Australia’s Mad Max-inspired Surf Lakes,
dubbed “celebrity” wave pool by press, set to open to public for
first time!
By Chas Smith
Come one, come all!
But if Kelly Slater was to wave a magic wand
above your head and grant you admission to one of the world’s wave
pools, which would you choose? His eponymous Surf Ranch, there in
the cow stink of Lemoore? The tank formerly known as BSR deep in
the heart of Texas? Wales’ original Wavegarden? URBNSRF very near
Melbourne’s airport or the Mad Max-inspired Surf Lakes planted
right in Yeppoon?
If I can offer some advice, I’d say to pick Surf Ranch, as it is
a hard/expensive ticket to come by, exclusive, and not exactly open
to the public like Surf Lakes just yesterday announced it is
planning to be.
Per the press release:
The site, located midway between Rockhampton and Yeppoon,
has been in use since 2018, but being a prototype, has served only
to successfully prove, test and improve the capability of Surf
Lakes unique wave making technology. To date, invitations to
selected guests have been extended to enjoy, and provide feedback,
on the incredible surf experience on offer.
“We are extremely happy that Surf Lakes International and
GSP have been able to come to an agreement whereby a significant
community asset may be finally opened to the public,” said GSP
Business Development and Media Director, Wayne Dart. “Having worked
with Surf Lakes over the past few years to develop and manage the
in-water experience, we know just how incredible the experience
will be and we know that the technology is by far and wide the best
in the world.”
The press has dubbed Surf Lakes a “celebrity” tank, as opposed
to Slater’s Surf Ranch, which feels a fairly heavy repudiation.
Who is more famous, Mark Occhilupo or DJ Diplo?
A no brainer.
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World surfing champ Gabriel Medina turns to
song following pal Jair Bolsonaro’s shock loss in country’s
presidential election, “I wish I could spend more time with the
people I love!”
By Derek Rielly
"When you're 95, one hundred years old, you'll look
back throughout your life, you won't think... I wish I had a better
phone...."
You’ll recall, four years ago, when livid surf fans
blamed three-time world champion Gabriel Medina’s exit from that
year’s Quiksilver Pro on his friendship with Brazil’s
right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro.
Medina, who seemed to have the Quiksilver Pro’s balls on the
point of his knife exited in a dull quarter-final with a sub-ten
point two-wave total.
His fans, of which there are many millions, blamed the
controversial Bolsonaro, with whom Medina and his guy-pal, the
soccer player Neymar, had been trading video messages.
Now that the tinsel has fallen off Bolsonaro’s Christmas tree,
losing the country’s election to leftish rival Luiz Inácio Lula da
Silva, although he has yet to accept defeat and remains in the
presidential residence in Brasília, Medina has turned to song as a
balm to the loss of a friend, mentor etc.
In a poorly tended back yard, although a little lawn seed and
water would quickly amend things, Medina sits with his sister
Sophie, the pair crooning as Medina adroitly handles a
three-quarter sized acoustic guitar.
“It’s not the best voice and we’re not the best musicians, but
it’s the best feeling, being with the one you love,” writes the
three-time champ. “When you’re 95, one hundred years old, and
you’ll look back throughout your life, you won’t think… I wish I
had a better phone…. I either want to spend more time on the
internet, or I want to spend more times at work or sleeping. Won’t
be any of those things It will be… I wish I could spend more time
with the people I love. @sophiamedina always together my little one
who’s grown up. Hahaha ❤️ 🥰 I love you so much.”
Previously, Bolsonaro had said he faces three alternatives for
his future: prison, death or victory in next year’s presidential
election.
Exciting times.
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Nervous surf fans flock to bookies, candles
in hand, as Kelly Slater comes in eighth on official betting odds
to be Gisele Bündchen’s next beau; Pete Davidson, Jason Momoa top
list!
By Chas Smith
A Halloween miracle!
All that candle lighting, it appears… is
working! Not working perfectly, mind you, and it could be
working much better, as I imagine some out there are yet to
participate, their windowsills unwaxed, but let us, the
tried-and-true, count our small victories this morning. Our
inch-by-inch gains.
Namely, sports’ books have officially released odds on who
Gisele Bündchen’s next boyfriend will be and our Kelly Slater is
currently EIGHTH!
As you know, well, rumors began percolating early in the month
that not all was well between the Brazilian supermodel and her
then-husband Tom Brady. While the news, later confirmed, was sad,
surf fans secretly hoped for a grand reunion between Bündchen and
the world’s greatest surfer and began quietly lighting candles by
windows for such. Hope sprang as she seemingly sent many signs to
Slater, saging her car, visiting a faith healer, and the
aforementioned surf fans began imagining, even seeing in minds’
eyes, the most handsome couple strolling various beaches hand in
hand.
And now we have official odds.
According to
betonline.com, the comedian Pete Davidson is the
favorite to land Bündchen’s hand at +1200. The actor Jason Momoa is
second at +1800 followed by Leonardo DiCaprio, John Mayer and
Neymar all at +2000, Chris Evans and Bradley Cooper at +2500 and
then our Kelly Slater at +3300.
Now, Davidson is a good bet, as well as Momoa, but I think we
can rule out DiCaprio (Leo’s Law), John Mayer (Taylor Swift’s
effective smear), and Neymar Jr. (Gabriel Medina). I don’t know
much about Chris Evans or Bradley Cooper’s relative attractiveness,
but nothing greater than Slater. Nothing a few extra lit candles
can’t solve.
If you have yet to spark a flame, please do so now whilst on
your way to your local bookie.
It’s Halloween, after all.
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In act of pure benevolence, Japanese
heartthrob Kanoa Igarashi gifts blueprint for beating fear at “big
and scary” Teahupo’o to current world champ Filipe Toledo!
By Chas Smith
Surprise tips!
The 2024 Olympics are coming and, with them,
the opportunity for athletes who toil at less popular sports like
badminton, synchronized swimming and surfing a chance to shine on a
global stage. While the bulk of games will be played in Paris, the
surfing will be offloaded to French Polynesia and its glorious
“Place of Broken Skulls.”
It will be surfing’s second Olympic running. The summer before
last, brave men and women paddled out into two-foot Japanese
beachbreak in order to showcase skill and thrill. Teahupo’o, there
at the end of the road, serves up a different sort of
challenge.
Namely, big scary.
Surfing’s first silver medalist, the heartthrob Kanoa Igarashi,
recently sat down with Japan’s Kyodo
News to discuss how he would go about the business at
hand, saying, “The first time I was there, I felt very scared. I
stayed for a week but could only catch a few waves. But…I made
myself promise to make riding those kind of waves my strength. It
became a project. It was pretty much always tough…but in the last
couple of years I am finding it much more comfortable. I’m more
confident now riding there.”
Ahhhh and what a benevolent gift.
As you know, surfing’s current champion, Filipe Toledo, has a
distinct aversion to Teahupo’o, famously refusing to paddle
for waves during two separate contests. If things
continue the way they are, though, he will have to face fear and
drop himself over the ledge. Lower Trestles, you see, is not an
2024 Olympic back-up site. There will be no final five.
But look, again, at Igarashi’s secret advice to Toledo. Making a
project of riding big ledgy lefts.
Exactly like equally helpful BeachGrit tried to make
happen five-ish years ago.
Benevolence all around. Benevolence and good cheer.
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“Small and pretty” filmmaking phenom
reveals the surf movie gamble that cost superstar directors George
Lucas and Steven Spielberg millions!
By Matt Warshaw
John Milius trades Hollywood surf movie stinker Big
Wednesday for Close Encounters of the First Kind and Star Wars!
Greg MacGillivray was 14 in 1960, the son of a
Corona Beach lifeguard, small and pretty (his older sister was Miss
Newport Beach) and absolutely relentless at whatever he put
his mind to: paper route, math class, Boy Scouts—or, by 8th grade,
making a surf movie.
Nobody saw Greg coming. He looked like a kid dressed up for
Halloween as a surf movie-maker. He was almost invisible.
MacGillivray’s other superpower was that he could not be
rushed.
Miss the deadline if you have to, but do the job right.
Greg later said he spent all his money (and borrowed from dad as
well) and 90% of his free time on A Cool Wave of
Color, his debut film, which took five years to
make. He did the poster art. He painstakingly crafted little
interstitial stop-motion animated graphics, which flash by onscreen
in just a few seconds but really light the movie up.
Cool Wave debuted midway through MacGillivray’s freshman year at
UC Santa Barbara. It screened a few times at various local Elks
Lodges and high school auditoriums, and that was enough to earn a
mostly-good review in SURFER.
“Cool Wave of Color shows blessed signs of creativity, [and] a
musical score fitting to California waves.” (The criticism came
near the end of the review, and was a small but literal kick to the
nuts: “Greg is a young man and has a high-pitched voice.”)
First, in the Fall of 1964 MacGillivray gassed up his new
white-on-white Ford Econoline van—and again, the ambition and drive
cannot be overstated; Greg’s work ethic is two-parts inspiring and
one-part grotesque and while I’ve never met MacGillivray
face-to-face he is in my Spirit Animal starting-five—and set
out on a 6,300-mile coast-to-coast Cool Wave tour in which the
film played at three locations.
Three.
A pair of shows at the North Hollywood Women’s Club, another in
Daytona Beach, another in Virginia Beach. Driving cross-country and
back for four shows seems insane.
But no, just the opposite. The whole point, as Greg well knew,
was not to turn a profit, but to get out there and be seen, build
momentum, gather experience—and the experiences came one after the
other, big and small, high and low.
Driving through Alabama, just a few weeks after 30-plus black
men, women, and children were hospitalized after being beaten and
gassed during a peaceful march in Tuscaloosa, Greg grabbed a
KKK rally poster from a telephone pole as a memento and was
escorted out of town by a group of locals in a gun-racked pickup.
Later, in a side trip to Manhattan, he visited MoMA and splurged on
a Central Park carriage ride for his wife-to-be. MacGillivray loved
surfing but also loved new experiences of any kind.
The other thing: Greg headed up the second unit on the Big
Wednesday shoot, and his description of that episode in Five
Hundred Summer Stories reminded me yet again of that film’s
humiliating public debut and its otherworldly rehabilitation.
Sharpen those knives, folks.
If you’ve been with me here awhile you know that time and tide
have not mellowed my view of Big Wednesday, which was directed
by John Milius and released in 1978 by Warner Brothers.
I first spaghetti-whipped it here, and did it again
here. I make an
exception for Gary Busey, who singled-handedly carries the first
reel of Big Wednesday, and I also have a soft spot
for Bear, the fallen shaper whose “lemon
next to the pie” quote is sad and poignant while at the same time,
and not intentionally, the movie’s comic highpoint.
But I stand by the idea that the Big Wednesday bad-review
dogpile—read the Times takedown here and the
Surfing magazine review here—was totally
deserved, and that Big Wednesday getting unceremoniously yanked
from theaters after a week or two was a mercy to all involved.
Except Milius, of course, got the last laugh—many laughs in
fact.
Big Wednesday found new life in the 1980s as a video-rental
favorite and then found a place into the Baby Boomer treasure chest
of once-scorned-now-sacred cultural artifacts, right next to the
Monkees and Ronald Reagan.
But before that happened, there was a second and maybe more
astounding Big Wednesday consolation prize, which I believe is
a one-off in the history of Hollywood. MacGillivray tells the
story:
I began making day trips to Milius’ office at Warner Bros.
In the adjoining office sat Steven Spielberg [who was] working with
Milius, writing and prepping the comedy feature “1941.” The unions
still had incredible control over Hollywood, but Spielberg, Milius,
and their friend George Lucas were challenging the status quo with
enormously profitable films. One day the three of them were at
John’s office and we were all joking around about filmmaking. I
would later learn that they had each agreed to share some of the
profits from the three personal projects they each had in
production. Incredibly, Lucas’ film was Star Wars and Spielberg’s
film was Close Encounters of the Third Kind. John’s film was Big
Wednesday. [Each filmmaker] gave each away two points from the
net profits they owned in their own creations [to the other two
filmmakers]. This was their way to show the old-time studio bosses
that a new era had begun of youthful, creative
collaboration.
“The deal worked out better for some than others,” Spielberg
later told MacGillivray, laughing at the lost millions of dollars.
“We haven’t repeated the practice.”
(You like this? Matt Warshaw delivers a surf essay every Sunday,
PST. All of ’em a pleasure to read. Maybe time to subscribe to
Warshaw’s Encyclopedia of Surfing, yeah? Three bucks
a month.)