Mystifying.

Surf fans near and far have come together, today, in an attempt to solve a great mystery roiling the professional landscape. Hours ago, World Surf League CEO Erik Logan posted an image to social media featuring himself and current world number six Kanoa Igarashi, captioning it, “Having an opportunity to speak the worlds best surfers is something that NEVER gets old! Last week I had a chance to speak to our sponsors at the Vans US Open, and no question one of the highlights was having an ability to interview Kanoa. He’s a very special person, global superstar and one of the best surfers in the world. I wanted to thank him for taking such great time for our partners and giving us some extra time to talk! #graitude #surfing #lovewhatyoudo”

On the surface all very wonderful, but what is stumping fans, here and there, is the secret finger message on display (see top photo).

Igarashi, on the left and appearing somewhat dazed, is holding up one finger pointed at Logan’s eye. Logan, on the right and grinning broadly beneath model-perfect beard, is holding up two fingers somewhat limply pointed at his own chin.

Neither is known to affiliate with a gang nor is either a 12-year-old girl.

What, then, is the message?

1 – 2?

Professional surfers and management coming together to ensure a Kelly Slater title for 2022 thereby exciting mainstream news and, tide rising, floating all ships?

Igarashi letting the world know that new-look Logan stands for peace and is our time’s John Lennon?

Later, the two shook hands in an uncommon way further muddying waters.

Do you have a decoder book?

Ring?

Are you a 12-year-old girl?

Help.

Yikes!

The Outerknown Tahiti Pro officially kicks off tomorrow. Though it will likely not run immediately, it can be certain that the world’s best small-wave surfer Filipe Toledo will be pleading with the senior vice-president of competition, head of tours Jessi Miley-Dyer to get the party started as quickly as possible.

Surfline, the World Surf League’s official forecasting partner, is calling for minimal initial swell that will grow to shoulder high through the first weekend with gorgeous east northeast winds grooming.

“Perfect. It’s perfect out there. Run. Run today. Fun-size. Fuuuuuun-size,” he will maybe whisper through the screen of Miley-Dyer’s bungalow window in the pre-dawn hours, hoping beyond hope the message seeps subliminally.

Toledo will, of course, have one very nervous eye on the back half of the contest window where Surfline is calling for a “run of swell from the 17th-19th (that) may provide solid double overhead+ surf for Teahupo’o, potentially a little bigger on occasion.”

Yikes.

And you will certainly recall the 2015 Teahupoo contest in which Toledo refused to paddle for a wave, earning a 0 point heat score in what was described a brave act of cowardice.

Historic.

The wind those big days, however, may be a problem. While Surfline does its very best to bolster the WSL’s Wall of Positive Noise with sheer happy ludicrousness, the statement, “Models have been all over the place with just how the wind will play out for next week, as they struggle on a solution of a front sweeping through the region during that time. We’ll likely see a mix bag of good, bad, and so-so winds throughout this run, which for now, it’s still very uncertain when those times will be exactly,” does not inspire confidence.

“Bad winds on the way. Naughty winds coming,” Toledo will possibly chant near Miley-Dyer as she eats her lunchtime veranda poisson cru.

Will she be swayed?

Will the event run early or late?

More as the story develops.

Did Kelly Slater get it all wrong?

A real and mostly undeniable truth that has hovered over the World Surf League née Association of Surfing Professionals for the last two decades plus is that the best surfers in the world are on tour. Sure, there are wonderful Ben Gravies and Jamie O’Briens and Clay Marzos and etc. but the cream of the crop, in prime, has surfed the tour for the last two decades plus.

Three decades plus?

Certainly fantastic specimens have grown tired, “retired” early like Tom Curren, Dane Reynolds, Bobby Martinez and others from greater Santa Barbara but doesn’t this iteration of competitive professional surfing feel… different?

Gabriel Medina, sitting champion, elected to sit out most the year in his prime before becoming injured and not seeming to care.

Former champion John John Florence, became injured too but instead of heading to much rehab, posted to social media, chose to sail the high seas while purposefully avoiding the next WSL stop in Tahiti.

Clearly cost to benefit has been weighed and for two still young surfing mega-stars the tour doesn’t matter so much.

What does this mean overall?

Will the next batch of prodigies chart different non-competitive courses? Building fanbases upon jaw dropping clips, film releases, art?

Or is this simply a hiccup?

Did Kelly Slater get it all wrong?

Please discuss.

Bleak and ugly but is there hope?

Surfing, man. A toxic stew featuring bashed singlefin: yellows, locals onlies, back paddles, angry glares, frustration, rigidnesses of mind, body, style, substance but has it always been so and must it always be? For the intellectually stilted, I suppose status quo rules but a scintillating new essay directly challenges the norm.

Maya Weeks, who describes herself as “a white settler writer, artist, and geographer living and working on unceded yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash land,” which I think is California’s central coast, pulled no punch in smacking us all in the mouth. “Surfing has a reputation for embodying all the most annoying and violent aspects of white masculinity, and for good reason,” she writes before really digging in.

Contrary to its roots as a kānaka maoli (Native Hawaiian) cultural practice, modern surfing as widely distributed by white men has been a font of rugged masculinity, hyperindividualism, and conquering (especially when it comes to big waves). I’m thinking of white locals in my hometown telling visitors “we grew here, you flew here”; of white men stealing the waves of people they don’t know; of the way professional surf contests as late as the 2000s were set up to give women the worst conditions to surf in as well as far-from-equitable prize money; of white American men leasing private islands to capitalize on as surf resorts; of literal surf Nazis. I’m thinking of how in the early 20th century, the Manhattan Beach, California city council used eminent domain to take the land from the Bruces, a Black family. Of how it took the Bruce family nearly a century to recover their land.

Bleak and ugly but is there hope?

Thankfully, yes, as Weeks discusses promising developments such as women getting an equal shot to surf Mavericks even though that contest hasn’t ever run, the lineup becoming more diversified and:

Crucially, since time immemorial, the lands and waters of what is currently called the Central Coast of California have been the home of the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe. The proposed Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary will reinstate some Chumash sovereignty over these waters in a protected area that will extend from the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary to the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Ocean and climate scientist Priya Shukla points out that the sanctuary will not only restore “decision-making power to the original stewards of these natural resources” but also “[elevate] Chumash ‘thrivability’, which values the interconnectedness between the natural marine environment and local human community members.” I can’t wait to surf in it.

Me either except for the cold and angrier-than-completely-necessary elephant seals.