Fanning (left) shares business advice with the author (right) while surf journalist Tim Baker attempts to sneak hot tips.
Fanning (left) shares business advice with the author (right) while surf journalist Tim Baker attempts to sneak hot tips.

As staggering wealth revealed, champion surfer Mick Fanning crowned “one of most successful post-retirement business athletes in Australia!”

Who wants to be a multi-millionaire?

If you could get into a time capsule, shoot back to 2001 and tell those around you that in the future Mick Eugene Fanning would someday staggeringly wealthy, “one of the most successful post-retirement business athletes in Australia,” and an inspiration to business people everywhere what do you think they would say?

But here we are in 2022 and it is true.

A just-released News Corp feature estimates Fanning’s fortune to be somewhere north of $20 million. “The 41-year-old,” the piece goes, “has revealed details of his surprising wealth in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, where the 41-year-old opens up about the savvy decisions that have turned him into a business genius. The three-time world champion in April made a shock cameo return to professional swimming when he competed in the Bells Beach Classic — but he has had more important things bubbling away well outside his surfing career.”

Besides professional swimming, those things include flipping Balter Beer to Carlton Brewing for somewhere between $150 to $200 million, netting him $4 million, re-flipping that into real-estate and “undisclosed projects” and doubling down on FS8 fitness chain.

He is also alleged to have “business interests in a number of local restaurants and venues” on Australia’s Gold Coast.

$20 million smacks.

If you had those sorts of resources what would you do first?

I would go the the travel agent, purchase an airplane ticket and leave Australia’s Gold Coast.


Multi-faceted actor, voice of generation Jonah Hill follows Kelly Slater from surfing to golf, set to star as beer guzzlin’, grit smokin’ man of the people John Daly in upcoming biopic!

Excess, scandal, athletic achievement.

Is there anything Jonah Hill can’t do? The one-time funny sidekick, good for bawdy laughs, has transformed into a leading man, able to carry films as diverse as Sausage Party to Don’t Look Up. More importantly for us, though, the 38-year-old Capricorn has become the face of modern surfing.

Bleach blonde hair, fine longer board, kitted Mercedes Sprinter, surf instructor ex-girlfriend, oceanfront Malibu estate.

A man of the people and so it should come as no surprise that our body positive hero has just been announced as playing John Daly in an upcoming, yet to be named, biopic.

Per CBS Sports:

Daly is known as the “bad boy of golf,” and he is a controversial figure in the sports world. According to Above The Line, the film will cover “the excesses, scandals, and athletic achievements” of Daly throughout his career.

Hill has shown versatility throughout his acting career, doing everything from comedies to dramas. Hill has earned Academy Award nominations for supporting roles in The Wolf of Wall Street and Moneyball. Most recently, Hill played a role in 2021’s Don’t Look Up.

The movie will be directed by Anthony Maras, who directed 2018’s Hotel Mumbai.

But do you golf?

A handful of years ago, the world’s greatest surfer Kelly Slater became interested in the game and seemed to infect all of surfing. Many outings to the links, much putting. Photos of Benji Weatherly, Shane Dorian, Rob Machado hitting off tees etc. I’ve wondered for years why Slater hasn’t become semi-professional, there, on the masters’ circuit but I also wonder many things that carry little value or importance.

I, personally, think golf is the poor man’s polo.

Can’t be bothered.


Surfer getting pounded at Teahupo’o beats colorful squid, silly crab to snag surf lensman Ben Thouard coveted “Ocean Photographer of the Year” award!

Bravo.

Those brave men and women who shoot images of our surfing from watery angles have always impressed me most. But who, amongst us, hasn’t been influenced by their work from the earliest ages? The intimacy, the closeness that only brave man, or woman, bobbing in the brine, sometimes extremely heavy, with heavy camera and fins can bring.

It takes guts. Guts and an eye for art and a knowledge of surf and strong legs and strong arms and a stout heart.

Daniel Russo, Jimmy “Cane” Wilson, Brent and Brian Bielmann, Peter Taras, Damea Dorsey, Ben Thouard, but to name a very few, have made their mark in the space with Thouard just winning the coveted Ocean Photographer of the Year award.

The Frenchman’s intoxicating picture of surfer getting pounded at Teahupo’o beat out a colorful squid, sea otter in school of fish, even more colorful squid, sea snake all tied up in knots, sea turtle being chill and silly crab.

A worthy honor.

Examine all of the photographs here but most examine Thouard’s. Who do you think the surfer is? The only certainty is who it is not.

Philip Toledo.


A gorgeous and intensely atmospheric house!

Famed Pipeline “A-team” house owned by troubled surf co Billabong sells for rumoured $6 million to company insider!

The party's over for storied North Shore icon.

With rumours of acquisition by the Authentic Brands group at fever pitch, the iconic surf company Billabong was ordered, or so the whisper goes, to offload its famed “A-team” house overlooking Pipeline on Oahu’s North Shore.

The six-bed, four-bath contemporary looking joint sits on 9000 square feet of prime beachfront land and was quickly snapped up by a company insider who’d long enjoyed its fruits.

And, although the sale price remains secret a figure close to six million dollars has been touted.

I’ve only ever stayed at the place once and was forced, due to my beta male status, to sleep in a subterranean bunk room although one star did make me and my biz pal welcome with a succession of gifts, as well as the surprise three am treat of marijuana smoked through a hollowed-out apple.

Such was the star’s stamina and appetite for “partying” as they say, my pal and I were forced to flee to Honolulu for the less physically demanding pursuit of cocktails and prozzies.

The house, which can sleep eighteen people an feed a multitude with its three kitchens,  entered surf folklore when it featured in Chas Smith’s coming-of-age book Welcome to Paradise: Now Go To Hell, described by the New York Times as “a compulsively readable narrative, indisputably great”, with a passage given to the day Fast Eddie Rothman paid a surprise visit to Billabong frontman Graham Stapelberg.

Listen to Chas describe the event below.

 

And take a tour of the house with Lyndie!

 


Hill's Azoff and DiCaprio's Belfort on set during filming of the 2013 smash hit.

Beloved actor, body positivist and Malibu surf inspiration Jonah Hill hospitalised with bronchitis following seven months of fake coke use, “It’s interesting pretending to be on drugs!”

"If you ingest that much matter into your lungs, you will get very sick."

The Hollywood funnyman, whom you know in these pages as the surfer inspiration to anyone whoever thought about turning to surf in their middle age but were afraid they’d missed the boat or thought they were too chubby, weak or afraid, has revealed a shock health crisis following his role as Donnie Azoff in 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street.

Yeah, this clip is a little old, BeachGrit was only a couple of years into this world when this thing surfaced, and brave Mr Hill had yet to bleach hair, buy two Malibu mansions, an 88 foam board and become engaged to a surf instructor, but still worth, very much, repeating, I think.

Hill’s character in the black comedy, which was produced and directed by the great Martin Scorsese (Shutter Island, Boxcar Bertha, Bringing Out the Dead), is a real creepy son of a bitch.

Marries his first cuz he don’t want any other man to have her, tells DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort if had retarded kids ‘cause of the genetic risk he’d loose ‘em in the woods or institutionalise ‘em, eats a goldfish, joins Belfort in gaming stocks, makes million, and enjoys quaaludes and coke.

In the clip, which you can watch below, Hill says he did so much fake coke during the seven-month filming he got bronchitis for three weeks and had to be hospitalised.

“We were literally doing fake coke for, like, seven months, every day. I never had more vitamin D in my entire life; I could have lifted a car over my fucking head.”

Even though the fake coke was vitamin powder, it didn’t matter says Hill ‘cause “if you ingest that much matter into your lungs, you will get very sick” and adding, “It’s interesting pretending to be on drugs… I’ll use music. I’ll make a playlist for every scene, so I’ll try to make, like, music that [makes me feel] jittery and chaotic… and then just drink a ton of coffee and Red Bull.”

The patron saint of VALS lives a vastly different lifestyle to that of Azoff, of course.

Just two weeks ago, BeachGrit reported that Hill had become a Mercedes van-driving surf nomad scouring the Californian coastline for waves in a Mercedes adventure vehicle, also known as the Beast Mode 4×4.