Rage against the machine.

Surf fans do not generally agree on much. The World Surf League Championship Tour is either too long or not long enough. There are either too many surfers or not enough. Kelly Slater either should have retired a decade ago or should surf until he’s seventy. The judging either rewards floaters too highly or not highly enough. The only area of universal agreement is that Surf Ranch is not an appropriate place to host an event. Or, rather, Surf Ranch is not an appropriate place to host an event and Stephanie Gilmore is absolutely without reproach.

The eight-time world champion is as graceful as she is stylish, and charming as brave. Her ability, tenacity, dignity all 10 out of 10. When she speaks we all listen and she just spoke to Stellar magazine, telling honest truths about the sometimes nasty surf industry.

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Gilmore, who appears on the cover surfing in a yellow sundress, declared, “For my first eight years on tour, my pay was probably $12,000 to the men’s $40,000. But I didn’t question it because all I wanted to do was surf,” adding later that (the surf industry) can be a tough place for women to not feel intimidated” and “Yes, there were moments where I felt pressure as an up-and-coming surfer to look good in a bikini and to have that hot beach-girl vibe. But I’ve watched other female athletes like Serena Williams be fierce and feminine, and I feel like the older I get, I realise how fun it is to embrace both sides.”

The $12,000 to men’s $40,000 is truly egregious and it is a fine thing that it is now all fixed up. The early pressure she felt to have that “hot beach-girl vibe” is also unfortunate and should have been layered onto Mick Lowe instead.

Gilmore perfect just the way she is.

V-Day!

"If you don't like it, don't buy it!"

Chris Martin has been a fixture on the popular culture scene for some time now. The lead singer of Coldplay burst into our consciousness in 2000 with the band’s smash hit Yellow then cemented his place there by marrying historically significant actress Gwyneth Paltrow, making Apples then consciously uncoupling.

Martin has also been notable in our much smaller surf scene for almost equally long, taking up longer boarding and going left, or right, in Hawaii, Costa Rica and, of course, Malibu (Point Dume specifically) where he just purchased an architecturally significant home built by one John Lautner.

The architect, known for his beautiful use of space and form, he was also influential in his use of materials, Jean-Louis Cohen noting:

There is absolutely no dogma in Lautner’s attitude to materials; as a result he never subordinates the design concept of his buildings to any rigid rule that would require the primacy of a single material in a project. Even where he demanded rigorous continuity and integrity, as with wood in the Walstrom House and concrete at Marbrisa … he never allowed that to undermine the sense of structure and always took into account the need for a certain structural logic … He was happy to bring together wood and concrete … as he did in the Desert Hot Springs Motel … to have cables meet concrete and plastic, as in the Tolstoy House, to carry a wooden roof on steel supports, as in the Garcia House, or, so evident in the Chemosphere, to allow three radically different materials to work with each other – a structure of laminated lumber to enclose the dwelling area, metal struts to carry it, those struts bolted onto the vertical concrete column that anchors the unit to the hill.

Well, Martin decided he did not like the space, form or materials and ripped the entire thing down, The Lautner Foundation taking to Instagram and decrying, “If you don’t like it, don’t buy it! Shame on Chris Martin for knocking down the Garwood Residence… another Lautner lost to the ages…”

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What will the singer build in its place?

One can only imagine.