First-ever surf themed rollercoaster set to open in Florida promising riders “the rush of cutting through waves as they race up to heights of 110 feet in the air” without even getting wet!

Chas Smith

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Will Filipe Toledo make the drop?

We have arrived, officially, in the future but have you not seen the prophetic film WALL-E wherein a plucky robot left behind on earth is reunited with mankind, in space? The people, who had fled the planet due pollution etc., seem to very much enjoy their circumstances, getting extremely fat whilst sitting in floating chairs that do everything for them include feed, clothe, entertain.

The good life.

And that good life is soon set to replace actually surfing in the ocean for SeaWorld Orlando has just announced its new surf-themed rollercoaster called “Pipeline.”

Per Attractions Magazine:

The innovative design elements that make this a first-of-its-kind roller coaster are the surfing launch and wave jumping motions that riders will experience. The unique surfboard-shaped ride vehicle will give riders an all-new experience from the moment it starts. Riders will be secured on the roller coaster in a standing position and will be launched at top speeds of 60 miles per hour, while feeling as if they are catching a wave. Riders will then feel like they are hanging loose when their seats rise and fall to mimic the sensation of riding on a wave while sending them through several twists and turns.

Each rider will get the rush of cutting through waves as they race up to heights of 110 feet in the air and go upside down on a wave curl along the 2,950-feet of track. Pipeline will send riders on a journey reaching max speeds of 60 miles per hour, with five different airtime moments during the one minute and 50 second experience.

Thrilling.

Only a few questions remain. Will the World Surf League attempt to hold the Billabong Pro Pipeline in Orlando, on the rollercoaster, in an attempt to broaden surfing’s appeal?

Will Filipe Toledo ride?

Unkle Tito, inset, keeping Irvine-bound traffic safe.

Surfer-turned-citizen-cop’s iPhone video of “Zanny Nanny” driving highway crazy in a three-wheeled SUV goes viral, “She was so incoherent, nothing was connecting with her. It was like she was in a blackout.”

Derek Rielly

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And you won’t believe the twist!

The surfer-turned-citizen cop Chad Towersey has become the toast of mainstream American media following a recent video on his Instagram page that follows the travails off a gal gone wild in a three-wheeled SUV.

The handsome Costa Mesa-based Towersey aka Unkle Tito, who is forty-three, snatched the footage of the woman he dubbed “Zanny Nanny” on the 405 freeway headed north to Irvine as he was driving to his job as a solar panel salesman.

“I’m seeing this car in front of me with the tailgate open and I think, that’s kinda weird,” he says. “I start getting up a little closer, and she’s going eighty miles an hour, and something is off. Sparks are flying from the side, I look closer and she’s riding on three wheels!”

Unkle Tito pulled up alongside, starts honking, waving.

The gal “looks over, gives me a blank wave, looked forward and kept driving like nothing was wrong.”

Tito and another driver use hand signals to conspire to sorta box her in, to slow her down. It’s effective. Gets her wild three-wheeled SUV down to thirty miles an hour.

“Finally, she gets off at the same exit I have to get off, goes around a roundabout and then slams into a guy parked at a red light.”

Tito tells her to get out of the car.

“She was so incoherent, literally nothing was connecting with her. She didn’t know what was going on. It was like she was in a blackout.”

Gal asks, “What’s going on?”

Tito, “You’re driving down the freeway on three wheels with your tailgate open!”

“She was disconnected from reality,” he says. “She then starts using this story that she was having a bad day, tells me she’d just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I told her, ‘I’m sorry and I’ll pray for your but you can beat cancer; you can’t beat running into a bunch of people on the freeway.”

Anyway, Tito takes off and ten gets a call from his wife who tells him there’s a “hostage situation” in their neighbourhood.

(It’s America! Yes!)

“Some guy had carjacked someone and was holding the family hostage,” says Tito. “There was SWAT, police, everywhere was taped off and I’m documenting everything when this guy comes up to me and says, randomly, ‘Hey, my girlfriend follows your page and saw your video on the lady on the freeway.’”

And, here’s the twist!

The man, a marine from Camp Pendleton down there at Oceanside, tells Tito, “I helped her right before you caught up with her. She was in Costa Mesa and she had crashed into the curb (damaging tyre). I got out, helped her out, got her car up on a jack, and put the wheel in the back. And, while I was doing that she jumped into her car and took off while her car was on the jack!”

The vid has “gone bananas,” says Tito. “CBS, Fox, ABC, I have five on-camera interviews on the day and the video got circulated from meme page to viral page to everywhere.”

How much he make from his lil time in the sun?

Zero!

“I gave it to everyone for free.”

(Police are investigating the wild piece of driving.)

Ratajkowski (pictured) in core shaping bay.

San Diego area surfer hearts soar again as famous first daughter Emily Ratajkowski telegraphs “joining dating apps” amidst smoldering rubble of Brad Pitt romance rumors!

Chas Smith

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"So you're saying there's a chance?"

Spring is usually considered the season of love but half of BeachGrit resides in Australia, in bloom right now, and so it makes sense that amour has filled these pages of late. Surfers lighting candles for a much-hoped for reunion between the world’s greatest champion Kelly Slater and his onetime honey, Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen. Surfer hearts soaring when imagining the world’s sexiest man Brad Pitt strolling normally chill San Diego area beach towns.

Alas, as is the way with love and its wild heights, depressing lows, those surfer hearts crashed, yesterday, when those same surfers, residing in normally chill San Diego area beach towns, were unlikely to behold Pitt’s glory.

He was supposed to come to Encinitas thanks its most famous first daughter, Emily Ratajkowski and their rumored connection. He was supposed to wander the aisles of Seaside Market, dine at the Union Kitchen Tap or, at least, drink an IPA.

Then, no, as Ratajkowski was spotted smooching a New York disc jockey and not even in neighboring Leucadia but rather New York itself.

Major depression… until today when, in a new interview, the one-time Hurley model declared that she was considering hopping on dating applications.

Per Page Six:

Emily Ratajkowski is angry, but believes she’ll “be OK” after her split from husband Sebastian Bear-McClard.

“I feel all the emotions,” the model, 31, told Harper’s BAZAAR for the magazine’s November cover story, released Thursday.

“I feel anger, sadness. I feel excitement. I feel joy. I feel levity. Every day is different,” she continued.

“The only good thing I know is that I’m feeling all those things, which is nice because it makes me believe that I’ll be OK.”

Ratajkowski – who was recently spotted making out with DJ Orazio Rispo – admitted that she has “gone on dates,” but isn’t on the apps.

“But give me time,” she added.

“Give it time?”

“So you’re saying there’s a chance?”

San Diego area surfers back in the game, Brad Pitt no longer necessary!

David Lee Scales, anyhow, discussed this glorious spring and also the beauty of one wave surf sessions and burritos. Listen below while you are crafting your dating app profile.

Committee for Equity in Surfing (left) informing Billie-Jean King of potential untruths.

Committee for Equity in Women’s Surfing trains potent ire on World Surf League: “Why are you lying to Billie-Jean King? Things are NOT equal. The WSL excludes women and girls!”

Chas Smith

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"Stop spreading untrue information!"

World Surf League executives must certainly have their stomachs twisted into knots this morning as they woke to realize the Committee for Equity in Women’s Surfing trained its potent ire on Santa Monica overnight. BeachGrit, as it were, knows the feeling. One month ago, it was this very tasteless surf tabloid in the crosshairs after posting a clearly offensive picture of an older woman longboarding.

Much reflection, soul-searching, was forced afterward. Many apologies given.

The Committee for Equity in Women’s Surfing, with a mission of supporting access, inclusion, equity and equal pay and promises to be “new wave of professional surfing,” had more work to do, though, and the World Surf League has, now, been taught a serious lesson.

The trouble began when the WSL’s Senior Vice President Jessi Miley-Dyer met tennis icon Billie-Jean King, over the weekend, penning, “I met @billiejeanking last night and it genuinely made me realize the impact of all of our hard work because SHE KNEW about surfing, and what we have done for women in the sport. She even knew details! People who say ‘you shouldn’t meet your heroes’ are just picking the wrong people to look up to. Plus, she has three names too which we also talked about.”

Moving, yes?

Apparently no.

In a subsequent post, Miley-Dyer re-referenced King and the Committee came in guns blazing.

“Why are you lying to @billiejeanking? ‘Things’ are NOT equal. The WSL excludes women and girls. Stop discriminating against women and girls. You are damaging women and girls. Stop spreading untrue information!”

Ouch.

At time of writing, it is unclear which lies were told and which “women” and “girls” have been excluded and discriminated against and also how they have been damaged though I am certain it’ll cause days of wonder.

Shame WSL.

Deep shame.

Lying to Billie-Jean King, I imagine, a mortal sin.

"We hold many fears inside us from which we cannot free ourselves."

Big-wave surfer “groomed, drugged and sexually abused by a family friend” as a tween finds solace in riding fifty-foot waves, “Do whatever you like to me. I surrender. Maybe I will die.”

Derek Rielly

By

“Surfing saved me from the dark side of the night."

The Portuguese big-wave surfer Joana Andrade, a tiny five-two in Havs, but relentless hunter and slayer of Nazaré rhinos, is the star of a documentary set for cinema release called Big vs Small. 

It’s a wild story in a sport that has its fair share of ’em.

Andrade was the first woman to tow Naz’s lethal jack-in-the-box peaks, pre-Maya Gabeira etc, and came to surfing after being drugged, groomed and sexually abused by a family pal when she was twelve.

“Surfing saved me from the dark side of the night,” she says. “We hold many fears inside us from which we cannot free ourselves.”

The film detours into Andrade’s breath-holding training with Finnish freediver Johanna Nordblad.

You might’ve already seen Nordblad in the Netflix documentary “Hold Your Breath, The Ice Dive”where she tries to hit a world record for distance travelled under the ice-pack with one breath.

Two epic women sucking air and disappearing into the inky black, under a ceiling of ice.

A helluva long way from the Ments or the Pacific splendour of Tahiti.

“Do whatever you like to me,” Andrade say. “I surrender. Maybe I will die.”