Enterprising Irishman makes detailed maps,
including GPS coordinates, of every secret wave in Hawaii and
California; uses “chodes from Manhattan Beach” to advertise!
By Chas Smith
Paddle V-Land with the crew!
There are rules in our odd surfing world and
there are rules. Don’t paddle out in a pack, don’t jibber
jabber in the lineup, don’t wear a spring-suit even in spring,
don’t skirt around somebody who has been sitting on the peak
(unless they are straddling a Wavestorm), don’t throw water in the
air in an attempt to entice the “surf gods” to send swell, etc.
etc.
DON’T PROVIDE GPS COORDINATES TO EVERY SECRET WAVE IN CALIFORNIA
AND HAWAII.
Well, an enterprising Irishman has boldly flouted the all-caps
no-no by producing beautiful maps of the Hawaiian islands and
California with exact coordinates to every secret wave in the
aforementioned plus many more details and has employed “chodes from
Manhattan Beach” (according to noted surf personality) to advertise
and hopefully sell.
Holding qualifications for Teahupo’o
Olympics in Huntington Beach slop called “act of willful negligence
bordering on sociopathy” by progressive moral bellwether!
By Chas Smith
Death in the Afternoon.
As students of professional surfing are keenly
aware, the Summer Olympics are but two years away and with it, the
Sport of Kings’ glorious return to global attention. Surfing was,
of course, introduced as an Olympic sport at the last games in
Japan. With no spectators were allowed on the beach, due Covid
restrictions, the whole scene was rather droll, little waves
lapping Italo Ferreira’s calves as he claimed gold.
Ho-hum.
This next running, though, will see surfers paddling out at
might Teahupo’o. The “end of the road” there in French Polynesia
with its terrifying blue fold detonating on ouchy reef. Green
spires twirling skyward, in the background, while boats bob and
boil in the channel.
Teahupo’o is impossible to ignore and will be possible to ignore
for the multiple millions tuning in around from around the globe
for the very first time.
High stakes.
The problem, however, is that to qualify for an opportunity to
huck over the awful ledge, surf hopefuls test themselves against
Huntington Beach’s sandy slop and, next year, El Salvador’s clean
little right points. The sheer absurdity of using those waves as a
gauntlet for the “Left of Doom” is, according to David Lee Scales,
an act of willful negligence bordering on sociopathy.
Now, Scales did not say those exact words, and I wouldn’t
necessarily call him a progressive moral bellwether like some have,
but the point was true and powerful as he delivered it during our
weekly scheduled chat.
Imagine surfers, not on the World Surf League, forced to do
battle at Teahupo’o for the very first time. Will it pure chaos,
brave boys and girls leaping into death or glory? Or will many
choose to reprise 2022 champion Filipe Toledo’s brave act of
cowardice, sitting out the back, refusing to play?
I suppose without Final’s Day there on Lower Trestles’ cobbled
stone backing Teahupo’o up, dropping anchor won’t truly be an
option.
So pandemonium, then.
Good watching, no doubt, but fair to the Olympians?
Hmmmm.
Listen, and ponder, here but also, episode is very much worth a
scrub to the last three minutes wherein an epic remix recounting
Toledo’s historic day is waiting for you.
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Long read: The Greatest Surfer You’ve Never
Heard Of (Part One), “In the ocean, he was one of the best in the
world, but once his feet touched the sand, he was just another
bloke from Bondi.”
By Peter Maguire
A classic story of sliding doors or how two men of
equal ability and from the same beach can veer down wildly
different paths.
During a business trip to Sydney in 2009, I went to
Bondi to try to find my old friend, Ant
Corrigan.
The town had changed quite a bit since my last visit in 1984—the
pubs and their punters, the milk bars and their pinball machines,
the junkies and their smack—all replaced by bistros, boutiques, and
bankers.
Located less than five miles from King’s Cross, Sydney’s
notorious red-light district, Bondi is the closest beach to the
city center.
The horseshoe-shaped cove stretches roughly a kilometer from the
pool at the Iceberg’s Swimming Club at the south to the rocks at
the north.
Unlike Sydney’s more exclusive northern beaches, up until the
1990s, Bondi was an extremely diverse working-class town. It is
lovingly referred to by its residents as “Scum Valley” due to its
filthy, polluted water.
During the 1970s, after a bad storm, it was not unusual for the
beach to be littered with faeces, used condoms and syringes.
I figured that the most logical place to begin my search for Ant
would be at the Rip Curl wetsuit shop on Campbell Parade behind the
beach park. After all, Ant in his custom made red and yellow
wetsuits doing Larry Bertleman-like turns, on Micheal Cundith’s Sky
Surfboards, made him the alternative poster child of the 1980s.
The surfer behind the counter told me that Corrigan, like most
of the old Bondi locals, had moved from the coast and that my best
bet was to look for him after 4 p.m. in the Off-Track Betting
section of the Royal Hotel on Bondi Road.
The Royal was one of the few remaining old school pubs in this
now upscale area. I got there early, spotted some concrete, paint,
and plaster-spackled surfers my age enjoying after-work schooners
and approached them.
When I asked about Ant, it quickly turned into a reunion of
sorts. A few schooners later, and one of my new friends was on
the phone, putting out the word that “Corro’s seppo [American] mate
Pete was in town and looking for him.”
Word got back to me that Ant worked for Qantas and was finishing
up his shift at the airport but would meet me at the Royal the
following night.
Ant Corrigan and I had shared some magical, carefree days
surfing northern New South Wales in 1984 before the pressures of
adult life encroached upon us.
More than one of Australia’s greatest surfers, Ant was a classic
Aussie larrikin who had more in common with Ned Kelly than the
hipsters who had taken over his hometown.
Those who were born and bred in Bondi grew up fast.
“Skullduggery was common, so Southside surfers had to be apt and
on their toes. Dealing with rioting, rapes and murders and
cops and robbers, were all part of the city beach lifestyle,” wrote
Matt Ellks in his novel Scum Valley, “It was an area where street
credibility went a long way. You could have all the money in the
world, but if you didn’t have street-cred, you were
nothing. In this environment, your daily exploits were the
measuring stick of who you were.”
Long before the Fords, Corrigans, Horans, Crams and Webbers,
there were iconic Bondi watermen like Keith “Spaz” Hurst, Jack
“Bluey” Mayes, Kevin “The Head” Brennan, and the gladiators who
manned the North Bondi Surf Lifesaving Association who would set
the standards for generations of Bondi watermen to come.
World War II veterans like Adrian Curlewis, who survived three
years as a Japanese POW in Burma, built the surf lifesaving
associations along military lines, with “battalions,” patrol
captains, and served as the organization’s president for forty
years (1935-1975).
The first phase of Australian beach culture was defined by the
volunteer groups that sprang up along the coast to reduce the
number of drownings at the nation’s treacherous beaches. These
clubs gathered regularly for surf carnivals that featured swimming,
paddling, running, surfboat, and surfski
competitions.
The day usually ended with beer-soaked sausage-sizzles, the
inevitable interclub “blues” (fights), and then truces sealed by
more beer and laughs.
Founded in 1906, the North Bondi Surf and Social Club was much
more radical than your typical surf club.
“North had all the characters,” said former Australian surfing
champ Robert Connelly, “The renegades who wouldn’t do community
service, wouldn’t patrol beaches on a Sunday because they wanted to
go surfing at South Bondi. They were more stage wrestlers and
boxers. I’m talking ‘Hollywood George’, the wrestlers and the
nightclub bouncers coming down to stay fit.”
Qantas engineer Vic Corrigan was a member of the prestigious
North Bondi rescue-boat crew. The punter’s (bookie’s) son grew
up in Bondi in a house with racehorse stables. Corrigan
married Maureen Hallahan, and by the early 1960s the couple had
three children: Steve, Cathy, and Ant.
The young Corrigan family spent most of their free time at the
beach. “We just loved the water,” said Cathy Corrigan
Clapoudis. “We used to go down to the Bondi baths all the
time.”
After Vic and Maureen divorced, the single mother moved into a
friend’s Bondi apartment, where Steve and Ant shared a room but
spent most of their days surfing and skateboarding. When the Ford
brothers formed the invitation-only Panache Surf Club, they invited
Steve Corrigan, one of Australia’s hottest up-and-coming surfers,
to join.
The Ford brothers knew that some of Australia’s best surfers
were in nearby Narrabeen, and if the Bondi mob was to successfully
compete against them, they had to measure themselves against them
on a regular basis.
Although it was only eighteen miles north, Narrabeen was a world
away.
“The Harbour Bridge, and the miles of road in between,” wrote
Ellks, “protected northside beaches from a lot of city
heat.”
Not only were the waves better, but there was also a hotbed of
surfing talent where some of Australia’s greatest surfers—Col
Smith, Terry Fitzgerald, and Simon Anderson—were all about to make
their marks in Hawaii, South Africa, and California in the new
sport of professional surfing.
The Ford brothers bought a VW van, and before dawn each morning,
they filled it with Bondi’s best surfers and drove to
Narrabeen.
Two of the surfers who were usually in that van were Steve
Corrigan and his diminutive, toe-headed brother.
“I used to surf most mornings, Monday to Friday, before primary
school,” Ant recalled, “Those trips were unbelievable. I was
surfing with the best surfers in the world. It was like a
competition every morning. I was privileged to be a part of
it.”
Ant Corrigan got so good so young, that it would take many years
for his peers to catch up.
“The name, Corrigan, say from 1973 to 1977, over the course of
two brothers, meant a ton to the hopes and dreams of surfers
everywhere,” wrote Derek Hynd, “The Corrigans were a strong
representation of why things burned for a whole generation of
career-destined Australians down the track.”
Bondi’s surfing population exploded in the early 1970s, and
there were now three main factions: the Hill Crew, the Wall Crew,
and the Rock Crew.
The elite “Hill Crew” occupied the grass hillside overlooking
the beach.
According to Cheyne Horan, one of Australia’s greatest
professional surfers, “If anyone walked up the hill, they had to
have a reason. So, if they weren’t with the crew, you’d pelt them
with milk cartons.”
In the water, the surfing hierarchy was even
stricter.
“In those days,” recalled Horan, “we weren’t even allowed to
speak to the older guys. You weren’t allowed to paddle out the
back. Bondi had a big thing like that. We weren’t even allowed to
surf in the south corner if they were in the water. They paddled
out and guys just paddled in.”
1974 was a big year for Australian pro surfing, and many had
high hopes for Steve Corrigan when he traveled south to Torquay to
compete at the Bells Beach Rip Curl Pro. Although his competitive
performance was mediocre, word of his free-surfing and his
roundhouse-loop cutback spread quickly.
“Surfing wouldn’t draw the lines it draws now without Steve
Corrigan. Mick Fanning, Kelly Slater, Tom Curren!” exclaimed Cheyne
Horan, “all those guys have got a bit of Steve Corrigan in
them.”
While some criticize the Fords for being straight and square,
there is no denying their success in turning Bondi into a breeding
ground for competitive surfing talent.
At the 1976 New South Wales Championships, Bondi surfers took
1st through 3rd places in every division. At the Australian Titles,
Bondi also swept every division with Ant Corrigan winning the
under-15 division and Cheyne Horan winning the
under-19.
“So it turned out that this hot little crew of guys in Australia
are possibly the best kids in the world,” recalled Horan with
pride.
Although Cheyne was slightly older than his doppelgänger, Ant
Corrigan, they became fast friends. The pair surfed together
all day, every day, their only breaks being for what Horan
described as the “really dodgy sandwiches, worse than
7-Eleven.”
In true Bondi fashion, Ant figured out a way to remove their
lunch from the vending machine in the pool hall across from the
beach without paying.
“We’d get a couple of tasties, a couple of free drinks,”
recalled Corrigan, “and then fuck off.”
When the pair wasn’t surfing, they were skateboarding, which
Horan believes accelerated their surfing progression.
“We tried to do things that the old guys couldn’t comprehend.
That’s where Ant and I got into 360s and different things like
that.”
After Horan won the Australian Titles in December of 1976, he
decided to pursue his dream of becoming a professional surfer. In
order to do this, he needed a bankroll and approached Steve
Corrigan, who worked as a plumber, for an
apprenticeship.
Corrigan told Horan that he could start the following week after
he returned from a ski trip to the Snowy Mountains. Tragically,
Steve fell asleep driving home from the mountains, and got into a
head-on collision with a bus. His two passengers survived, but
Corrigan died from his injuries.
While Bondi’s tight-knit surfing community was shattered by the
loss of their most promising surfing son, nobody took it harder
than Ant.
“After Steve passed, it really affected him,” said Ant’s sister
Cathy. “They shared a room and it was very hard on Ant. He often
stayed with other friends and family who sort of adopted him after
the accident. Mum was so beside herself, she was happy if he was
happy.”
“It was just a
devastating time, a really sad time for everybody,” recalled Horan.
“To me it was the start of manhood as us grommets set aside
childish ways to face the realities of life. From that day on, my
brother and I, we took Ant on as a brother. We were always there
for him. We forged that brotherhood, more than just a
friendship.”
After his brother’s death, Ant took a more Dionysian view of
life, and the city became his playground. At sixteen Corrigan
doctored his birth certificate so he could work at the Chevron
Hotel in Kings Cross where his friend’s mother ran the notoriously
raucous bar with an iron fist.
“Everyone had a lot of respect for her, she wouldn’t take any
shit from any sailors,” Ant recalled. “My boss was a gay bloke and
she just said to him straightaway, ‘Keep your hands off him, Barry,
if I see you go near him, I’ll rip your nuts off!’ Barry didn’t
look at me twice after that.”
When the U.S. Navy ships docked in Sydney Harbor, they were
bussed straight from their ships to the giant pub and nightclub
where a platoon of Sydney’s heaviest bouncers were always ready for
battle.
“The Yanks would come when their ships landed,” said Corrigan.
“There was a bit of friction between us and the Yankees at the
time. I saw some heavy brawls at that joint.”
By the end of his 16th year, Ant knew the working girls in the
Cross by name and enjoyed après-work nightcaps at Bourbon &
Beefsteak, the CIA’s haunt in Sydney.
Ant was still one of Australia’s best surfers, but unlike his
friend Cheyne Horan, he was neither enamoured nor impressed by pro
surfing.
Seventeen-year-old Horan, in only his second year on the
fledgling International Professional Surfing tour, was ranked
second in the world. Horan and Corrigan’s sponsor, Rip Curl
wetsuits, convinced Ant to enter the Rip Curl Pro at Bells
Beach.
Cheyne Horan got up in the dark on a cold Victorian morning to
cheer on his friend, but when he got to the beach, Ant was nowhere
to be found.
“They’re calling out his name, I’m waiting at the contest for
him,” said Horan, “and he doesn’t show up. That’s typical Ant. I
know Ant and I know that he doesn’t really care about the contest
scene as much as we do.”
Horan figured that his friend had gotten drunk or met a girl,
and just let it slip by.
More than a decade later, he asked Ant about that fateful day at
Bells. Although Corrigan made it to his hotel in nearby Torquay,
his ride to the contest site never showed up.
“So that’s how Ant Corrigan missed out on being a pro surfer—the
guy not showing up to take him to the beach,” said Horan, who then
drew a deeper meaning from the missed ride. “It’s nature taking its
course. It was never going to be his destiny and it wasn’t.”
While much has been made about the missed heat at Bells Beach,
Corrigan’s real denouement with pro surfing occurred a few years
later at the 1979 Stubbies Pro at Burleigh Heads.
After a blistering 3rd place finish in the trials, Ant should
have qualified for a spot in the main event. However, contest
organizer Bill Bolman decided to give one of the overseas
competitors his place.
“I surfed in trials to even get to the trials,” says Corrigan.
“They kept knocking me back until I ended up 16th reserve.”
Toward the end of the championship heat between Hawaiian Dane
Kealoha and Australian world champion Mark Richards, an angry
Corrigan paddled out and waited in the channel for the contest to
end.
The second the horn went off, he sprint-paddled deep into the
lineup.
“I just knew where it was going to break, and this solitary
4-foot wave come out of nowhere.”
In front of the giant crowd watching on the beach, Ant caught
the wave of the day.
“I knew what I was going to do,” he said. “I was gonna show
right off! I start spinning roundhouse 360 after roundhouse
360.”
When Corrigan got to shore, “I kicked me board up under me arm
and marched up the beach. Me hair hadn’t even gotten wet. People
were going, ‘Why weren’t you in the contest? Why weren’t you
in the contest?’ I said, ‘Ask Bill Bolman!’”
Ant returned to Bondi and his job at the pub. Pro surfing was
less disillusioning to him than it was boring.
“I had a gutful, I wasn’t getting anywhere I wanted to go,” he
recalled, “I was a bit of a reb and free spirit and had more fun
surfing with friends and probably got better waves than the pro
surfers, just traveling with mates to secret spots and had a
wonderful time with no hassles.”
Ant’s sister Cathy was always slightly amazed when she received
her brother’s postcards from exotic locales like Sri Lanka,
Indonesia, Central America, and Hawaii.
Before I met Ant, I saw a photograph of him that is forever
seared into my memory. Resplendent in his custom red and yellow,
short-sleeved Rip Curl wetsuit and matching board, Corrigan is
carving a perfectly timed bottom turn around the hollow section of
a thick, overhead right.
Unlike Peter Townend’s more famous and melodramatic soul arch,
Ant’s is closer to Terry Fitzgerald’s functional “power
arch.”
Hands behind his back, right clutching left, eyes focused on the
next section like a Formula One driver charting his line through
the chicanes, Corrigan’s posture is perfect, his rail is buried,
and he has speed to burn.
There is no wasted movement; it is a photograph of mastery.
The most famous image of Ant, however, was a 1977 Australian
Surfing World cover shot that featured a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud
with a quiver of single-fins strapped to the roof. Future world
champion Tom Carroll, Cheyne Horan, and Ant sit in the front
seat.
The caption reads: “The HOT generation—a new wave.”
Tom Carroll would go on to win multiple world championships,
Cheyne would have a remarkable pro career, and Corrigan walked away
from it all.
Bondi’s Ron Ford was probably referring to Ant when he wrote
that Bondi and its neighboring beaches had “an abnormally high
percentage” of Australia’s best surfers, but for some their hearts
were not in it, and many were pursuing “more traditional Aussie
pursuits.”
While Ant Corrigan’s early competitive exploits spoke for
themselves, his surfing fame was spurred by a series of Australian
Surfing World magazine covers.
Unlike the American magazines of the time, Bruce Channon and
Hugh’s McLeod’s magazine featured long, lavish, beautifully
photographed stories about adventurous young Aussies exploring
their continent’s vast, untamed coastline.
For a California teenager like myself, who preferred long-range
Baja expeditions and camping on coastal ranches to colored jerseys,
these images spoke to me in a way that the American magazines did
not.
Above all, they reminded me that surfing’s frontier was alive
and well.
I think that I was the only graduate from my posh West LA
private school who did not go to college immediately after
graduation.
Instead, I worked two jobs, one in construction and the other in
California’s underground economy, saved every penny, and planned to
leave for the surfing safari of a lifetime that would officially
begin on my nineteenth birthday.
Each morning I dragged myself out of bed at 4 a.m., looked at
the Air New Zealand ticket pinned to my wall and reminded myself
that this pain would only be temporary.
Days after my nineteenth birthday, I moved into shaper Michael
Cundith’s house at 8 Broken Head Beach Road and never looked
back.
Cundith, then a surf-stoked 38-year-old bachelor, put me through
a six-month crash course in single-man living that served me well
until I married two decades later.
Felix Unger to neighbor George Greenough’s Oscar Madison, the
Santa Barbara expat had lived in Australia since the ‘60s and was a
meticulous craftsman who shaped some of the most advanced
surfboards in the world.
Although the triplane hull was popularized by Tommy Curren and
Al Merrick’s Channel Islands Surfboards, Cundith, Greenough, and
Chris Brock had invented and perfected it many years earlier at
Byron Bay’s Sky Surfboards.
Cundith’s small house/surfboard factory, conveniently located
across the street from Broken Head Point, was a constant hive of
activity during the 80s.
Surfers from all over Australia and the world congregated around
his kitchen table and shared pre-surf “cuppas” (coffee or tea) and
“cones” (bong hits), and post-surf “cold ones” (beers) and “hot
ones” (joints).
A week before the 1984 Stubbies Pro at Burleigh Heads, Mike
Cundith and I drove to the Byron Bay train station to pick up Ant
who was MC’s star rider at the time.
He would spend a few days with us dialing in his boards and then
head to the Gold Coast, an hour north, for the
contest.
When the overnight train from Sydney pulled into the station, a
short, broad-shouldered man with blonde hair and a blonde mustache
walked down the stairs and onto the platform.
Before Cundith could shake his hand, a pretty girl grabbed him
by the arm, spun him around, planted a big kiss on his lips and
asked, “Aren’t you even going to say goodbye?”
Ant smiled, flashed us a cat-that-ate-the-canary grin, shook my
hand, and said, “G’day Pete, now how are the banks at Broken?”
First impressions are rarely wrong, and during the week Ant
Corrigan stayed with us he made quite an
impression.
From Broken Head to Lennox, to Yamba and beyond, when Ant
paddled into a surfing lineup, the former Australian cadet and
schoolboy champion stood head and shoulders above the pack—really
any pack—anywhere.
By the time I met him, he was a streetwise man of the people who
stood outside and above surfing’s caste system.
In the days leading up to one of Australia’s most prestigious
contests, pro surfers from all over the world descended on our
house on their way up from Sydney to the Gold Coast.
One morning, I was roused before dawn by a loud commotion. I
came out of my room and found a white-haired stranger wearing a
black bowler hat who looked like a cross between one of the Droogs
from Clockwork Orange and a Waffen-SS Obersturmführer hovering over
Ant, who had been asleep on the floor.
Ignoring me, Hawaii’s Tim “Tazzy” Fritz was loudly demanding a
cup of coffee. The white Hawaiian had once placed in the Pipe
Masters, and both in and out of the water he is remembered as one
of the heaviest surfers of the 1980s.
“G’day big fella. What’s this I hear about a cuppa?” Ant
said as he stood up, extended his hand, and when he said, “Ant
Corrigan,” the menacing Aryan suddenly turned into a star-struck
teen. “You’re Ant Corrigan?” he gushed. “Australian Surfing World
is my favorite magazine! I’ve been following your career for
years.”
We gathered around the kitchen table where the big Hawaiian
chased his coffee with more powerful stimulants that he had
smuggled in from home. Then, just as quickly as he had arrived,
Fritz was gone.
He would bomb out of all the contests, but Tim Fritz would
become famous with bouncers from Queensland to Victoria. Fritz died
under mysterious circumstances at the age of 24 in 1986.
Although the waves Ant and I surfed during the week leading up
to the contest were great, the afternoon pool games at the “RSL”
(the Return Service League is the Australian version of VFW) and
his crash course on Australiana were better.
Ant invited me to join him on the Gold Coast for the Stubbies
contest. A few days later, we drove north in my VW van. Ant told me
to stop at the first hardware store he saw and emerged with plastic
tubing of various sizes.
Next stop, Woolie’s supermarket.
As I filled our cart with our week’s provisions—tea, instant
coffee, cereal, milk, cordial syrup, Arnott’s “bikkies” (cookies),
cigarettes, and “Red Head” matches—Ant went to the pastry section
to hunt down a cake decorating set.
“The metal tips,” he explained, “make perfect cones” [bong
bowls].
Our last stop was the bottle shop where we bought slabs (cases)
of Tooheys New beer.
Our holiday flat overlooked the almost flat Burleigh Heads
lineup. We had traded perfect, uncrowded surf at Broken Head for
tiny waves clogged by the world’s best surfers.
The serious pros like Tommy Curren and Tom Carroll were staying
sharp by surfing nearby Duranbah, but Ant couldn’t be bothered.
Instead, he held court at our flat as old friends from Bali,
Hawaii, and all over Australia, streamed into our flat at all
hours, for their choice of a cuppa, a cone, or a
cordial.
I pitied our neighbors, California’s teetotaling Christian world
champion Tommy Curren and his young, French wife, Marie. They had
no choice but endure our noisy presence. Ant was the yang to the
unflappable Curren’s yin.
While I didn’t realize it at the time, Ant was teaching me by
example not to take a surfing contest more seriously than a reunion
with your old friends.
“When Ant is one of your mates,” said Cheyne Horan, “he’s a
great mate. He won’t shirk on telling you that you need to wake up
to yourself. He might say things sometimes to you that cut to the
bone, but you need to know it. I think that’s one of the things
that I love about Ant. He’s said things to me that no one else will
ever say and that’s what I’ve always appreciated about our
friendship.”
When we weren’t entertaining guests, we were playing miniature
golf and eating Big Macs at McDonalds, the only place in Australia
at the time where hamburgers weren’t covered with beets and
mountains of shredded carrots.
Nighttime only meant one thing: The Playroom. Located on
the Gold Coast Highway in Palm Beach, the Playroom was one of
Australia’s great music venues during the 1970s and 1980s where
bands like INXS, Cold Chisel, Midnight
Oil, Australian Crawl, Men at Work and many others
got their start.
“If you fell on that carpet, you would probably need a tetanus
shot,” recalled one regular, “It was also so sticky with all the
grog and who knows what was spilt on it.”
In the early 80s, pro surfers did not travel with coaches and
shrinks; it was a much more bacchanalian time. The Hawaiians had a
hard time keeping up with the Aussies in the beer drinking
department but more than made up for it when the inevitable “blues”
(fights) punctuated the end of the night.
A few bleary days and nights later, the Stubbies Contest began
in tiny, substandard surf.
Ant easily won his heat, but seconds after the final horn
sounded, a set wave appeared on the horizon. He knew that if he
rode the wave, he would be disqualified but took off anyway, and
linked bottom and top turns all the way to the beach.
It was another Pyrrhic victory, but at this point in his surfing
career, Corrigan couldn’t have cared less.
“Them is the breaks, yeah, that’s my life,” Ant recalled, “It
was unreal, we had a wonderful time.”
Unlike many surf stars at the time, Ant was remarkably absent of
ego.
In the ocean, he was one of the best surfers in the world, but
once his feet touched the sand, he was just another bloke from
Bondi. This was both a blessing and a curse.
Rumor: Authentic Brands Group snags
Quiksilver, Billabong parent company Boardriders adding iconic
logos to family including Izod, Juicy Couture and the likeness of
Elvis Presley!
By Chas Smith
The Stone too!
What a time to be alive and part of this surf
industry we all call home. Oh, you may not like it. You may grunt
and growl “Industry? I ain’t no part of no industry, man. I surf
for pure reasons.” Only that is simply naive chatter. You, me, Sam
Waters, we’re all the same. Cogs in the machine and on that note an
exciting new rumor is percolating.
You certainly recall, weeks ago, when whispers grew to loud to
ignore that VF, parent company to Vans, Supreme, JanSport was set
to acquire Boardriders, home to Billabong, Quiksilver.
Impeccable source BeachGritpenned at the
time, “Dreams do come true, as they say, and the
acquisition by one of the world’s largest apparel, footwear and
accessories companies, consolidates VF Corp, which also owns the
canvas shoe company Vans, as the hub around which surf fashion now
revolves.”
Alas, that dream was but a wisp of tropical air, dissipated by
colder fronts from the east.
A new hot rumor, though, has floated and here we have Authentic
Brands Group grabbing ahold of the iconic Mountain and Wave,
Stagnant Pool and folding them into a robust house that includes
Izod, Neil Lane, the licensing rights to Elvis Presley, Marilyn
Monroe, Muhammad Ali and many other brands plus personalities.
Oh, also Volcom.
The Stone.
Authentic Brands Group, headquartered in New York City, was
founded by Canadian Jamie Salter in 2010 after he dabbled in the
snowboard industry. The company went on an early tear, purchasing
Juicy Couture plus image and marketing rights for notable names
including the aforementioned Presley, Monroe, Ali plus Shaq O’Neill
and Dr. J. In total, some 50 brands are now owned raking in some
$22.5 billion a year.
Pop that bottle of vintage Champagne you have been saving to
celebrate, if the rumor proves true.
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In never-before-seen string of wild
successes, World Surf League shortlisted for “Purpose and
Sustainability” prize at Leaders Sports Awards (presented by Abu
Dhabi)!
By Chas Smith
Bravos to the moon.
I think it is now safe to say that no sporting governing
body, professional or otherwise, has experienced a string
of successes anything near what our World Surf League has in the
past few months. Win, win, win, baby, win. What began as one of the
most watched events in history, Final’s Day there on Lower Trestles
cobbled stone, led directly to WSL Senior Vice President of Tours,
Head of Competition Jessi Miley-Dyer being named one of the august
Sports Business Journal’s “Game Changers” for 2022, buoying World
Surf League owner Dirk Ziff rocketing up Forbes definitive list of
American billionaires and now this.
Being shortlisted for the “Purpose and Sustainability” prize at
the Leaders in Sport Awards proudly presented by Abu Dhabi.
For those who have never been to the United Arab Emirates, the
beautiful country that counts the aforementioned Abu as its
capital, let me share that both purpose and sustainability are
tantamount. Desalinization plants allow the desert to bloom.
Tallest buildings in the world shoot to the moon in nearby
Dubai.
Golf courses where there was once only sand.
Bugattis replacing camels.
The WSL did not win, I think, but being considered victory in
and of itself.
Those plants, planted near Bells Beach in Australia saving…
something.