Just slipped onto my desk is more news from the imminent takeover of those once iconic surf brands, Billabong, Quiksilver and RVCA.
For those who came into surf in the past few years it might be hard to comprehend, even to frame in some sort of conceptual framework, but there was a time when Quiksilver, Billabong and Hurley were the archest of rivals, each brand pushing each other to build the best surf team, host the best surf event, dazzle with latest innovation for wetsuits or trunks.
That all ended when Billabong and Quiksilver flew too close to the sun, their balance sheets melted by hubris and financial extravagance, and were sold to vulture capitalists.
What exclusivity phase means is, the Authentic Brands Group can only counter-offer if the Bluestar offer comes in too low.
The way Bluestar works is it identifies brands it wants to buy and once they get the keys, “our team of experts embark on a complete and thorough understanding of the brand’s potential channels of distribution and price point strategies. We create tools such as brand development profiles, trend guides, style guides and marketing strategies. These marketing materials portray graphic illustrations and a strategic marketing road map to enhance consumer brand recognition.”
In layman’s terms, throw a logo on anything that moves, inflatable pool toys, beard oil, whatever dumb stuff people will buy ’cause it has a heritage banner on it.
If Bluestar gets the keys to the three iconic brands, it’ll create the greatest assemblage of surf brands ever created, rivalling even those honied days a decade or so ago when Billabong and Quik were throwing millions at even the silliest of provincial surf brands.
A little ironic for Billabong as its never been as lean and healthy, and therefore profitable, as it is right now.
Surfers have long been arbiters of fresh new slang. Hang ten, rip curl, kook, hand jam, the list goes on and on and on and on and our kind has gotten used to being chill and cool and unintelligible to outsiders but code talking diggish* words to each other.
Or at least we used to be.
Sometime within the last few years the TikketyTokkety took over and now in-the-know youth are no longer dropping wave jargon but rather unintelligible gibberish like SMH and sus and other such nonsense. The word currently trending? “Rizz.”
Coined by YouTuber Kai Cenet, it roughly translates to “One’s ability to seduce a potential (usually female) love interest.” Or, per Urban Dictionary, “Another word for spitting game/how good you are with pulling and sustaining bitches.”
Surf fans, thus, have been attempting to apply to our favorite professionals.
Which Championship Tour surfer has rizz?
Like, if you were at a bar with any of the top 44, who would “spit game” the very best?
Gabriel Medina?
Kanoa Igarashi?
Matthew McGillivray?
Nat Young, Kolohe Andino, Jackson Baker?
Mark Richards?
Help!
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Professional surfers (pictured) with trowels. Photo: WSL
World Surf League blows environmental doors off hinges as 2022’s progress report reveals emissions slashed by 50%, 35,000 global youth educated, 100 tons of plastic vanished from Indonesia!
Aside from its commitment to equality, the World Surf League has really leaned into environmental stewardship in these past few years. Professional surfers, on the Championship Tour, can regularly be seen planting small bushes in various bluffs, much booth talk can be heard from Joe Turpel and gang about various environment and Jessi Miley-Dyer plus Erik Logan things.
But who could have guessed, who might have imagined how robust the efforts actually were.
With 2022 drawing to a close, the World Surf League’s Chief People and Purpose Officer, Emily Hofer, has shared, “The ocean is our arena, it’s our office — many of us would describe it as home. We believe that the future of surfing depends on the health of the ocean; and it’s our duty to ensure that the ocean is protected for surfers to come.”
The successes this year?
According to the WSL:
-Reduced emissions by almost 50 percent from the 2018 baseline year;
-Educated 35,000 global youth on cultural and environmental stewardship;
-Removed 100 tons of plastic from Indonesian waterways;
-Conserved almost 350,000 hectares of coastal land — including prime surf ecosystems at Playa Hermosa, Costa Rica and Grajagan Bay, Java, Indonesia (famously known to those in the know as “G-Land”).
“Sports have the power to inspire hearts and minds,” Hofer added at the end. “Anything related to protecting the ocean or the earth is a really good way to leverage sports and the inspirational power of sports.”
Sports sports sports.
Sportswashing.
Wonderful.
But how do you think the reduced emissions came to be?
Ahhhh, the mid-season cut. Professional surfers told they are no longer allowed to get on to airplanes and fly to exotic locations.
Less helping hands in planting small bushes, I suppose, but an overall win.
Go, WSL.
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Adult learner Parker Seidels, inset, says sorry, man, to Makana, wearing his board in the main photo.
Adult learner surfer who nearly decapitated Pipeline star issues brave mea culpa on YouTube, “I’ve received a lot of death threats and a lot of hate. I know what I did was wrong and stupid and disrespectful!”
"I apologise to Makana Pang for paddling out at Pipeline two days ago and seriously almost injuring Makana, and possibly ruining his career."
Do you watch any of those surfing blogs on YouTube? I do. It’s a guilty indulgence.
Sorta like secretly enjoying Hollywood rom-coms or bikie-grade methamphetamine.
I can’t get enough of it.
Nathan Florence is the standout.
There’s something about the unproduced, uncut rawness of his videos that encapsulates the surfing experience so much more closely than a tightly edited performance clip.
The paddle out. The sets on the head. The lineup chat.
Jazz is what’s between the notes ‘n that. Plus he hooks.
It’s obviously a model that resonates. His audience and view rates are through the wazoo.
But for every one Nathan Florence there’s a thousand Parker Seidels.
For a while now I’ve had a story bubbling in the back of my mind about the YouTube surfer. This second generation of GoPro-weilding content creators holding up the likes of JOB and Ben Gravy as their heroes.
Never not online. Dedicated to recording every aspect of the lineup. Slow-mo non head-dips.Going over the falls. Hi-5s and bro-slaps with their buddies on the beach.
Actual surfing skill not required.
Parker is one such acolyte. Only he plies his trade out at Pipeline.
There’s dozens of videos posted to his YouTube Channel with titles like:
RAW FOOTAGE LEARNING HOW TO SURF EP 1
CAUGHT INSIDE AT PIPELINE *HUMBLING*
SCARY DAY AT PIPELINE *ALMOST DROWNED*
I SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN OUT HERE *VERY BIG DAY AT PIPELINE*
You read Makana’s impassioned, level-headed plea for kooks to stop paddling out in conditions they can’t handle, after his mid-tube collision with an errant learner’s board.
A bit of instagram sleuthing quickly uncovered Parker as the board’s owner.
Now, Parker, a fresh-faced teen who has apparently only started surfing in the last 18 months, has taken to YouTube to apologise for his actions.
Only thing is, this wasn’t the only strife he’d gotten himself into chasing content over the last few days.
“I just want to make this video to apologise for my actions this past week. I just want to express how sorry and how terrible I feel right now, and I just wish I could take back what i have done because i was being so stupid. I was being an idiot. For going to the Big Island and being super uneducated and getting super close to the lava and not knowing anything about what I was doing.”
Turns out Parker had also hopped over to the slopes of active volcano Mauna Loa and tried to roast some marshmallows in the lava flow, which has been threatening homes on the Big Island for a couple of weeks now. Of course he recorded clips of it all for his YouTube channel. Big sign of disrespect to local Hawaiian customs. Then he and his group apparently became lost for hours on the volcanic slopes, putting themselves at further risk.
“I want to apologise to all the people I have offended and I have definitely learned from this experience. I’ve received a lot of death threats and a lot of hate. I know what i did was wrong and stupid and disrespectful.
“From the bottom of my heart I want to apologise and I know saying sorry isn’t enough. I know this will take time to fix. I am educating myself about what I have done. I just feel terrible. I want to apologise to all the natives on the Big Island for what I have done.”
Cue Pipe, Makana.
“I also want to apologise to Makana Pang for paddling out at Pipeline two days ago and seriously almost injuring Makana, and possibly ruining his career. I just wanted to say I was very, very selfish in that moment. I shouldn’t have been out there. The waves were way too big. Not only did I put myself at risk but I also put a lot of other surfers at risk who have trained their whole lives to be there and it was just super selfish for me to paddle out in those waves. I’m glad that he’s ok but it could have been way worse. I know what I did was wrong. Just wanted to make this video to apologise even though I know this is going to take a lot of time to fix.”
It was all enough for young Parker to finally see the error of his ways.
“I am definitely taking a break from social media. I am definitely getting off Instagram. And YouTube. For a long long time. I just want to own up to my mistakes and my wrongs. I have learned a lot from this. I will learn and I will grow. I lost my job this morning. I feel like people are basically out there to kill me right now. It’s kinda scary but I just wanted to let you guys know I am taking a break and I am deeply, deeply sorry for my actions and I will do better and think more before I do things. I apologise. I’m sorry.”
Where to from here?
Parker, who looks to be barely out of his teens, is less a cause of the problem than a symptom.
No one’s begrudging the likes of Nathan Florence, JOB, Koa etc making a living with their videos. They’re professionals. They belong in the line-=up.
But should they now be posting warnings at the start of their clips?
DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME. VALS GET CRACKS.
Or could we even go a step further?
Have a guided discussion, a collective moment of introspection, on the levels of self-aggrandising narcissism we have descended to as a society in the social media age?
This cultural morasse we find ourselves in?
Could YouTube be disbanded? Instragram disconnected? Modems tossed in the bin, Smart phones placed in bedside drawers. Humanity strolling out into the sunlight together. Finally unfiltered. Finally unplugged.
Or will the content creation machine continue on its inexorable roll?
Probs. Cunts’ll do anything for a click nowadays.
‘Cept here on Beach Grit.
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No big wave. Photo: Eurovision Song Contest.
“Possessor of pop’s most piercing falsetto” Sam Ryder declares horror Hawaiian surfing accident altered his course from big-wave stud to sensual songbird!
But if you had to choose between being an international singing sensation or a noted wrangler of big waves which would you choose? Of course the two are not mutually exclusive. Makua Rothman, son of North Shore strongman Eddie, for example has conquered both worlds but it is exceptionally rare and, to be honest, I don’t know if you have the necessary double threat skillset.
So which?
Adored by fawning audiences whilst crooning or sliding down the face of monsters?
Well, British singer-songwriter Sam Ryder came to the aforementioned crossroads and chose the microphone. In a stirring interview with the BBC, the Eurovision musical contest runner-up declared that it was a horror surfing accident in Hawaii that guided his destiny.
“I was surfing in Hawaii and my board snapped. Then I got hit by a wave and I very nearly drowned,” he told Auntie. “It pushed me down so far into the water. And the turbulence of the water, the power, is incredible. Fighting against it, you feel like you’ve been hit by a bus.”
The terror left him bed-ridden for a week, pondering what to make of his life.
“Obviously, the golden rule in surfing is ‘never underestimate the sea,'” he continued, “but until it goes wrong, you can’t fathom it. You’re like, ‘I am insignificant in this body of water’. But that day was important to me because I wanted to be very good at surfing and ride the big waves – but [the accident] put me back on my true purpose. I was like, ‘You can’t do the thing you love most, which is music and singing, if you’re at the bottom of the sea.'”
A wise determination.
Ryder, who has luxurious long hair and soft beard, went on to amass more than 14 million TikTok fans, a record deal and Eurovision success.
As an American, I only really know of the business from Will Ferrell’s very funny Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga.
Worth a watch.
Also, though, are you sad not to be able to watch Ryder on the World Surf League’s Big Wave World Tour?
