WEAK ASS CURRENCY!

Any surf fan worth her salt is well aware of Australia’s importance to our space. Not only is surfing the Lucky Country’s national sport, not only would the World Surf League host 11 Championship Tour events a year there, if it could, not only is Mick Fanning a national hero, Joel Parkinson a well-respected park ranger but… well, I guess that’s enough.

Now, the most surf mad region of the surf mad nation is the state of Queensland, which boasts the Gold Coast and Surfers Paradise. Its turquoise water producing many iconic waves. Its capital Brisbane set to host the 2032 Olympics which will heavily feature surfing.

Except not everyone, apparently, is a fan. Acclaimed rapper, 31, Azealia Banks recently vowed to never perform in Australia again because she finds Brisbane abominable. After cancelling a show she declared in a to-video piece:

I’m so sorry you guys – actually I’m not sorry – but listen: last time I was in Brisbane and y’all threw shit on the stage and damn near almost fucking hit me in the face with a fucking bottle of soda or whatever that shit was. That was the most racist, most demoralising experience of my fucking life and right now I’m on a really good track.

Sydney and Melbourne are the only cities I really want to play. Y’all got a whole different culture around here. I am too far away from home … I am a beautiful black woman and I am not going to get in front of some audience of white people for them to be throwing shit at me. I am so not sorry. I am not sorry at all. Brisbane, y’all are just going to have to take the L and smoke it.

After this run this will be my very last time touring Australia. This place makes me utterly miserable and I’m too black and beautiful to have a bunch of white people in my face playing with me over their WEAK ASS CURRENCY!

Wow.

In the award-nominated Welcome to Paradise, Now Go to Hell, I described Queensland’s Gold’s Coast as “humid and cancerous” because the “ozone is rotted above Australia because Australian girls love hairspray.”

Pretty rude but no “WEAK ASS CURRENCY” rude.

Ouch.

Naughty talk.

The ubiquitous “learning how to surf” whilst nowhere near the ocean has been a staple of local television newscasts since broadcasting became a thing. Hosts standing awkwardly, making awkward talk and awkward eyes about “hanging ten” etc. The entire business is usually wholesome, family friendly, but, days ago, the conservative hosts of firebrand Fox and Friends pushed the envelope into the lewd and rude.

The bit begins with three hosts, two handsome males with conservative hair and one female wearing a long coat with feathered blonde hair. They are standing outside in New York City and one of the men declares, “Got the note to wear sweatpants today, sweatpants, because we’re going surfing.” Behind them all is a large blow-up wave, the sort Hurley sells, and on the ground are three soft tops.

The Locals’ Surf School co-owner is then introduced, informing the three that they should be in wetsuits, not their business suits, but they’re all going to give it a try. He then walks through the three basic skills. Paddle, pop up and wipeout, declaring, “Yes, you will be wiping out, I’m sure of it, but it can be fun and safe if we do it.”

He next lays on one of the soft tops and demonstrates proper paddling form while the hosts look on, popping to feet while one says “It looks like a burpee, it looks like you’re doing a burpee.”

Now this is where things turned bawdy. One of the male hosts got down to “paddle” and “pop up” himself, while the other two wonder if he is going to rip his pants. The female host refuses to get down on the board, worried that she might rip her jumpsuit with all declaring “that would be even better.”

Yikes.

So much pant/jumpsuit ripping. So much hope for it to all hang right out.

Pure lust.

More innuendo and tension, naughty talk, seen since Ron Burgundy went off the air.

The female host then jumps onto the inflatable Hurley toy and the piece devolves from there into an orgy of odd, shocking viewers at home.

If you have the stomach, you can watch here.

More importantly, though, have your pants ever split in public?

Describe, please.

Bad bride.

Do you recall when Kelly Slater unveiled his wave pool, there in the tule fog of Lemoore, and, at the same time, blew away the globe and squished Adriano de Souza’s pinnacle moment like a bug? How could you forget? That wave, all tubing and endless, was a replica, a manmade bit of woven dreams, but there it reeled in real life before our very eyes, de Souza’s tear-soaked.

Everyone wanted to surf it and the World Surf League wanted to buy it.

Being owned by a billionaire, the second business was quickly done and there Ziff, and a rotating door of merry CEOs, had the future in soft palm of hand.

Except.

Things have not quite gone to plan.

While Surf Ranch, as it came to be called, is ridiculously fun to surf, it has presented a number of challenges. Namely, not very many people can surf it on one day and it is hideously boring to watch competed upon. There has been no luck, yet, in securing a second Surf Ranch, as new, more sensible options have sprung up, and various iterations of the Surf Ranch Pro will forever remain the dumbest dumb in surfing history.

Instead of being a true bride to Slater, though, through sickness and health etc., the World Surf League has decided to stab the world’s greatest surfer directly in the back by, essentially, giving up and hosting events at his most bitter rival, a Wavegarden near glorious Melbourne, Australia.

A 1000 level regional QS or some such but still sanctioned with praise heaped.

Per The Guardian:

“This is really cool,” says Jessi Miley-Dyer, an ex-pro surfer and head of competitions at WSL, as she surveys the scene. The sun is shining, the smell of sunscreen lingers in the air and spectators have packed into a cafe overlooking the wave. It’s not Teahupo’o, Tahiti’s wave of consequence, or even Bells Beach, home to one of the iconic events on the WSL’s elite tour and barely an hour away on the Victorian coast. But it might be the future of surfing.

“The idea that someone can be here in Melbourne, surfing so close to the city, having the chance to learn,” Miley-Dyer says. “Wave technology has a place and will be a big part of developing our next generation of stars.”

Wave technology.

Not Slater’s plow.

Not the cow stink.

Just wave technology.

Shame on the WSL.

Deep shame.