Are you team bird or team barrel?

Seven years ago, the former investment banker Andrew Ross announced a masterplan to dot Australia with a ten-pack of Wavegarden pools.

The first of the ten pools opened near Melbourne’s Tullamarine in 2019, to much celebration from that city’s wave-starved surfers. 

A second pool, which was going to be built in the Perth suburb of Alfred Cove and, importantly, a few hundred metres from my parents’ house, was shut down by the state government after local activists claimed bushland and marine reserves would be damaged. 

A few oldies also complained it might impact upon their access to the lawn bowls club there, which apparently carried a bit of sway.

Now, his next swing at a pool in Perth, this time at a bleak part of town called Jandakot, has hit a potentially fatal roadblock after it was revealed around thirteen acres of endangered vegetation would be bulldozed, putting the habitat of the almost extinct black cockatoo to the sword. 

You know black cockatoos? Noisy as all hell, but with a cute little button of white on their heads and with pink lining around the man-bird’s eyes. Ain’t nothing feels more Australian than sitting under a gum tree watching a flock of happy cockatoos heading to adventures unknown.

Anyway, The Environmental Protection Authority has opened the proposal to the public, asking whether or not it should “assess (the) proposal and, if so, what level of assessment is considered appropriate“.

The tank set-up looks pretty wild, elevated walkways around the pool, caravans around the perimeter mimicking Slater’s set-up at Surf Ranch and a sort of square semi-highrise overlooking the man-made masterpiece.

If you live in Perth, which makes Florida look like Oahu, you’ll be supplicating yourself to whatever gods you follow to get this thing made.

"Stop touching me."

It goes without writing that we all live in extremely divided times. Left loathing right. Right loathing left. Camps within each loathing each other. Neighbor extremely suspicious of neighbor, friend cancelling friend, but all were miraculously brought together on this Cyber Monday, united by equal loathing for a ridiculous looking surfer and a “Chad” aiming to shame him.

But let us travel, together, to Newport Beach, California, or maybe Del Mar, where our scene unfolds in broad daylight. For here we witness a surf caricature, floppy blonde hair, sunglasses, attempting to parallel park a white older model Mercedes station wagon festooned with an orange longboard. The “Chad” pulls up, cellphone out and ready, declaring, “Ahhh, now you’re hitting cars, bro, come on,” in classic west coast whine.

The “surfer” flashes a peace sign and responds, “Get a job, Chad. Is that your name? Chad? Go and hit up some açaí berries.”

Surfer girlfriend, girl friend or wife then appears as Chad tries to warn her not to get hit, that “He’s hitting cars.”

She says, “Dude, I know who you are.” He says, “Stop touching me.”

And the whole business devolves from there.

The video, posted to Reddit, has only one tone in comments. That both antagonists are horribly annoying.

A sampling:

Guy in chubbies calling other guy Chad is peak Chad behavior.

I surf out front of this street daily. You don’t longboard here. Unless he’s gonna take the longggg walk to the pier, that board isn’t touching the water.

Pretty hard to take a guy calling you a chad seriously when he’s barely even wearing pants himself.

alk about the pot calling the kettle Chad, geez!

The video does raise a larger question, though. Is it ok to lightly tap bumpers when parking? My skill is so great at the parallel arts that it is unnecessary but I’ve always found it ok.

Happy Cyber Monday.

"I just want to catch one wave before Christmas."

The “movie-star handsome” intermediate-level surfer and insanely popular YouTuber, Ben Gravy, has shocked sports fans with the release of post-surgery footage following an operation to stitch his bones together.

Gravy, who has almost two-hundred thousand subscribers on his channel, shattered his collar bone in four places at El Slammo, an experts-only wave in Longport, a pretty little Jersey borough pointed at the Atlantic.

Before surgery, Gravy had warned his fans of the gravity of his condition,

“It’s pretty shocking. The break is a lot worse than previously thought. I thought I’d walk away clean and it’s not the case.”

In the clip below, thirty-four-year-old Gravy is disoriented, his words infused by the irrational; it’s as if his brain has been torn from its anchor.

 

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Thoughts and prayers for a swift recovery.