Dark days for a once happy boy-man whose eyes have been opened to the horrors of being a lifelong surfer.

The Disney-ification of surfing has been written at ad nauseam: the advent of the leash, big-wave vests which suddenly enable the likes of me and my 50 closest friends to paddle out at waves far beyond our grasp, the dreaded midlength. 

Reading those who have dipped their pen into this tired inkwell often conjures images of old men no longer able to paddle into waves, cursing me for my youth and still-intact hairline. 

But, on the wrong side of 25, maybe it’s my time to enter these hallowed grounds. 

Surfline is killing surfing. 

It has been an abysmal summer in San Diego. Small, windy, and inconsistent. I’m pretty sure I’m getting scoliosis from schlepping my log down to the beach every morning. At best, maybe two swells since May. 

Still, like the junkie I am, I check the forecast religiously, multiple times throughout the day. And, to my utter amazement, I notice something. Maybe, just maybe, a swell. In fact, the first swell of fall. Nothing special, but just enough to pull the trusty shortboard off the rafters. 

Surfline sees it too. That all seeing monster. It knows. It always knows. A week out, it gives the day a modest 2-3+. Seems about right given the forecast. 

But then, an Instagram post. “First WNW Swell of Season Provides Widespread Waves to California.” A menacing blob dashes across the screen, plunging into California. 

3-4. 

It’s 24 hours before the swell arrives in San Diego. 4-5. Surfline posts a cam rewind of Mavericks, captioned “Swell Update: @peter_mel packed one this morning at Mavs.” A lone figure pulls into an unremarkable closeout at Mavericks. 

I check the forecast before bed just for giggles. Has the swell turned code red yet? What’s the Surfline color code for “Epic” again? 

2-3+. An unremarkable 2-3+. Exactly what the forecast calls for. Surfline pulls off the ultimate bait and switch. 

I pull up to the beach a little earlier than usual. I have to be at work early and I have a feeling there’s going to be a crowd. 

The street is full. A surfer next to me pulls on a brand-new changing poncho. It matches his out of the box suit. I can almost smell the new neoprene. 

Now, I surf a nondescript spot every morning. No camera; not even a Surfline entry. A C-grade spot that can get fun but is tucked away and crushingly mediocre. 

On any day, 5 or 6 guys, 10 max. Today, 40. 

I paddle to the outside peak, a tricky part of the reef that is seldom surfed. Two locals turn and grin at me, quietly lamenting the absurdity of a 40-person lineup. 

One of the bigger sets swings wide and I’m in position. It’s standing up on the reef. I set my rail. 

Like a gimp-styled superhero, he drops in from the heavens. Arms flailing, an unintentionally delayed bottom turn. I straighten, lest my bang rails with this intruder. He does a few ungainly pumps, straightens, and kicks out. 

And then, the pièce de résistance. He flashes me a shaka. Not a limp, ironic shaka, but a hard, twisting shaka. The kind that makes your forearm cramp. It’s not an apology. It’s an “aloha, bro.” 

You know who he is. He exists in every lineup. The surfer just competent enough to wreak havoc in a lineup. 

Jen See’s already made the connection, but it’s worth repeating. This is your fault, Surfline. You’ve created this agent of chaos. You’ve pumped him full of color-coded, easy to read, always embellished forecasts and pushed him out to sea. 

And that was fine. Even nice. A discerning beginner could piece together how to read buoys. You taught us something. You taught me something. 

But then you decide to double down. You started throwing out meaningless buzzwords to your 2.2 million followers. A post (or two) for every “swell.” Code red. First swell of the season. Hurricane X. Raising the temperature, giving the masses exactly what they wanted. 

And yes, the brands didn’t help.

They clothed him, put him on a 7’0” funboard, and told him jazz hands look cool on a wave. 

But you’re the one who put him in the water. 

 

“You have to be a gnarly tough son of a bitch cocksucker to go beyond the point where you think you might die!”

Do you remember, yesterday, watching Ian Cairns and Elon Musk bludgeon your favourite online resource to pulps of blood?  

Kanga, who was famous in the nineteen seventies for brazenly presenting his titanic buttocks to the beach as he flexed into bottom turns, took to X to attack Wikipedia for its “shocking inaccuracies.” 

He was moved to comment after Musk, the fifty-two-year-old billionaire owner of Twitter/X, as well as SpaceX and the nerd chariot producer Tesla, quipped “History is written by the victors. Well, yes, but not if your enemies are still alive and have a lot of time on their hands to edit Wikipedia”.

The “talented but elitist” former world number two, who once strangled a Hawaiian surf star on a ten-foot wave and who told me once “You have to be a gnarly tough son of a bitch cocksucker to go beyond the point where you think you might die!” replied,

“My personal experience with Wikipedia was shocking. Accused of hacking I finally had to engage with another Ian Cairns in Scotland to vouch for me, that I was me. It makes me doubt every page on the site. It’s not Encyclopedia Brittanica!”

But what did Wikipedia get wrong? Much speculation yesterday although a phone call placed to Laguna Beach this afternoon, where Kanga, who is seventy-one, lives, revealed it was less what they got wrong than what they missed out on. 

First, of course, we had to laugh about silly Erik Logan being jettisoned from the WSL and his “disturbing” stunt with Filipe Toledo, Kanga explaining that’s what it’s like in Hollywood, “They do creepy shit”.

Anyway, Wiki missed that he was there for the formation of the IPS (Fred Hemmings’ version of pro surfing), then the ASP (Kanga’s version), his work on Big Wednesday, the OP Pro, how he came up with computer scoring with the ASL, six CT wins etc.

“I wrote all this and put it in there and made it…right… and then I came back in the morning and it had reverted to where it was.” 

Editors figured Kanga was a hacker.

“They contacted me, this guy starts messaging me, saying, you’ve hacked this Ian Cairns’ account, cause he’s a famous Scottish actor or something. And, I said, dude, this is…me, and they threatened to ban me from all sorts of stuff, the whole cyber thing. I just realised the people you’re dealing with have this sense of ownership over information.” 

The custody of information is a very thorny topic with this dynamic man.

“Elon, that guy,” says Kanga, “he’s under investigation for so many things these days because he dared to release the Twitter files, actually supports stuff, is anti the trans agenda, he’s not down for the plan and now he’s fired all the election interference people. Yeah, man! They’re going to have to do away with him! The people who are very left are freaking out.”

Are you on the left, the right, or a fence-sitter, and, again, how can you not love Elon for all the clever trinkets he makes? Asking Matt Warshaw, specifically.