Interesting side note: Wearstler used her cash from the Playboy shoot to set up her design biz. | Photo: The Ingalls/Synchronicity

Playboy pinup turned celebrity decorator Kelly Wearstler reimagines 1953 Malibu Beach Shack, untouched for thirty years, for family of “avid surfers”

"It was an architectural gem – a hidden surf shack."

If you’re into quasi-kitsch mid-century interiors as fashioned by glamorous Amazonian women with a history of posing nude, you’ll know and adore the work of LA-via-Myrtle Beach’s Kelly Wearstler (pronounced Worst-ler).

Ms Wearstler, who is fifty-six in a few weeks, flew onto my radar in 1999 when she fitted out the relaunched Avalon Hotel in a sea of pretty greens and blues and banquette seating and mid-century pendants, transforming what was once a shadow haunted vestibule filled with the eyes-stinging smog of disinfectant.

The New York Times was similarly enchanted writing, “Her playful, elegantly over-the-top designs for the Avalon Beverly Hills changed the look of boutique hotels around the world.”

I gave my pretty white dick some Christmas sport in those rooms shortly after its doors were reopened. Glory days etc.

Now, and as celebrated in her latest book Synchronicity, the former Playboy playmate (“You can ask any of my friends. I have no problem with my sexuality. I’m completely uninhibited. Everybody has a body, and I want to show mine. God blessed me,” she says) has given an old surf shack on the Malibu beachfront her magical touch.

The joint had been on the market for years when Wearstler rented it so she and her fam could tough out the pandemic months. A pal had stayed at another place three doors and she was thrilled by how it hadn’t been gussied up by zeitgeist-y renovations.

So she tracked down the owner, asked if she could rent it and he said, hell yeah, long as I can show the place to potential buyers.

Smart guy.

Wearstler made the place look a million bucks and within a few months had a buyer – a Silicon Valley surfer who has since kept the place relatively original.

Photography by The Ingalls.

“You could have built a house three times the size of this one, which is what everybody unfortunately does on Broad Beach. But he’s not tearing the house down, just fixing up the original bathrooms and doing a little more landscaping. That was amazing to hear,” Wearstler told Wallpaper.

“It was about bringing together old spirit and new spirit to create unique experiences that make every room memorable.”

Check out Wearstler’s book here, nude pics can be bought here.

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The Inertia's editorial voice, described as paternalism mixed with dismissiveness ladled with passive-aggression and served warm with the emotional seasoning of a college campus safe space genre, is employed to accidentally clown all manner of surf-adjacent business, from beach wagons to the correct pronunciation of Teahupo'o, was, yesterday, formed into a weapon and used to injure the beloved actress Jennifer Lawrence.

Scandal-prone adult learner site The Inertia savages new Jennifer Lawrence movie for “missing the mark completely in depicting surfing anywhere close to realistically”

The "definitive voice of surfing" goes attack mode.

There are few things as reliable, on this ever-changing earth, than The Inertia gettin’ goofy. Founded in 2010 by Virginia Beach local Zach Weisberg who “was inspired to launch what would become the template for the vulnerable adult learner tsunami following a talk by the Huff Post’s Arianna Huffington in 2010,” the “definitive voice of surf and the outdoors” has risen to the very peak of unintentional parody.

The Inertia’s editorial voice, described as paternalism mixed with dismissiveness ladled with passive-aggression and served warm with the emotional seasoning of a college campus safe space genre, is employed to accidentally clown all manner of surf-adjacent business, from beach wagons to the correct pronunciation of Teahupo’o, was, yesterday, formed into a weapon and used to injure the beloved actress Jennifer Lawrence.

You will certainly recall the Academy Award winner from star turns in Silver Linings Playbook, The Hunger Games and American Hustle to name but a very few. Her new picture, No Hard Feelings, is set in the seaside town of Montauk and follows Maddie, played by Lawrence, who “on the brink of losing her home, finds an intriguing job listing: helicopter parents looking for someone to bring their introverted 19-year-old son out of his shell before college. She has one summer to make him a man or die trying.”

The Inertia, anyhow, lights right in, savaging the film for its inaccurate portrayal of the surf lifestyle.

Surfers and surfboards are placed strategically from scene to scene. Brand new, unwaxed, leashless shortboards are shown stored in the bright sunlight in a board rack on the front lawn of Maddie’s house. Does Maddie surf? She never talks about surfing, drives a sedan without board racks, and beelines it to a flat beach when she takes Percy (her love interest) to the ocean.

Even worse, one of the main characters, Jim, is supposed to be a surfer, played by believably surfy-looking Scott MacArthur. Points given that he drives a van, but points redacted for there being nothing in the van. No wax, no leashes, no wetsuits, no tubs to soak booties… nothing.

The piece is titled Why Can’t Hollywood Get Surfing Right?” which echoes surf Buddha, and The Inertia contributor, Sam George’s declarative film Hollywood Don’t Surf.

Back to the issues at hand. Are sedans with board racks and vans with bootie-soaking tubs what truly marks a surfer?

What about a really kitted out beach wagon?

What does “surfer” look like to you?

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Photo: @nikolaitildanmark Instagram
Photo: @nikolaitildanmark Instagram

Denmark’s Count Nikolai uses surfing as cudgel to bash royal cousin on birthday amidst title dispute!

"A brash young rebel inspires a fight for freedom."

Our surfing is many different things to many different people. Therapy, an escape, form of exercise, meditative, a cheap thrill, bit of masochism etc. For Count Nikolai of Denmark, it is a weapon of social war. A cudgel that can be lifted high in the air and brought screaming down into the face of an adversary.

But certainly you are aware of the title fight brewing in the happiest country on earth. Yes, Denmark, and all it’s various perfections, its Nomas and Tivolis, also has a royal row that makes England’s Prince Harry business seem positively genteel. Last September, you already know, Queen Margrethe II decided to strip the titles of four of her grandchildren. Her youngest son, Prince Joachim, had his four children, Prince Nikolai, Prince Felix, Prence Henrik and Princess Athena lose royal status and, instead, relegated to being mere Counts and Countesses.

Ouch.

The move was done in the name of modernization, though Princess Marie, Prince Joachim’s second wife, angrily spat, “There’s nothing modern about hurting children’s feelings.”

While that notion may be disputed, the whole nasty business has simmered and, yesterday, broke back into the open when instead of attending his royal cousin Prince Christian’s 18th birthday party, Count Nikolai, 24, went surfing in Australia.

Boom.

The handsome young man, a model studying at Sydney’s University of Technology, posted a photo of the affair to his Instagram account and received much praise.

While the press, including surfing’s “bad dog” BeachGrit, was quick to see the move as a heavy swipe, Count Nikolai later took to Instagram to wish his cousin a happy day, writing, “Funny how time flies… Happy 18th Christian! Hope everyone celebrates you just as you deserve.”

Nice.

“Celebrate you just as you deserve” has a bit of a sting, though, no?

In any case, Prince Christian’s birthday in Copenhagen was very well attended. According to the Daily Mail:

The lavish event saw royals from across Europe travel to Christianborg Palace in Copenhagen where striking image shared on Instagram shows the future heads of monarchies from around Europe posing for a rare photograph together.

Dressed to the nines, future Queens Princess Estelle of Sweden, 11, Princess Ingrid Alexandra of Norway, 19, Princess Catharina-Amalia of the Netherlands, 19, and Princess Elisabeth of Belgium, 21, smiled for the camera next to Christian.

The aforementioned Prince Joachim and his aggrieved wife Princess Marie even made an appearance. Royal watchers took it to be an olive branch in the wake of some ugliness.

What do you think?

Peace in our time or further victims over the horizon?

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It won’t be a perfect process. I’ll get mollywhopped on a reef, lose my board or, knowing my luck, see my prick turn all red and pink after a jellyfish sting. I’m sure I’ll unintentionally fuck up decorum and etiquette at some point too.

Real life: “I’ve never surfed before but I think I probably should”

No one would see me crossing the street and think, “Woah, that dude definitely shreds.” Regardless, I still think surfing is for me.

I’m moving to California and I’m gonna surf. 

Never done it before. Haven’t even taken a lesson. There’s no part of me that thinks I’ll be particularly good at it either.

Looking at me, you’d probably assume I’d be rather bad at the beach. Bald, pasty white, and sporting a ginger-tinged beard.  I’m latino by blood, but for some odd reason, my appearance screams Celtic. Definitely not Coastal.

And after two years of beating my body to shit with bar food and budget beer while grieving a death, my abdomen looks like a half-roasted marshmallow that’s been dropped and kicked around on the floor– shapeless, white, and lumpy, with odd hairs sprouting from strange places.

There are abs under there. I’m working on it.

No one would see me crossing the street and think, “Woah, that dude definitely shreds.”

Regardless, I still think surfing is for me.

Ballsy logic from a guy who’s never achieved a true suntan and hasn’t even made an attempt at standing up on a board before. But I’d never skied or guided whitewater rafting trips before I moved West either. Flying blind into an unfamiliar sport is kinda my thing.

Water, whether frozen or fluid, has been the one consistent throughline of my life since I ditched New York City. In brief bursts while paddling or skiing, my brain goes silent.

But, I have to admit that, in the beginning, I got into mountain sports partly because I wanted to be seen. Get good fast, get cool pics, get acknowledged and announce my arrival on the scene. Maybe one day become the whitewater Jimmy Chin. Young, insecure and desperate to prove something after walking away from life as an office grundle, I wanted it known that I was really doing it.

That faded with time on river and snow. Eventually, it was mostly the action itself that provided satisfaction. I still posted outrageous shit about how incredible I was with paddle or pole in hand, but the intention was just to entertain or aggravate my friends. Attempts at accelerating my improvement eventually became about making myself happy.

But I don’t want any of that with surfing. No goals, no competitive urges, no hard-ons for recognition– externally or internally.

The way I envision it, I’d like to get in the water before the sun’s finished putting on her makeup and stepped out the door. The time of day when (I assume) the only other people out there will be surfers so seasoned, they’ll take one look at me bumbling my way through the waves, and not risk conversing with a kook.

That’s what I enjoy most about my imagined intro to surfing, and why I want it– the removal of room for ego, the doing it alone and the quiet.

A lot of shit annoys me. Restaurants that serve ranch instead of bleu cheese with buffalo wings. Vineyard Vines shirts. Sanctimonious Instagram posts. The tone that gossipy booster club moms talk in. Clammy hands. Italian subs with no prosciutto or roasted peps. Groups that walk shoulder-to-shoulder at a snail’s pace down the sidewalk on Saturday afternoon.

That last one chaps my ass way more than all the others. Nothing makes me boil more than when others affect the pace at which I can move or engage with the world as I desire. Somewhat irrational, I know. Like my abs, I’m working on it.

But that’s another reason why I want to surf. I’m ignorant to the sport, but not ignorant enough to think that every day the beach will be empty for my pleasure. That’s not what I’m getting at.

What makes my peaches swell, is the idea of an activity that’s powered by the individual from start to finish. I’ll have to step around umbrellas and kids digging holes if I’m not up early enough, but there won’t be any serpentine gondola lines to wait on, or forced, close-quarters conversation on a chair lift. No dependence on paddle partners or agonizing waits as my half-brained friends orchestrate a shuttle drop at the take out.

Drive to the beach, put the board under my arm, walk and commune with the water on my time.

I’m under no delusion that I’ll one day be a great surfer. Nor do I want to be. I just want to do it, be pleasant to others as I learn, lug the board back to my truck, then fuck off with the rest of my day still intact, no thought of status or progress on the mind.

I don’t look like a surfer nor do I know dick about how things in that world really work. But, from my limited research, I’ve surmised that I should avoid being seen with a Wavestorm in my possession, and that it’s a subculture that runs on respect. I like that.

Understanding how to operate in that sort of space is how I made it in the whitewater world. I never became a master, all-star river guide. But I did turn myself into a solid Class IV boater, because in the early stages, the silverbacks saw someone who was willing to listen and always defer to them. I’ll try to do the same thing surfing, though again, without any goals in mind.

I just wanna learn to stand up and stay there for a couple seconds, man.

It won’t be a perfect process. I’ll get mollywhopped on a reef, lose my board or, knowing my luck, see my prick turn all red and pink after a jellyfish sting. I’m sure I’ll unintentionally fuck up decorum and etiquette at some point too.

Local’s will get pissed at me in the lineup some day (that’s what they call it, right?). But, I’m ok with that.

I’m a dirtbag river guide, a ski town bartender and a Cuban refugee’s kid. I’ve always been good at getting punched in the face.

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Beckham at Tavi.

Unearthed footage of David Beckham surfing Tavarua re-emerges as well as the shock reason it was buried for twenty years!

“My arms are aching," says Becks' former assistant Rebecca Loos. "It lasts for about 10 minutes, and he starts thrusting really hard and then I grip."

Lately, I’ve been muscling away the sooty clouds of sadness, those memories of loss etc that only come at night or creep into your head in the pre-dawn, with a Netflix series about the larger than life soccer player David Beckham. 

Beckham, who is forty-eight, is like a locomotive and indeed the television feels too small to contain his energy. Disappointing is the lack of energy dedicated by the filmmakers to cover his myriad carnal adventures with glamorous women whose lipstick is slashed across their mouths like iodine. 

Although denied by Beckham’s team, a man would have to be a monk not to risk his balls in the fire for the freaky rogue’s gallery of groupie sexpots that followed the wildly handsome Becks around. 

One, Becks’ former assistant Rebecca Loos, would later jerk a pig off in a reality TV show stunt.

“My arms are aching,” she complains. “It lasts for about 10 minutes, and he starts thrusting really hard and then I grip.”

(Tell me about it, girlfriend!)

Now, it can be revealed that Beckham starred as a surfer alongside fellow soccer superstars Roberto Carlos, Thierry Henry,  Ronaldinho, Raul Gonzales, Fernando Torres and Rafael Van Der Vaart in a long-disappeared Pepsi advertisement, the brand’s ultra-budget marketing campaign for 2005.

The surfing was shot on Tavarua in Fiji and a ten-foot high “water wall” behind a movable platform was built at a private airport near Madrid where the players filmed their parts. 

As good as the ad was, “best sports advertisement of all time”, Pepsi pulled it after a few weeks following the 2004 tsunami that disappeared a quarter-mill souls in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand.

(Editor’s note: regular readers might denote this as one of those “slow news days” stories which indeed it is.)

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