Will you fight?

Yesterday a stirring video dropped, out of nowhere, detailing how one Erik Logan was responsible for saving a bawdy talk radio show thereby becoming a hero to free speech, waving a middle finger at “the man.” Gregg “Opie” Hughes, one half of the program Opie and Anthony, shared how the XM satellite network wanted to kick them off the air for being rude and provocative only to be saved by Logan who brokered a sweetheart deal where they only had to vacate microphones for one month and get paid whilst doing.

Surf fans were shocked.

The last we had seen Logan, he was sitting atop the vast World Surf League as its Chief Executive, wielding his power like a cudgel. He seemed to be untouchable, spinning corporate nonsense talk faster than it could be digested, sucking the breath out of professional surfers, wearing their skin. He did not appear to be a savior, rather a demon sent to torment and molest.

Molest, as in bother maybe, he did just too much as the World Surf League fired him in the most ruthless way possible, lopping his increasingly handsome head right off when he was on a business trip to Brazil, eulogizing him in one mean sentence.

“Erik Logan is no longer with the company.”

Back to yesterday’s arousing video, though, and its seemingly out of nowhere-ness, might it have been the first salvo in a just-over-the-horizon civil war?

For, just over the weekend, it was reported that the World Surf League was moving its vast Santa Monica offices in a sure sign of financial distress. The property offered for purchase or lease. Further reporting for the AI enhanced Surfer revealed that the World Surf League was not self-immolating, yet, but moving to “refurbished” offices in the South Bay.

(Ominous music).

The same South Bay made famous by Erik Logan.

When the Oklahoman with the magical wetsuit of armor first crashed onto our scene it was with a paddle in hand, gently sweeping Manhattan Beach’s seas. The South Bay, also home to El Segundo, Torrance, Hermosa and Redondo, has no good waves and wild women patrolling the beach with knives, but Logan made it his own, branding it, living it, loving it.

The World Surf League’s move a direct assault.

Opie’s aforementioned video, a rallying cry for enlistment.

Will you fight at Brother’s Burritos? Two Guns Espresso? Rock ‘N Fish?

On the shore of El Porto?

But whose banner will you carry?

Me?

This one.

This means war.

One day, we will gather our children around our feet, order them to sit and begin to speak using our most serious baritones. “Children,” we will say, “it is time to learn about the great surf industry that was once fruitful and bold, about fierce brands like Quiksilver, Billabong, Volcom and Hurley…”

The children will likely interrupt at this point and ask, “Beard oil companies?”

“No!” we will roar in response.

“Not beard oil companies!” but then will have to correct ourselves. “Yes, they are beard oil companies today but they were not always such. They once produced t-shirts and trunks that would be desired and sponsor teams of professional surfers who would wear the logo with pride and belong to it.”

The children, still confused, will ask, “They belonged to beard oil companies?”

And we will, likely, give up.

But it is true, there was a time when the brands meant something, their surfers were identified and poaching one was a direct affront.

Thankfully, we have surfboard shapers carrying the mantle and look, a major coup just announced as Channel Islands has poached Hawaiian stud Barron Mamiya from rival Sharp Eye.

Ooooeee.

But what do you think the mood is San Diego, where Sharp Eye calls home? Revenge being plotted? Fear that small wave world champion Filipe Toledo might be next? Landing with Mayhem?

What about the mood in Ventura, where Channel Islands calls home? Much toasting but also surveying the landscape? Who might be next to bring over to the tri-hexagon?

Exciting days, in any case.

"The blood was squirting, which means it's arterial..."

As surfers, as seafaring adventurers, we are well aware of the dangers we face every time we step foot in the vast ocean. From sharks to stingrays, extra chilly temperatures to sunburn, trouble lurks everywhere to make no mention of the surfboard itself. The fiberglass and foam missile, either Patriot or SCUD (longboard), is the vehicle for fun, certainly, but get out of line and wham-o. Right in the kisser.

Or worse.

And let us travel to San Diego’s Pacific Beach where a 22-year-old was miraculously saved after slicing her femoral artery with the nasty fin of her surfboard.

“I remember coming up from the water, and then within five seconds, I felt the excruciating pain,” Allie Brieghner told San Diego’s NBC affiliate.

Within 20 seconds, she passed out.

Her friend, Alec Maddox, thankfully nearby saw she was in trouble.

“The blood was squirting, which means it’s arterial, so I had to get her out of the water as fast as I could.”

The brave man carried her to the beach and fashioned a tourniquet from leashes which he cranked down tight with a stick.

“Somebody nearby found me the surf leash, and they detached it from the surfboard, so I just wrapped it around her leg a couple of times and made a little loop because you need to put a stick through this so you can crank it, so I had somebody go grab me a stick as well,” Maddox said, having learned the trick in the Marine Corps.

Ms. Brieghner was rushed to a local hospital where doctors removed her femoral artery and stapled it back together before re-inserting it into her leg.

“If there’s anything that anyone can take from this, it is to be more aware of the board you have and the fins because it was a freak accident. If they were more like a rubber fin, I don’t think it would have severed my femoral artery or cut through as much,” she said at the end.

Food for thought.