"Cams are down."

Surfline Man Hates Surfline!

Jen See

By

"But how can he live without cams and forecasts? All those colorful blobs and arrows and technical forecasting stuff. He loves them so much!"

Coffee in hand, Surfline Man is sitting on the patio tucked under an umbrella at his favorite local spot. Cold brew season, baby! He flips open his laptop to Illustrator where he’s creating super cool designs for his new surf clothing brand.

The surf brands all look the same now. It’s just so boring. It’s totally time to shake things up. Surfline Man is certain he’s just the guy to make it happen.

Surfline Man has been working so hard designing and doing other important surf brand stuff. `He and his new best friend Dylan are going to make the most awesome brand ever. They’re so close to launching now. They just need to come up with a sweet name. Really, it’s like, the hardest part.

Last week, they signed the lease on a super cute store in Encinitas and they’re going to have the coolest opening party. Surfline Man can’t even wait. All the beautiful people will be there! And Surfline Man is going to be one of them.

Dylan’s so the best. He just moved south from Santa Cruz and he’s like, super core. Surfline Man met him in the parking lot at the Seaside Market. Surfline Man’s shopping cart totally ran into Dylan’s Tacoma and Surfline Man felt super bad. But it was okay! Dylan wasn’t even mad.

Now they’re totally good friends, and they even went to Nicaragua together last month. Surfline Man got so barreled for the first time ever. Or at least, mostly barreled. Kinda barreled. Whatever! It was so much fun! Surfline Man can’t even wait for the next trip. North Shore, here we come!

Surfline Man takes another sip of cold brew and contemplates his surf trunk design. It’s looking good so far, but it needs something. Surfline Man just isn’t quite sure what. It’s hard to think of his best ideas every day. It’s good to take breaks! Surfline Man does not want his precious brain to be worn out.

Surfline Man switches over to the surf forecast. He keeps Surfline open at all times, because he would never want to miss anything important. He wants to see all the waves, all the time! Surfline Man can almost see Cardiff from his seat at the coffee shop, but the cam is like, so much better.

But when he looks at Cardiff all he sees is a blank screen. Where is his favorite surf cam? Surfline Man’s heart starts beating very fast. Maybe it’s the stress or too much cold brew, but omg he is so worried right now. Where is his surf cam?

In a panic, Surfline Man hits refresh. Still nothing! How will he know where to go if he can’t see it on the internet? How will he ever know how to surf again? The world is suddenly so frightening and filled with uncertainty.

Surfline Man does not know what to do. He picks up his phone and taps out a text. It’s super slow and frustrating, like why is auto-complete so bad now. Finally he hits send.

omg dylan
the cardiff cam is down

it is?
just surfed trestles
super sick

Surfline Man pulls up the cam for Trestles. He can’t even resist. He just has to see. If only he’d known, he could have watched Dylan surf. That would have been so fun!

But no! Trestles is dark, too. The little symbol just spins and spins. No waves! No new best friend surfing!

ugh trestles is down too
forecast says it’s kinda small

nah brah it was super fun
surfline kinda sucks
better to just check it yo

Surfline Man feels the earth shift under his feet or his chair or whatever the earth shifts under. He feels so uncertain of everything now. Dylan is so core and knows everything. He got super barreled in Nica and he’s super nice. He brought the best vegan burritos over for dinner last night.

But how can Surfline Man possibly live without his favorite cams and forecasts? All those colorful blobs and arrows and technical forecasting stuff. He loves them so much! His days would feel so drab and empty without them.

Already, Surfline Man is feeling so depressed he can’t sit just here and watch the surf while he drinks his coffee and designs his rad new surf brand. Why can’t he have this one nice thing?

It’s not like he can run off to Trestles when he has important surf brand work to do. Someone has to design these sweet trunks. The world will be so sad without them! Surfing will be so much better and more fun with Surfline Man’s new brand that doesn’t even have a name yet.

They really do need to work on the name part. Surfline Man might not be the smartest guy in the world, but even he knows you can’t have a launch party with all the beautiful people for a brand with no name. Who knew making a surf brand would be so super stressful?

Forget Surfline anyway. Surfline Man is going to make his own forecasting site. It’ll have cams that work and forecasts that are actually good. He’ll pick even better colors for the maps and stuff.

How hard could it be? He’s like an ace programmer already. Surely Surfline Man can build something better than Surfline!

Suddenly Surfline Man remembers his old enemy Trey. He could totally help with a forecasting site. If Trey can sell Elevate! he can sell anything. Anyway, they weren’t exactly enemies, just like, not the best friends. As long as Surfline Man doesn’t have to play dodgeball it’ll be totally fine.

Surfline Man is super sad he didn’t know that Trestles was good and that he couldn’t watch his new friend Dylan surf. But if he made his own Surfline he could like, totally do those things. He could design his radical new surf trunks and watch Trestles at the same time.

Surfline Man just wants to live his best life. It should not be too much to ask.

If he had super good forecasts he could plan so much better. And he could even get all the way barreled. He’s been making so much progress on his surfing since he met Dylan. Surfline Man can totally see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s getting so close now.

Picking up his phone, Surfline Man scrolls until he finds Trey’s number. Time to get the Elevate! band back together. A new Surfline. It’s going to be so good. Surfline Man will be super famous for his awesome invention. He could name it after himself. Forecasting with Trent. Well, it’s a good start anyway.

Before he can find Trey’s number, Surfline Man’s phone buzzes. Oh, it’s Dylan! This makes Surfline Man so happy.

lunch?
meet you at acai bowls?

totally!

cool be there in 15

Surfline Man hits save on his super important surf brand stuff and slides his laptop in his backpack. He returns his cold brew glass to the barista because he hates to leave a mess. He is eating açaì bowls with Dylan and it’s going to be so fun!

Smiling, Surfline Man walks out into the bright sun with a spring in his step, all thoughts of Trey and building a new website forgotten. Who needs to know before he goes? He can go check it just like Dylan. Next time, he’s totally going to score Trestles.

On their next surf trip, Surfline Man going to get so barreled. He just needs a little more practice. And he’s going to launch the best surf brand ever. Surfline Man is totally sure the perfect name is going to come to him so soon. Maybe it’ll even be today.

Açaì bowls are so inspirational!

Slater loses in Tahiti, thirty-one years after his first world title win.

Tears and shock as Kelly Slater loses in last-minute boil-over at Tahiti Pro, likely bringing his professional surfing career to an ignominious close

Derek Rielly

By

"It's the most upset I've ever seen him."

The greatest surfer ever Kelly Slater has been bundled out of the Tahiti Pro by the Brazilian world title contender Yago Dora in a buzzer beater boil-over. It brings, likely, an end to the Champ’s thirty-year professional surfing career. 

Yeah, there’ll be a wildcard here and there, definitely Pipe, possibly Tahiti, but you ain’t gonna see Slater on the tour full-time, in 2024. 

There’ll be no complaints about Slater’s performance in Tahiti. The 11-time world champion controlled the heat with Dora until the very last minute with a series of imposing rides, a seven-five and a six-nine-three pinning the Brazilian against the ropes. It was a masterful performance given his frantic odyssey from Namibia to French Polynesia just to surf.

Needing a 7.76 and holding priority with two minutes left, Slater, a man in his fifty-second year, gives his twenty-seven-year-old foe an inside drainer, a wave Dora expertly threads. There is shock as judges barely give it a five. 

Slater uses priority and threads a smaller wave. The man whose popularity is such that it has shattered any other surfer is assured of his place in the next round. 

As the clock runs out, the best wave of the heat appears and Dora, angry, insulted by the previous low score, puts the result beyond any question. 

Still, the judges only give the wave an eight, but it’s enough to end Slater’s career, the pain clear, probing his insides, the heart going out of him along with the blood. 

As the numbers were read out, delivering the fatal blow, Slater sat in the channel, head bowed, appearing to weep.

“It’s the most upset I’ve ever seen him,” said WSL commentator and long-time friend of Slater’s, Strider Wasilewski.

More at the completion of the day’s play.

Not how Teahupoo looks today (pictured). Photo: ASP
Not how Teahupoo looks today (pictured). Photo: ASP

Surf fans flock to Tahiti Pro webcast to witness potential last ever heat of “world’s greatest athlete” Kelly Slater!

Chas Smith

By

Ready the Kleenex.

“Where were you when Kelly Slater surfed his final ever heat” is, maybe, going to be a question asked by children and their grandchildren into eternity. The world’s greatest athlete will come up in heat 5 of the Tahiti Pro, today, against Australia’s Ryan Callinan.

The elimination round.

Commentators in the booth are calling conditions “challenging” i.e. “bad” and Strider Wasilewski let it slip that Slater had not caught a wave in the morning warm-up session.

A goose egg.

So, where are you going to be in just a few short hour’s time?

Taking time off work, heading down to the local bar and hugging patrons tightly?

Alone in your house, lights darkened, candles lit?

Other?

Click here to live comment with friends wherever you may be.

If Slater loses, remember, he will be finished for the season and will only be back next year if granted a special season-long wildcard by the World Surf League itself.

Almost impossible to imagine.

Oh wait.

As you were.

UPDATE:

Kelly Slater made it past R. Cal in the Elimination Round! Will surf against Yago Dora in Heat 3 of the upcoming Round of 16.

Open Thread: Comment Live on day two of the Tahiti Pro as professional surfing collectively “goes to turns!”

Chas Smith

By

The End of the Road.

Hayes (right) and the big time.
Hayes (right) and the big time.

Influential political writer lists former top Hawaiian pro surfer and RVCA co-founder Conan Hayes as one of 30 mysterious unindicted co-conspirators in Trump election saga!

Chas Smith

By

"Minor celebrity" turned major.

Former top Hawaiian pro surfer Conan Hayes is, now, clearly the most interesting man born in our world. The onetime Momentum Generation star and co-founder of RVCA who sold his share to PM Tenore for $7.5 mil then became erased from the brand’s history, has been on a Kafaesque tear since spreading his wings and leaving the surf industry nest.

In 2015, Hayes was hit with grand theft charges by the Orange County DA, who alleged Hayes had committed short sale fraud against the Bank of America “by providing Bank of America with false information concerning his financial net worth, which was in the millions of dollars, in order to qualify for short sale relief.”

The charges were dropped two years later “among a myriad of scandals following the prosecution.”

Later, he opened a warehouse in Los Angeles that imported children’s toys.

Then, two years ago, he was introduced as a player in the Donald Trump election kerfuffle of 2020.

Per Vice:

In recent years (Hayes) has become somewhat of a minor celebrity in election fraud conspiracy theory circles, under his anonymous Twitter handle We Have Risen. He has worked on an election audit in Antrim County and has suggested on social media he was in Phoenix where the Arizona audit is currently taking place. He also has links to Doug Logan, the Cyber Ninja CEO who is currently running the sham audit in Maricopa County.

Further evidence that Hayes was the person who captured the images was provided by cyber security experts tracking this situation, who found Hayes’ initials in the downloaded files:

Clevenger confirmed to VICE News on Thursday that it was in fact Hayes who had provided the data from Mesa County to Watkins. What Clevenger, who represented the Seth-Rich conspiracy theorist Ed Buttosky, was not able to say for certain was if it was Hayes who also provided the video clip to Watkins, who Gerard Wood was, or if, as some open sources investigators tracking this situation believe, that Hayes and Wood are in fact the same person.

Well, that “minor celebrity” title has expanded over the years which includes costume changes, being on Trump’s legal payroll, using a fake ID to copy election software and other such star turns.

Now, it appears, he has arrived in the upper echelons of Trumpian fame. The influential political writer Seth Abramson, Harvard grad, former attorney, has dug through open source media and guessed the thirty formerly unnamed unindicted co-conspirators in the federal case against Trump and his election tampering.

Conan Hayes is either number 21 or 22.

The big time.

But where did it all turn for the man who once had it all?

Quite possibly Teahupoo, where our current crop of championship tour surfers find themselves at this very moment.

Per the Encyclopedia of Surfing (subscribe here):

Hawaii’s Conan Hayes got a pair of 10s in the (1988) final, and a 7 (it was best-three waves back then), but one of his 10s was so much better than anything ridden in the event that the number was meaningless. Koby Abberton meanwhile got two 9s and a 9.1, and won the event. People who were there still recall Hayes’ loss as the single most wrongful call in ASP history, made worse by the fact that Abberton (below), having necked a half-dozen Hinanos between the final horn and the presentation, galloped onstage, took the check, and bellowed out to the still-stunned gallery “Whoooooose the man?” Silence. ‘Whooooose the man?” Still no reply, so Koby helped out. “Me! I’m the man!”

Professional surf judges planting the seed of conspiracy.

On the plus side, and according to Vanity Fair, there is worry in Trump’s camp that one of the unindicted co-conspirators could flip. Per the piece:

The possibility that one of Trump’s former advisers could turn state’s witness and testify against either him or his aides or close associates is already apparent to the twice-impeached former president. This summer, Trump has asked some of his political and legal advisers to name who—especially among those investigated or questioned by the special counsel’s office—they believe to be the most “vulnerable” and likely to crack under pressure from prosecutors, according to two people who’ve heard him ask about this.

What do you think the Justice Department would offer Hayes for some damning testimony?

Quiksilver?

A major come up.

More as the story develops.

Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by @theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros
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