"Like a dog to its barf..."

Professional surfers woke this morning and rubbed their eyes once then twice, first to remove sleep, next to stop  as tears from flowing as ducts began to sting. Surf fans gripped stomachs as bile began to churn, threatening to make its way up from belly and out of mouths. Both groups reading the same breathless press release from the World Surf League.

“Following the incredible momentum and milestones we’ve hit in 2022, we will continue to build our global platform to progress and elevate professional surfing,” said Erik Logan, WSL CEO. “We experienced the redesign in its entirety for the first time this year, and we will further strengthen the sport through next year’s fully-combined Championship Tour, which will also qualify the first 18 athletes for the 2024 Olympic Games.”

The 2023 CT will include 10 regular-season events in seven countries, starting in January for the Billabong Pro Pipeline. The Mid-season Cut will come into action following the Margaret River Pro, Stop. No. 5. The WSL CT will return to the Surf Ranch, the world’s largest high performance, human-made wave 100 miles from the ocean in Lemoore, Calif., as the sixth stop on the calendar. The 2023 Rip Curl WSL Finals will be held in Lower Trestles in San Clemente, Calif., where the men’s and women’s Top 5 surfers will face off for the World Titles.

Lower Trestles back, again, to decide that Brazil’s Filipe Toledo is the 2023 World Champion but, worse, that Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch will, again, host an event at the top level.

The “world’s largest high performance, human-made wave 100 miles from the ocean in Lemoore.”

The Surf Ranch Pro, as it is called, is extremely unpopular. Professional surfers, generally taciturn, have let their ire leak, claiming that only safety surfing is rewarded and that it is dumb. Fans, less conservative, have publicly hated for years with the late great Longtom summing up, “When you strip out the ocean and the possibility of anything that adds unexpected drama to pro surfing, a Medina brain explosion, lulls, a heat-winning ride in the final seconds, sharks, coral etc etc, it boils down to a bland formula. For the viewer, a dull ache of unrealised desire at the deathless sight of that impossibly perfect wave that fades with each wave to be replaced with niggling boredom and a jarring resentment.”

i.e. barf.

The Surf Ranch Pro was mercifully disappeared last year but is back again and what does this sort of face slap say about the World Surf League, its “robust growth” and “extreme health?”

Or have I read the tea leaves wrong?

Do you adore the stink?

Bold and brave.

Rétrospectif has been part of surfing’s various offerings since Joel Tudor sprang on the scene riding old longboards the way Miki Dora intended for them to be ridden. Before then, high-performance longboarding was a thing, with thick-thigh’d men bottom turning, bashing the lip, floating 9 foot fluorescent slabs of foam. Tudor, though, nimbly danced to the nose, twirled, drop-knee turned and, thus, a movement was born.

Now we have leashless longboards crowding lineups from Malibu to Byron, non-fluorescent, captained by shaggy hair’d boys in trim Birdwell trunks. Thick flat fishes, fins glassed on, piloted by sun-kissed girls wearing short-johns, gliders, single-fins, etc.

It could be argued that retro is more common than à la dernière mode but up to a certain point. Surfers are pack animals, preferring to operate within defined spaces. Tudor and his ilk established a certain era as ok of imitating but no surfer has yet gone “full retro” until now.

Mila Kunis, very famous actress and wife of Ashton Kutcher was recently spotted on a Santa Barbara beach wearing a scuba diving wetsuit, riding a paipo board. For those unaware, the paipo was ridden by ancient Hawaiians as a sort of proto-bodyboard. One has not been seen in public since and scuba wetsuits were worn by cold water surfers before Jack O’Neill fixed the wrong bits in the early 1950s.

Someone going “full retro” has been whispered about for years, though most throwback surfers are extremely scared and wondered if a return is ever possible? If he or she would be forever trapped in archaic times with no way back, stuck in the deep past even if the deep past becomes uncool with everyone back to thrusters etc.

Kunis, though, a bold pioneer. Shaking it off and not caring.

The new Joel Tudor.

Land of the rich, home of the rich.

The United States is made up of three men. Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates. Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle and worth some 96.8 billion dollars, might be considered part of the “qualifying series” along with Mike Bloomberg, Jim Walton, Mark Zuckerberg and the ghost of Warren Buffett.

All fine and good, I suppose, except not assuaging the growing fear that the land of the free, home of the brave is actually just a plutocracy ruled for, and by, rich men.

Dumping gas on the fire, Ellison recently flaunted Hawaiian law by shuttering public access to a beach on the isle of Lanai. The New Yorker, with suspiciously tiny eyes, purchased 98% of the “pineapple island” in 2012 and his reign has not been without controversy. He has been accused of forcing families who have called the Lanai home for generations to pack their bags and vamoose and also wants to turn it into a “wellness utopia.”

Yikes.

More immediately, though, the beach closure. According to San Francisco Gate:

In Hawaii, public access to beaches and shorelines is required by law, but exceptions were made for Lanai Resorts at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company received permission from the County of Maui to add a metal gate at the entry to the beach park, which it owns, at a time when the governor ordered the closure of all beaches.

Conditions of this agreement included that the gate be open at all times, day and night, and it should only be closed during “severe weather emergencies or emergency proclamations.”

The gate was shut from July 16, according to community Facebook posts, through July 28, after a historic swell flooded the park. A Lanai Resorts spokesperson told Civil Beat that pedestrians could walk around the gate when it was closed, but large boulders scattered to the sides of the road prevented vehicles from going around.

Covid closures, man. How do you think they are aging?

A great idea that kept us all safe or… not?

More as the story develops.

Hammer.

Students of competitive professional surfing know that the game extends far beyond our World Surf League and its Championship Tour. There is, also, the Challenger Series, Qualifying Series, Junior Tour and International Surfing Association World Surfing Games, to name but a few thrilling iterations.

There is also, of course, Olympic surfing introduced last year in Japan and set to roll out in 2024, 2028 and likely 2032 as the Games will be in Teahupo’o, Los Angeles and Brisbane, all surfing hubs. But you would imagine surfing gold the very height of achievement? Would you imagine surfing so lucky to be included?

According to California superstar, and current number twenty in the world, Kolohe Andino, f*ck no and, frankly, the other way around.

In a shockingly frank interview ahead of the aforementioned World Surf Games, currently underway in Huntington Beach, Andino unleaded a rebel yell:

“Being honest, more than surfing needs the Olympics, I think the Olympics needs surfing. I think the Olympics are pretty stale and boring and that surfing is the best sport in the world. You add surfing to the Olympics, I think more people will watch it.”

Hammer.

He followed a question from Pete Townend if he would attempt to qualify for the Olympics again and quickly answered, “100%. That’s like asking if the sun is going to come up tomorrow.”

Andino was subsequently defeated by Huntington Beach’s own Kanoa Igarashi, surfing for Japan, in the quarterfinals but, man.

Stale and boring?

Ouch.