"The death of the Pipe Masters is a tragedy beyond tragedy."
The surf journalist Chas Smith, an old flirt with expressive soft hands and a slightly gaunt northern European face, is well-known here and in the broader surf world, a writer who knows how to use minor characters to humiliate and belittle their protagonists.
When he stretches his delicate fingers in the air and clicks them like castanets, publishers come running.
You know the books, Welcome to Paradise Now Go to Hell, Cocaine and Surfing, Reports from Hell and Blessed Are the Bank Robbers.
As Daniel Duane wrote in Outside Magazine,
Cocaine + Surfing is a dazzling page-turner, highly-recommended beach reading, and absolutely the funniest book ever written about surfing. To hold those contradictions together in one’s mind, it helps to recognize that Smith’s literary models do not include serious works like my man Warshaw’s scholarly History of Surfing or William Finnegan’s Pulitzer-Prize winning Barbarian Days; A Surfing Life.
Cocaine + Surfing belongs, rather, to the honorable lemons-into-lemonade lineage that begins with Ross McElwee’s cult-classic 1986 documentary film Sherman’s March: A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love In the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation, in which McElwee tries to make a film about the civil war but ends up interviewing all his ex-girlfriends instead, and Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence, an unforgettable book about not writing a book about D. H. Lawrence.
All of which is meaningless except as a chip shot into BeachGrit’s new vlog series, Chas Smith Hates Surfing where, with an affectionate scorn for the sport, Smith turns his eye to the week’s events.
Cruel but essential.
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fuck I hate watching slow dumb video when I could read a text as quickly as I want.
…. Chas is officially the Doug Stanhope of the surfing world.
Who wants to read?
Wifi on planes. A miracle!
Where is that and should I be there on my next adventure?
With a quick glance over to “Welcome to Hell” sitting right next to Hyman Minsky’s “Stabilizing An Unstable Economy” on my desk I find myself torn as to whether I can listen to Chas while also currently listening in on a VC update call. Or should I wait until this evening while being properly primed with tequila and possibly shrooms to focus on the Chas VLOG. What should I do?
Nice view of Isla Vista
…not high enough? who packed my ‘chute?
Idk man, it’s been pretty entertaining to watch women have a real dig at pipe this morning.
Entertaining-ish. Exhibition events just don’t have that same zing. Remember when it was Gabriel and Italo, final, eight foot, title on the line?
Honestly though… who gives a fuck that it’s an exhibition event? Look at the womens’ final, they all deserved to be there and barring Erin Brooks were exactly who I’d expect to be in it. For the men if you can beat the Florences, Jamie, Mason, etc then you absolutely deserve to call yourself a Pipe Master. Hell, to me this format is a lot more entertaining and engaging than the traditional man-on-man heats.
The tauntaun on the bookshelf makes an immeasurably better host than David “Lee” Scales. Tauntaun is much less haunted by it’s fragile masculinity. Also it doesn’t speak.
Daniel Duane was a Val, that being said, contests are all ‘dust in the wind’—(‘crust in the wind’), and are basically just a tool by advertisers to push their products.
an ‘expression-session’ might be cool though’.
Is he really a VAL? Don’t he surf Ocean Beach etc?
Paused you Chas less than half way thru to go fill my mug full of egg nog. Ooooooeeee’E delicious!
Bob could change his name to SMITH. Unfortunately taken. Chuckled at the Toledo comment.. Maybe your next hate session could be on a comedy stage with all of us here on a zoom call cheering your hate live!
Chas Wolfe laying down the law much like his brother Tom and applying specific sarcasm to the crowd, including Leonard Bernstein, Bo Hurley, select Black Panthers…all in an effort to raise money for the WSL only to be denied ’cause the party hostess (Mrs. Leonard) used plastic straws…and served Roquefort cheese instead of Blue…(What are you drinking, Mr Wolfe?)
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. These are nice. Little Roquefort cheese
morsels rolled in crushed nuts. Very tasty. Very subtle. It’s the way
the dry sackiness of the nuts tiptoes up against the dour savor of the
cheese that is so nice, so subtle. Wonder what the Black Panthers eat
here on the hors d’oeuvre trail? Do the Panthers like little Roquefort
cheese morsels wrapped in crushed nuts this way, and asparagus tips in
mayonnaise dabs, and meatballs petites au Coq Hardi, all of
which are at this very moment being offered to them on gadrooned silver
platters by maids in black uniforms with hand-ironed white aprons … The
butler will bring them their drinks … Deny it if you wish to, but such
are the pensées métaphysiques that rush through one’s head on
these Radical Chic evenings just now in New York. For example, does that
huge Black Panther there in the hallway, the one shaking hands with
Felicia Bernstein herself, the one with the black leather coat and the
dark glasses and the absolutely unbelievable Afro, Fuzzy Wuzzy-scale in
fact—is he, a Black Panther, going on to pick up a Roquefort cheese
morsel rolled in crushed nuts from off the tray, from a maid in uniform,
and just pop it down the gullet without so much as missing a beat of
Felicia’s perfect Mary Astor voice… . (Radical Chic)
I count the numbers of times I use a hand iron a year on less than three fingers.. I can appreciate Wolfe’s angle non the less that world is more than an arms distance from here.
puzzled me AL…nice~
Radical Chic, one of the best. That and From Bauhaus to Our House.
cut to fin whales and beached suites…social service’s is gnarly
glass architecture v chopes reef v land management…gathering food. my ‘script offers that “these are dire enemies…”
I give it 3 weeks until he gives it up.
Ambitious! I say two!
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I also have a Tauntaun on the bookshelf!
“The surf journalist Chas Smith, an old fart…”
Fixed it for ya Dez.
“soon to be old fart..” At last night xmas party all the young employees started play beer pong for cash. This old dude took all their cash and prizes through the night arcing shots with a Curry’esque follow through.. Too Easy!
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Finally! An elliptical worthy vlog.
Watched one or two heats in pumping surf, there was no urgency at all in any of the competitors (my understanding is that the heats were non elimination heats). So you have a live reel where little is happening and the heats you watch are non consequential, either in terms of the competition itself, and also the world title. It’s a great way to castrate surfing’s greatest stallion!
It’s a beauty contest, with about as much credibility.
I predict the winner of the “Pipeline Masters” will be sponsored by Vans.
Do I get a prize?
Definitely doesn’t have world title consequences seeing as it’s not part of the world tour or the wozzle.
scoring: Florence Bros: 75.3, 69.0, 57.5…Bal Stack: 44.1…Russell Bierke 5.0…”And The Ladies Prefer Surfing Gums…”
There was no priority, so no back paddling up the reef and mind games. This format was refreshing and you gotta be weird or Brazilian to not enjoy it.
Meanwhile the euro pipe masters is on
https://quemaoclass.com/live