Kelly Slater sends son of poor Brazilian fisherman the ultimate compliment, “One of the gnarliest things I’ve ever seen done on a wave!”

"Absurd," says Yago Dora.

It’s been four years, roughly, since I picked my way through a maze of serviced apartments in Margaret River, six o’clock of a cool May evening it was, for the honour of spending two days with Italo Ferreira. 

As clear as if it was yesterday, I recalled the way his mango-sized deltoids popped as he squeezed his hands together. I remember, also, Italo showing me the Instagram post from his then-girlfriend Mari which he’d examined prior to their first meeting and that made him fall in love with her.

Mari sits astride a chair in white bikini bottoms. Her yellow hair waterfalls over brown skin and a red brassiere. Both eyes are closed and Mari’s tongue laps at an imaginary milk bowl in the sky.

History, of course, tells us that Italo, the son of a penniless Brazilian fisherman, won the world title that year, putting Medina on the end of his boot at Pipeline. Two years later, he became surfing’s first gold medal Olympian although no longer with Mari at his hip.

A likeable man with good intentions and as flashing and as relentless as a rapier. But for a knee-injury at J-Bay it’s likely his volcanic energy would be all over Lower Trestles, doom for Filipe etc. 

Out of the game and with no contests for almost six months, Italo has been showering his almost three-million fans with posts, the latest a barrel to boogie-dodge to the gala performance of a frontside 540. 

Kelly Slater, fifty-one and a pioneer of aerial drama, describes it thus. 

“First off, this is one of the gnarliest things I’ve ever seen done on a wave. And I’m baffled that Italo Ferreira could do a year on Tour and not make the Top 5.”

 

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Zuck before (insert) and after. Photo: Meta
Zuck before (insert) and after. Photo: Meta

Mark Zuckerberg erases haunting sunscreen surfer sissy boy image in testosterone-fueled all-male floating battle royale

INTENSE.

Mark Zuckerberg, man. And by “man” I mean MAN. The Facebook founder, once solely viewed as a vindictive nerd, has transformed himself into a vicious nerd and who would have seen that coming? Who could have? The pathway to peak end-of-the-world began when the milky 39-year-old discovered foil boarding. Befriending super boy Kai Lenny, Zuckerberg foiled here, he foiled there, he foiled everywhere.

Unfortunately, he was not cool and sometimes did it with a large American flag and sometimes did it with a face full of white cream.

Afraid of the sun.

The image became, instantly, meme-ified and Zuckerberg, while laughing it off, was most certainly frustrated by a public image he had tried so hard to chase by “riding big waves” and “doing a fair amount of extreme sports-like stuff.”

Very sad.

Well, lessons learned, etc., and now the world’s seventh richest li’l guy only wants a different sort of white cream on his face.

Testosterone.

The Palo Alto local has taken up the fight game, of late, rolling around, choking out, arm baring and what not. Various big names in the MMA world have trained with, or on, Zuckerberg and he appears to be taking it very seriously. Though in a move certainly intended to chase Scaredy Zuck away, he outfitted a barge with a wrestling floor and wrestled men on it on the water.

Extremely cool.

Business Insider reports that stars Israel Adesanya and Alexander Volkanovski were present and the whole affair was filmed and posted to Meta with a Mission Impossible soundtrack backing. It looks INTENSE.

I have one quick question, though. Did billionaires of old, Rockefeller, Carnegie and the like hire old-timey photographers to follow them around while they play-acted bear wrestling then send the newspapers prints? Did Gianni Agnelli hire filmmakers to follow him around and take movies of him bouncing in a bounce house?

Just curious.

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Busey (insert) dreaming of better moments in cars. Photo: Point Break
Busey (insert) dreaming of better moments in cars. Photo: Point Break

Beloved surf actor Gary Busey implicated in nasty Malibu hit-and-run likely tarnishing angelic reputation

"Utah, get me two (lawyers)."

Of all the surf characters in our pantheon, from Patrick Swayze to Keanu Reeves, Matt Adler to Matt McConaughey, Gary Busey is, without doubt, the most beloved. With important roles in Big Wednesday and Point Break, the the 79-year-old with an expressive face and wily mouth has been able to capture the best, the purest of who we are both in and out of the water.

It is with much shock and dismay, then, that it appears Busey was involved in a very un-gentlemanly hit-and-run whilst driving the Pacific Coast Highway through Malibu just before America’s Labor Day. According to TMZ, a woman was minding her own business when SLAM! her back bumper became hit. Instead of stopping and exchanging information, which is customary, the offending newer Volvo station wagon zipped off.

Not about to be hit-and-runned, the woman follows in hot pursuit until the Volvo pulls into a restaurant parking lot. There she confronts the driver, who just so happens to be Gary Busey, looking peak surf chic in a baseball cap, glasses and a khaki jacket.

Very Former.

When asked why he did not stop and follow typical protocol, Busey boldly declared, “I’m private,” then forwent his lunch and zipped off again.

I’d imagine with the way the court of public opinion is these days that Busey’s angelic reputation will be tarnished.

Sad.

But back to fender benders. Of course the thing for the offender to do is stay and exchange information, but I’ve always been of the mind that the offended should usually shrug and say, “Called a bumper for a reason, amirite?” I studied in Cairo, Egypt for six months during my college years, Arabic, Islam, history etc., and I was always impressed by the way Egyptians used their bumpers. They’d use them to move cars and fit into small parking spots, use them to push traffic along, once I was even in a cab and he used his to move a pedestrian from the middle of the road all the way to its other side. They aren’t legal sticklers, like us, all decadent and in moral and cultural decline.

Maybe the woman in the Busey exchange should think about that.

Walk like an Egyptian.

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Australian surfer Ethan Ewing ends month-long silence over broken back and miracle return to surfing’s San Clemente world title showdown!

"Some days the pain is worse than others. I won't be one hundred percent."

Yesterday, the surf world reacted with shock, joy, whatever you want to call it, after world number three Ethan Ewing made a surprise return to the game after fears he would be bedridden for months following a wipeout one month ago.

Apart from a brief note to fans and a video of the wave he got hurt on, Ewing, twenty-five, had maintained a strategic silence following the wipeout.

 

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The baby-faced Australian from Queensland’s North Stradbroke Island with an ass described as “overwhelming” was driven by a desire to keep Gabriel Medina out of the Final Five, back when it was thought the WSL would make up the numbers with the sixth-rated surfer.

The favourite to win the contest is reigning world champion Pip Toledo, whose daddy, Big Rick, has claimed the only reason Pip don’t charge Teahupoo is ‘cause he wants to save himself for the Finals, something that didn’t bother mad-dog Ewing, and which also don’t ring true ‘cause his zero heat total was in 2015.

Anyway, the Brazilian filmer Bruno Lemos got hold of Ewing down there at Lowers yesterday and got a few words out of the man with camellia-white skin and dishwater blond hair. He looks rather tired, not surprising given his journey from his island home to Los Angeles, but not a whit less charming than usual.

 

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“When I first did it I thought, I’m not going to be surfing for a long time, maybe, ‘cause I knew there was something wrong with my back ‘cause I slammed it really hard on the reef,” he tells his South American interlocutor. “I got some scans, there were some fractures, not too bad, no risk for the spinal cord. Very lucky.”

Ewing admitted that some days the pain is “worse than others but I just have to keep doing my physio, getting better and better each day. I won’t be one hundred percent but I’ll do everything to put on a good performance.”

Apart from keeping Medina out of the mix, Ewing “didn’t want to finish my season injured and in a bad ending.”

The one-day surf-off will run some time between September eight and sixteen at San Clemente’s Lower Trestles, likely around the 14th or 15th.

 

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Slater burns Azevedo at Padang and, inset, Azevedo goes toe-to-toe with Sara Taylor following a clash in the surf.

Australian tabloids slam Kelly Slater for sharing waves with “Bali’s most hated surfer” notorious for “savagely punching” a girl in the surf

“Paradise of perfect waves with Kelly Slater is a dream come true,” says girl-beater JP Azevedo

A little over five months ago, the Brazilian João Paulo Azevedo, aka JP Azevedo, was dubbed the most hated man in surfing when video emerged of him beating hell out of American Sara Taylor in Bali. 

“After being dropped in on on my first wave, the guy’s friend punched me in the head and then after being confronted about hitting me, he attacked Charlie on the beach for filming him,” wrote Taylor, along with video of the attack. “This is insane, does anyone know who they are?”

 

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The greatest surfer ever, Kelly Slater, doxxed Azebvedo writing, “Get this guy sent home where he belongs.”

Azevedo, an ex-pat living in Bali since 2019, blamed the fluidity of the modern gender binary for belting Taylor.

“This girl looked like a man, I didn’t know she was a woman. She surfed like a man, dressed like a man,” he said. “She was riding everyone’s wave, she wasn’t respecting anyone. She went with my friend’s wave and pushed my friend out of the loop. I went to ask why she had done that to my friend. She went by and threw water in my face, cursed me. And then I lost my mind due to momentary stress and ended up attacking her. I lost my reason. After I attacked her I saw that it was a woman. She was wearing a T-shirt and I couldn’t see her bra. Soon after I apologized, a friend of mine came paddling up and I said, ‘Calm down, it’s a woman’”

Gender fluidity or not, the guy appeared to have form.

His ex-girlfriend Carol Braga revealed that he put her in the hospital after a brutal attack six years earlier.

I dated JP Azevedo in 2018 and 2019. We broke up when he strongly assaulted me. I ended up in a hospital with head trauma. I was so ashamed of everything and especially (for) my daughter that I love so much. (…) Anyway, I ended up isolating myself for almost three months in a guesthouse in Rio, until the physical marks came out. But those of the heart… those still last. Very difficult all this .. because I loved him …

Today, after such news, I decided to speak out and expose myself. I don’t know if I’m doing it right. Forgive me (daughter) if you don’t like it.

I wish more peace in the world.

Today, after a month-old video emerged of Slater burning JP at Padang, the Australian tabloids, never ones to let the truth enter the narrative (just ask your ol pal DR, see, “Lewd ‘ambush’ leaves surfer gritting teeth”) and who have had it in the for the Champ ever since he questioned Australia’s vaccine mandates, suggested he was a champion of hypocrisy. 

It don’t matter that Slater burns the cunt, give him a close look at his fins then stares at Azevedo as he rinses his nose.

From the Daily Mail, 

But despite the online clash – and Slater’s public repulsion over Azevedo’s actions – the pair was filmed surfing together at Padang Padang Beach, in Bali’s south, earlier this month. 

Footage posted to Azevedo’s YouTube channel on August 4 shows the pair sharing a wave, standing just metres away from each other as they passed under a barrel.

In the caption, Azevedo gushed over how it was a ‘dream’ to finally surf alongside his childhood idol. 

‘Surfing with the GOAT [greatest of all time] Kelly Slater in Bali, Indonesia, is a dream session,’ he wrote.

‘Paradise of perfect waves with Kelly Slater is a dream come true, because since I was a child I watched movies and Slater always inspired me and my friends and everyone in the world of surfing.’

‘[He was] always winning the world WSL competitions and raising everyone’s level, both athletes and competitors in general.’

It ain’t easy being KS, everyone knows who you are, every camera is aimed at your head, and every person you meet or pass by either wants to fuck, fight, marry or kill you. 

 

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