surf League is gonna walk into a hornet’s nest at the tour’s next stop which, as fate would play it, is in Brazil.

If you’re coming in late, the play is this: a few decisions have gone against Brazil’s heroes Gabriel Medina and Filipe Toledo and Latin surf fans are convinced it’s a conspiracy, likely race-based, to kneecap the sport’s rightful champions, three-time world champ Medina and his understudy Toledo.

I wrote about it yesterday when the Californian Griffith Colapinto defeated Toledo at the Surf City El Salvador Pro, and clearly so in my opinion, and apoplectic Brazilian fans hit the WSL’s Instagram account en masse to voice their fury.

“World Shame League”

“…and the World Shame League strikes again.”

“WHAT A SHAME! WORLD SHAME LEAGUE! This last wave never will be like 8. This event was a joke.”

“SHAMEEE!!”

“The champion was already decided even before the heat begins. World Shame League.”

“If the judges do that again in Saquarema, the jiuripoca is gonna pew.”

“What a joke… Not any credibility left.”

Now, same fans have stepped up the vitriol, calling for chaos at the tour’s next stop at Saquarema, as well as threats of violence should similar events occur there, ie, a Brazilian loses to a gringo.

“You have to make the biggest protest in history in Saquarema! Bring banners, balloons planes, boo all the time! Make them leave due to emotional stress!”

“Exactly! Giant protest!”

“Saquarema fans already know what to do!!! Protest now!”

“Boycott! Prevent Saquarema!”

“I want to see if you guys will have the courage to continue this robbery in Saquarema.”

Meanwhile, popular Brazilian pro’s Yago Dora and Jadson Andre have taken to Twitter and Instagram to quell a fury that has spilled over onto Griffin’s personal Instagram account.

Wrote, Andre: “You Brazilian who comes here on Griffin’s page to talk nonsense about the drums or him, you don’t represent me!!! The kid just did his job, more respect for the favor. Thanks.”

And from Yago,

“Brazilians who come here to talk shit to the athlete who dedicates his whole life to surfing, that’s enough! The guy is just doing his job, whether the result was fair or not is not the athlete’s fault!”

Here’s hoping for HB 1986 redux on the dazzling white sands of Saquarema.

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In hot new interview, World Surf League CEO Erik Logan discusses explosive 20% revenue growth, wild 62% spike in audience and the untapped storytelling potential of Kelly Slater!

"The example I like to use..."

We grumpy locals, we salt-crusted derelicts have long gazed upon the World Surf League with a critical eye. It has, for years, seemed lost, pivoting from one raison d’être to another, never quite settling in. Tubs, for example, were the future then content then a reseeded competitive landscape. CEOs shuffled in and out, along with CMOs and various senior VPs. We watched, from our grouchy perches, and smelled a failure but our eyes, apparently, are stupid and our noses dumb for in a scintillating just-released interview with Boardsport Source, current CEO Erik Logan has delivered a wildly rosy update.

You must read in its entirety, here, but some highlights, to ponder, in the meantime. Revenue is up 20%, brand partners are up 35%, the digital audience up 62%, viewership numbers for the new Challenger Series up a whopping 92% and consumption of the aforementioned CS up a mind-boggling 300% or as Logan says, “Our strategy is to grow the audience in the biggest ways and when you look at our digital reach across Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and combine it with the linear partners that take it, Sport TV, Globo etc, we have a really large and wide distribution footprint and our model is to build and grow the largest audience, which we can then leverage for our surfers and partners to expose and grow to create a sustainable organisaiton perpetually. And to do this we need to meet the audience where they are.”

The studios, though “not shuttered, per se” have changed course to “fewer and better” including the vast un-mined field of Kelly Slater. Logan clarifying, “The example I like to use is Kelly Slater, probably being one of the single greatest athletes ever. And a lot of people may not even know; he’s 50 years old, still competing at the highest level and has won 11 world titles – he’s broken every record in competitive sport. We think there are some really great stories – like this one – to tell and connect to the broader eco system, or people who are interested in wider sports.”

Dirk Ziff, the World Surf League’s co-owner in chief, has no intention to pull the plug, either his goal simply being “to make investments to build this platform – this digital eco system – and to connect the world and surf fans to see surfing on the level it deserves to be.”

Professional surfing for the win.

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Accused sex pest Ryan Halkett.

Popular surf instructor arrested on multiple counts of rape and sexual assault, “The (alleged) victims were all females from foreign countries who attended his surf school…and alleged that the accused made them drunk and raped them.”

“The alleged accused was involved in several rape and sexual assault cases that happened between 2014 and 2022 at his surf shop school."

Ryan Halkett, owner of the Hermanus Surf Camp in South Africa, was plucked from his lodge by police and brought before the Hermanus Magistrates’ Court on Thursday.

Multiple counts of rape and sexual assault. 

Per police spokesperson Frederick van Wyk,

“The alleged accused was involved in several rape and sexual assault cases that happened between 2014 and 2022 at his surf shop school in Hermanus. According to reports the victims were all females from foreign countries who attended his surf school on different times and alleged that the accused made them drunk and raped them at his place.”

Because the women who came forward did not live in South Africa ― one from Florida, one from Lisbon ― they were not able to press charges from abroad.

Another woman living in South Africa reported an assault by the forty-one-year-old Halkett. This opened the doors for the women living abroad to join the case against the surf school owner. 

Johannesburg-based non-profit organisation Koleinu SA is representing the women. Co-founder Wendy Hendler told the Maverick Citizen: “We were obviously devastated that there was another victim – this is exactly what we are trying to prevent. So it was just heartbreaking. This is a breakthrough though, as we needed someone in South Africa to open the case here.”

Van Wyk believes there will be additional charges added as more women come forward. The young lady from Florida has begun contacting other females who have stayed at the Hermanus Surf Camp. Out of seventy-nine, at least twenty women have claimed inappropriate actions by Halkett. 

Hermanus, known as the Riviera of the South, is located an hour from Cape Town. Community members are outraged over the accusations and have organized rallies in support of the women. 

Halkett, who is forty-one, is out on R1,000 bail, or sixty US dollars, and maintains his innocence.

Communicating through a WhatsApp voice note, he said the accusations are “completely false and damaging. And also extremely painful that people would say that kind of thing. So ja, that’s my response. It’s not very lekker[good] at all.”

Sixty-one reviews on booking.com, which still carries the school’s listing, are uniformly positive. 

“Staying at the surf lodge was my favourite experience on my travels in south africa. Hermanus is an amazing town and I felt very safe there as a female solo traveller.I will be back for sure.”

“Great breakfast, very helpful host – Ryan organized the whale boat for me and other activities. Hermanus is such a beautiful town and as a solo travelling female I felt very safe there.”

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Art for Hermosa punks Black Flag and new book Point Break.

Iconic punk-era artist Raymond Pettibon’s new book “Point Break” hits surfing and waves, “His world is a messy, raunchy tangle between excitement and terror. For those who have been in serious water, it’s familiar.”

"When looking at a Pettibon, you get the sense that the ocean isn’t a playground but a compulsion, where the chance of drowning is very real."

JP Currie pushed me into trail running but it’s raining and I’m a baby. So I cracked open Raymond Pettibon’s new coffee table book Point Break.

It’s a doozy.

Blue-black waves with massive, braided lips about to crash down on tiny pen and ink surfer bodies. Deceivingly simple, reductive high school notebook doodles, dark and tense.

When looking at a Pettibon, you get the sense that the ocean isn’t a playground but a compulsion, where the chance of drowning is very real.
His world is a messy, raunchy tangle between excitement and terror.

For those who have been in serious water, it’s familiar.

All others, please wait in the foyer.

The book is accompanied by an essay form seven-time world champion Stephanie Gilmore and an interview with writer Jamie Brisick.
Pettibon tells him that “there’s two kinds of surfing. There’s big-wave surfing, and there’s the surfing that is changing out of your wetsuit in the parking lot, the kind of locker-room jock culture…

“Big-wave surfing separates oneself from the parking lot and flashing some Gidget, changing our of your trunks. In the lineup it’s between you and the wave―that separates the men from the boys, it separates Greg Noll from Fabian.

“I used to have dreams―almost nightmares―of waves when they were so big, and being caught inside and it’s like a washing machine, and as far as you can dive down, you can get your eyes full of sand and you’re still being tossed and turned…”

As if Severson went mad with honesty.

Drizzled onto Pettibon’s paintings are handwritten notes:

“Lived, loved, wasted, died. P.S. ― Surfed.”

“That would be the perfect wave, if there was not someone on it.”

“My road homewards lay through Waimea Bay.”

And my favorite, scrawled atop an image of a single, erect surfer taking the high-line on an impossibly steep right:

“What more could I have asked?”

But some are trickier to decipher:

“We let ourselves believe that we see a surface flatness there even as we pray for his soles. Borne forward mostly on the arms of in the curl of her kind nature alone. Born nekkid. There was really only one way to go.”

I’m too dull to get it and that’s why it’s worth staring at. Pettibon has long forgotten his censor.

His works try make sense of his experiences in the water. Sort of like Calvino meant when he said that dreamy thinking is “like jam; you have to spread it on a solid slice of bread. If not, it remains a shapeless thing, like jam, out of which you can’t make anything.”

Pettibon’s bread is canvas and his ink spreads smooth, baby.

It’s tough to hang an event on your wall but Pettibon comes close.

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You become a great dancer not by standing at the front of the class looking at yourself in the mirror, but by standing at the back, giving yourself space to dance, and by watching those in front of you. At this point, Griffin Colapinto’s dancing has made me sit up and take notice. | Photo: Pat Nolan/WSL

Buddhism big winner at Surf City El Salvador Pro, “That’s four contests, including the last three in a row, that have been won by two young surfers leaning heavily into Eastern philosophies of meditation and mindfulness!”

The more they win, the less it seems like an act. The more buzzer beater victories they have, and the greater composure they show, the more we might begin to wonder if they have unearthed a secret.

Call me ignorant, but I don’t follow the news.

Most of the time I have no idea what’s going on in the world. I know nothing about politics. I’ve voted exactly once in my life.

I have no social media aside from a Twitter account I opened six months ago, a necessary evil to find and promote writing,  but I hate it. I enjoy neither self-promotion nor self-doubt.

I want to keep my world simple, do my own thing.

But I struggle.

I’ve never felt satisfied for any length of time. Forever I’ve felt like I’m falling short of some unidentified purpose.

Life is a speeding thought train I can’t get off. Things flash into focus and are gone again before I’ve really seen them. I never really know what to dedicate my time to. When I do try to stop, all I want to do is get moving again, to find the next thing.

I think often about how other people feel about their lot, how they approach things.

Generally I’m envious of those who seem able to focus on singular goals or passions. 

I think that’s why I was drawn to writing and reading. To immerse myself in different worlds, to know things intensely and love them fiercely, if only for a short time.

It’s like a series of joyrides. I’m having the most fun imaginable, but then I walk away and leave them, upside down with wheels still spinning.

I wonder sometimes if life is easier for people who don’t think too much.

And if you don’t have a wandering mind, and you can find something to love, do you have greater capacity to dedicate yourself to it?

Is it easier to empty your mind if it’s not very full in the first place?

That’s four WCT competitions, including the last three in a row, that have been won by two young surfers leaning heavily into Eastern philosophies of meditation and mindfulness.

Griffin Colapinto and Jack Robinson. 

The more they win, the less it seems like an act. The more buzzer beater victories they have, and the greater composure they show, the more we might begin to wonder if they have unearthed a secret.

Our only real cause to doubt them is the hamming of their methods by Joe Turpel and his ilk. But let’s face it, they have the capacity to make anything sound disingenuous.

Colapinto noted yesterday that he has been learning from watching Jack Robinson’s approach.

Good artists borrow, great artists steal.

You become a great dancer not by standing at the front of the class looking at yourself in the mirror, but by standing at the back, giving yourself space to dance, and by watching those in front of you.

At this point, Griffin Colapinto’s dancing has made me sit up and take notice.

Honestly, I wasn’t convinced we would see a repeat of his Portugal victory anytime soon. The waves were sub-par, his meditation seemed juvenile. It seemed like the kind of win a talented surfer might get when he catches a vibe, but not necessarily one he could repeat.

But repeat he did, today in El Salvador. And though we might question the quality of the waves throughout the event, and the consistency of the scoring in the final, we cannot question his overall performance, nor the quality of his opponents.

Jordy, Kanoa, Gabby, Filipe.

If you beat those men in the course of an event, in any conditions, you deserve the win.

Most impressive is his fearlessness, especially when faced with Toledo. 

Just imagining the sheer speed, power and amplitude Filipe conjures is enough to diminish most competitors before they’ve even reached the water.

Not so Griffin.

Yesterday he virtually called out Medina when he claimed he’d been a boy the last time he saw him, and he was looking forward to facing him as a man. Another statement that marked a changed in his psychological makeup and perception of the world.

Today, in the post heat interview after manhandling Medina, it was Filipe he called for. He’s been the best, he said. I want him.

In the aftermath of his victory over Toledo he gave a brief interview with Strider from the water.

“Comeback performances,  those are what I dream of,” he said. “If I’m in that position, I love it.”

We know from past commentary that he’s referencing literal dreams. The surfers Colapinto sees in his visualisations are those he defeated here.

Medina has made two semi-finals in his first two comps back, and in both he looked like a potential winner.

His recent happy-go-lucky persona was more muted today post-loss. It was good to see that tension. Make no mistake, he wants to be in the final five. He’ll need to win at least one of the last three comps, and he can, as we know.

He feels his scores have been a little lowballed recently, and I think he has a case. (Not that my objectivity is reliable when it comes to Medina and the amount of money I have riding on him.)

I didn’t bet on Filipe, but he, too, might have cause to grumble about his scores. Along with Gabby and Italo, his aerial maneuvering is still scored lower than that of other surfers.

It’s not surprising. Think how much of their surfing the judges have watched. If they were without bias and expectation they wouldn’t be human.

The fight for the top five is shaping up nicely. With Rio (I can’t believe it starts in a week!), J-Bay and Teahupo’o to go, there’s still a bit of meat on the bone.

Here’s a thought exercise I’ll leave you with, does the fact the finals are at Trestles give some surfers a psychological advantage from the off?

Griffin could relax from day one, as could Filipe, as could Kanoa. Not only are the finals taking place at a wave that’s pretty much their local spot, but it suits their surfing.

It’s a mind game.

What if the finals were scheduled for Teahupo’o?

Who would be off the leash then?

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