Southern California’s Kolohe Andino stuns in last second Cold Water Classic win, travels to state’s hostile north and rips coveted trophy from weathered hands of surly locals!

Shark tooth to the heart.

Every year, for the past ten or such, I have begun each professional surfing year thinking “this one belongs to Kolohe Andino.” The handsome boy from San Clemente seemingly had it all. Pedigree from an iconic 80s surfing legend, one Dino Andino. Support from the most powerful brands in the space. Coaching from the much-feared Mike “Snips” Parsons. A handsome face, strong body, desire to be the best.

And every year I am left sad.

For all that talent, all that poise, Kolohe Andino has never hoisted the World Surf League Championship Trophy.

For that matter, he has never even hoisted a single event’s trophy.

But a new year is around the corner and hope springs eternal buoyed, especially, by a stunning Cold Water Classic victory, yesterday, in hostile Santa Cruz.

Andino took out local celebrity Shaun Burns in the quarterfinals. The Santa Cruz native, who had been responsible for the return of the event to Steamer Lane, told the Santa Cruz Sentinel after his vanquishment, “The Cold Water Classic is so prestigious and that’s probably my dream goal, to win here one year. I know I will, but I’m happy with my performance this year. It’s so fun competing at home with everyone cheering on the cliffs. There’s no place like it. And to have it be all your friends and family, it’s pretty emotional, actually. It’s the one contest I’d like to win more than anything.”

But Andino cared neither about local friends, family nor Burns’ cherished dreams.

Off with his head.

Next came Ian Crane but he is also from San Clemente so nobody cared about his untimely demise.

Last, Andino walloped with Malibu’s Taro Watanabe with last second heroics as a hot set steamered in allowing for high-performance hot.

“I was stoked,” the wise 28-year-old told the Sentinel. “There was a long lull in the middle of the heat and to have a finish like that was really rad.”

His prize, a megalodon chomper.

“That big, old shark tooth is crazy,” he added. “Hopefully that’s the only shark tooth I’ll be seeing in my life.”

Hope springs eternal.

Watch the entire show here.

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Tyler Wright and Lilli Baker, soon to be wed etc. | Photo: @tylerwright

Australian surfing superstar Tyler Wright announces imminent marriage to girlfriend Lilli Baker after whirlwind twelve-month courtship, “There’s genuineness, love, respect and appreciation”

“I felt so respected and appreciated [by her]. Eventually, I asked her out, she said yes and here we are."

If there is to be a storybook ending, or new beginning, to the wild Tudor-esque drama already played out in the lives of the famous Wright surfing family, this may be it. 

Tyler Wright, a preternatural talent who won her first big event at fourteen and two consecutive world titles at twenty-two and twenty-three, has told the Sydney Morning Herald of her upcoming wedding to Newcastle cafe worker Lilli Baker, whom she met while there for a surfing contest.

“I felt so respected and appreciated [by her]. Eventually, I asked her out, she said yes and here we are,” says Wright. 

Of their relationship, Wright described it as flush with “ease and openness. There’s genuineness, love, respect and appreciation. Being with someone who encourages you to be more you is always a good time.”

 

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Wright, who is twenty-eight, has had a rough ol time these past few years.

You’ll remember her “season from hell” when she disappeared from the tour for two years following a mysterious “African” virus that left her bedridden and feeling as if her “heart would explode” if she stood up and being fleeced of half-a-million dollars from a family friend, a gorgeous honey blonde with a Kim Kardashian-esque figure, who’d been handling the superstar kids’ accounting.

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Photo: @DuaneShootsToys
Photo: @DuaneShootsToys

In shock moral flap, noted surfer and social media mogul Mark Zuckerberg exhumes slain rapper The Notorious B.I.G. from grave, forces him to perform concert for nerds in Metaverse!

The Notorious B.I.G. Wednesday.

Do you recall when Meta née Facebook introduced its grand vision of the future to us simple plebes? A whole Internet world that straps onto the head, freeing the hands, and plunges us all straight in to three dimensional bits and bytes. CEO, and noted surfer, Mark Zuckerberg shared the first peek into this submersion with a foil rip session between him and one-time BFF Kai Lenny.

Well, things have not gone so great since. According to The New York Times, “In the year since (its rollout), Meta has spent billions of dollars and assigned thousands of employees to make Mr. Zuckerberg’s dream feasible. But Meta’s metaverse efforts have had a rocky start. The company’s flagship virtual-reality game, Horizon Worlds, remains buggy and unpopular, leading Meta to put in place a ‘quality lockdown’ for the rest of the year while it retools the app. Some Meta employees have complained about frequent strategy shifts that seem tied to Mr. Zuckerberg’s whims rather than a cohesive plan.”

And now?

Well, now the world’s 11th richest man has resorted to exhuming dead rapper The Notorious B.I.G. and is forcing his corpse to rap etc.

Per Engadget:

On December 16th, a hyper-realistic avatar of the late East Coast rap legend Notorious B.I.G. will be holding a concert and performing tracks from his catalogue in Meta’s Horizon Worlds. The show, which will use a virtual recreation of 90’s era Brooklyn as a backdrop, will also feature performances by guest artists like Bad Boy Records founder Sean “Diddy” Combs and a narrative journey of Biggie’s life by American music journalist Touré

Not everyone’s impressed that Meta is bringing an artist back from the dead in avatar form, of course, and the effort was met with a deluge of criticism in HotNewHipHop’s tweet about the project. Meta said, however, that it received the blessing of The Notorious B.I.G. Estate and that the concert will celebrate his life and legacy. Touré, who was in charge of the narrative aspect of the concert, also said that he “interviewed Biggie’s mother and sat in her kitchen, so she knows that [he loves] her son and will take care of his legacy.”

Surfers, everywhere, began worrying that deceased wave sliders might be next. Probably not Chris Davidson due certain posthumous revelations but maybe Jan-Michael Vincent?

The Notorious B.I.G. Wednesday.

I think I must head into Horizon Worlds soon to make sure all is ship shape, surf-wise.

David Lee Scales and I did not speak about this, anyhow and unfortunately, but did discuss how Kelly Slater is singularly responsible for destroying domestic surfboard shaping.

Very much worth a listen.

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"I'm gonna keep calling it Ponto South until they drag me to jail!"
"I'm gonna keep calling it Ponto South until they drag me to jail!"

Popular forecasting site Surfline outrages traditionally conservative subscribers, follows “radically woke” San Francisco School Board lead in renaming offensive waves!

Save our spots.

Surfline, which until recently was the largest surf-based website in the world, has long enjoyed the relatively stable support from its subscribers. For a fee, the faithful are served up sensible stories about surfing and surf travel, tide charts and cameras recording the current conditions of favorite breaks.

The only flair has been comically exaggerated wave heights.

The only flair, that is, until yesterday.

For yesterday, Surfline’s top brass decided to follow the radically woke San Francisco School Board’s lead in renaming offensive breaks.

You certainly recall, nearly two years ago, when the powers that be in the City by the Bay scrubbed naughtiness from schools in its districts.

Per The Atlantic:

On January 26, the San Francisco school board announced that dozens of public schools must be renamed. The figures that do not meet the board’s standards include Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, Robert Louis Stevenson, Paul Revere, and Dianne Feinstein. A panel had determined that the 44 schools—more than one-third of the city’s total—were named after figures guilty of being, variously, colonizers; slave owners; exploiters of workers; oppressors of women, children, or queer and transgender people; people connected to human rights or environmental abuses; and espousers of racist beliefs.

The “School Names Advisory Committee” had done its research, discovered that “the majority of Lincoln’s policies proved detrimental to Native Americans,” Washington had owned slaves etc. and their names were instantly vanished from school walls.

In a similar vein, Surfline sent out an email last evening reading:

We’re updating some spot names to better describe their locations, which may affect spots in your Favorites, Surf Alert preferences, and Sessions clips. One example of a spot name that changed is Ponto, San Diego CA.

Previously, we had three spots here: Ponto Jetties, Ponto North and Ponto South. They are now combined as one spot and cameras viewable as multiple angles. Because these three peaks are in the same location, they’ll have the same forecast, and you can view all the information you need in one place.

Generations of North County, San Diego surfers have grown up calling Ponto Jetties Point Jetties, Ponto North Ponto North and Ponto South Ponto South. They will now be forced to call them all just “Ponto” or be faced with cancellation.

It is unclear how many other spots have been sanitized but protests are already being organized on Oahu’s famed North Shore to keep Backdoor Backdoor.

If your local spot name has fallen afoul of the times, please complain to Surfline or organize a social media campaign in support.

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American surf fan (right) lost in despair.
American surf fan (right) lost in despair.

Australians weep with joy, Americans with bitter jealousy as Australian broadcaster inks deal to air every World Surf League tour stop plus eleven extra highlight hours for free!

Haves and have nots.

Americans woke up early to the most bitter shock, the sting of pure 24 carat jealousy burning hot, for morning headlines blared news that little Australia, far across the Pacific with a GDP but a fraction as much, had secured free-to-air broadcast rights for World Surf League programing on 7Plus television plus eleven extra hours that would be dedicated to a WSL highlight reel.

Head of Network Sport at 7Plus, Lewis Martin, mocking American pain, declared, “Surfing is a sport that draws a lot of passion from people all over the world, particularly Australians, so we’re stoked to continue our partnership with the World Surf League. As we sit at the precipice of a new era of surfing, it’s an incredibly exciting time for the much-loved sport. The nation’s golden girl of the waves, Steph Gilmore, is showing no signs of slowing down after claiming her eighth world title this year, and who could forget the greatest of all time, Kelly Slater, making history in the Pipeline last year? With the future of Aussie surfing in the hands of newcomers Molly Picklum, Isabella Nichols and Ethan Ewing, 2023 is set to deliver more stories and moments that you cannot miss, and you can catch it all right here on Seven and 7plus.”

Americans, on the other hand, forced to sit in front of small laptop computers to enjoy the precipice of a new era of surfing.

Required to hold smaller telephones up to faces, squinting, attempting to discern Griffin Colapinto from Kolohe Andino.

Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright. The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light; And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout. But there is no joy in coastal towns or other surfer—heavy enclaves our national broadcasters have made us pout.

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