Albee Layer almost dies on Maui
Albee Layer writes, "Idk how I woulda handled another set into the rocks. Ended up puking up some salt water for a while in the channel and some whiplash and other soreness…"

Hawaiian Albee Layer almost dies in New Year’s Eve tow surfing accident!

"Ended up puking up some salt water for a while in the channel and some whiplash…"

Albee Layer is a surfer who will dance a rigadoon in waves four feet or forty. Little surfboards and monstrous guns.

But even big-waver Albee Layer, who is thirty two, pronouns He, Him, Hottie, can find himself in strife as was evidenced by his brush with death on New Year’s Eve. 

Albee Layer takes up the story.

Had to give it a go yesterday. Couldn’t find anyone to come out (they were elsewhere scoring) but @annie__starr was there to watch over me. 

Went on the third wave of the set cause no sets had more than three waves till this one of course. Annie was right there ready for the pick up before the following wave but I waved her off to protect the ski and figured wave number 4 HAD to be the last wave of the set, in retrospect not my best call. 

After two more waves she was there again but we were so close to the cliff and I saw the next wave closing out into the worst area ever so I waved her off again (my bad again) then she was able to swing back in and get me. Right after we were back outside more waves came and idk how I woulda handled another set into the rocks. Ended up puking up some salt water for a while in the channel and some whiplash and other soreness but all in all pretty much fine. 

Very thankful all we lost was a board and a hat. Very thankful you were there @annie__starr you are a fucken insane ski driver.

 

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A post shared by Albee Layer (@live.fast.die.old)

The footage is wild.

Albee Layer’s gal Annie Reickert, noted for her bravado in Maui’s big waves, comes in to scoop him out of the impact zone. Albee waves her off multiple times. 

Not everyone was thrilled by the bravura performance, howevs.

Four-time runner-up to the world surfing title, Cheyne Horan writes,

“Wouldn’t be my partner , came in and missed with the sled twice , consequences could have been serious… lucky this time.”

Albee Layer ain’t afraid to put it in on the line, as they say. In 2019, he suffered a brain injury after wiping out on a thirty-footer at Jaws.

Four years later, Albee Layer was still feeling its effects.

“A lot of people have told me how stoked they are to see me back to normal since the concussion in 2019. I really appreciate that but the truth is I’m not and never will be whatever I considered normal before. It’s been over 3 years. I’ve been through lots of treatments, tried prescribed meds, meditating, therapy, fucken spirit quests you name it. I’m still a bit different. I can be shorter to anger (directed at myself), shorter to negative assumptions (very anxious), and even worse than I was at social interaction, which lead to a lot of self medicating that made things much worse.”

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Beloved Australian TV presenter Dave Hughes suffers tragic shoulder dislocation while surfing the Gold Coast on New Year’s Day

"9 out of 10 level nerve damage."

We, here at BeachGrit, have regular conversations surrounding the abject danger of this surfing life and I don’t image that will change now that its 2024. It is important, a duty even, to inform adult learners of the various and sundry ways they can damage both their bodies and psyches whilst out for a playful dance upon the waves.

There are:

Surly locals, beginners on longboards, “experts” on longboards, SUP pilots, cranky sea otters, side eye when the wave of the set is blown, rock jumps, reef, sharp surfboard fins, three or more Brazilians, rip tides, sneaker sets, willful under-called “swell events,” flying fish, to not even mention the obvious ones like shoulder dislocations.

Well, the beloved Australian television presenter Dave “Hughesy” Hughes, suffered the aforementioned pop while enjoying Australia’s glorious summer. Taking to Instagram, the 53-year-old penned, “Happy New Year. Had my least sober NYE in 30+ years. Green whistle came after two hours of worst pain of my life, plus morphine and the rest of them. Shoulder dislocation while surfing. 9 out of 10 level nerve damage. Shout out to wife, Surfers Paradise SLSC, and Gold Coast medical professionals for their much needed help! Will be in a sling for a while, not sure when my next right-handed high five will be.”

The “Green Whistle” is street jargon for the painkiller Penthrox.

But in any case, I, like Hughesy, have had my arm violently ripped from socket many times while surfing. Tens upon tens upon tens. The latest, at Surf Ranch some many years ago. Unlike the Australian funnyman, I never whined or whinged or demanded morphine. I’d just tug on it until it slid back in and that was that. I will say, though, after that Surf Ranch rip, wherein I hit the bottom with shoulder, I became so furious that I went to the doctor who x-rayed etc. and then performed the Latarjet procedure which I preferred because it sounded French.

Rehab took forever, my shoulder is still cranky and weird but it has not popped out since.

Recommend 10 out of 10.

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Candace Owens and Ricky Basnett

Conservative firebrand Candace Owens dumped over “surfer-like” anti-Israel stance

Genocide for beginners!

The political pundit Candace Owens, a firebrand adored by the right because…lookee here she black and conservative…has been dumped over her comments on Israel described as being “surfer-like” in their naivety and ignorance.

Candace Owens first revealed a stunning ignorance when she claimed Muslims were being held under slave-like conditions in Jerusalem. 

“When I’m walking through Jerusalem, and you see, and they say ‘these are the Muslim quarters, this is where the Muslims are allowed to live,’ that doesn’t feel like a bastion of freedom to me,” Candace Owens said on her own podcast. 

It took Candace Owens’ guest, Jewish comic Ami Kozak, to explain that there were four-quarters in the Old City, Armenian, Christian, Jewish and Muslim, and that the Muslim part of town wasn’t for enslavement. 

As your ol pal DR can attest, the Muslim quarter is abuzz with mercantile pursuits with many opportunities for gift-giving including toy machine guns adorned with photos of tween gal jihadists and polyester outfits for women covering crown to ankle bone and available in olive and black. 

Happy Muslim tweens pose with machine guns
Happy tweens pose with machine guns in Jerusalem’s buzzy Muslim quarter. Photo: DR

Anyway, you’ll remember when October 7 came around the surf community, with the notable and obvious exception of Shaun Tomson, was quick to hoist the Hamas standard, celebrating their brave resistance. 

Shortly after Hamas gunmen put bullets into hundreds of unarmed civilians in the Israeli towns bordering Gaza, including kids and their pets, and raped the hell out of the cute festival gals before executing ‘em, our own surf feminist and trans-in-sports-activist Lucy Small posted a series of stories about the conflict.

These included a reel  from Al Jazeera showing Hamas terrorists landing in Israel in their paragliders and about to murder hundreds with the caption, “Palestinians in Gaza made history as they escaped the world’s largest prison”. 

Yay!

Small explained the contradiction of a feminist supporting a religious fascist group that killed gays and subjugated women with, “The end of occupation may allow for healing. It is common in communities affected by armed violence, rates of domestic violence and violence against women are higher – it’s a tragic part of war.”

In another salvo, Small described Israel as being “at the nexus of colonisation, white supremacy, capitalism and (the) military industrial complex…”

And there was a blizzard of support for the South African surfer Ricky Basnett after he claimed Israel’s response to a medieval slaughter of its civilians by the Iranian-backed forces of its neighbour was genocide.

Basnett, who is a seven-time South African champion surfer and was a Championship Tour surfer in 2007 and 2008, followed a well-worn path of progressive surfers towing the line that every damn Israeli citizen got what they deserved.

But back to Candace Owens, who is as dumb as a pack of Queers for Palestine activists.

The Dave Horowitz group, which helped launch Candace Owens’ career, has officially cut ties in a statement titled, “Goodbye Candace.”

Six years ago, the David Horowitz Freedom Center invited the then little-known Candace Owens to its annual Restoration Weekend gathering of conservative movers and shakers.

“This really is the conference where everything started for me,” Candace later said. “I started my career, my political career on YouTube making just funny, satirical videos, and I got an email from David Horowitz inviting me to this conference, and let me just tell you what a big deal it was for me. I had no connections whatsoever.”

At this conference she met Charlie Kirk, and connected with his nationwide student organization Turning Point USA, and became a national figure.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center went on promoting Candace, honored her with an Annie Taylor Award for Courage in 2018, and hosted her at multiple events.

That’s why we are so disappointed in what she has become.

Back then she laid out an ambitious plan to “move the black vote 20 points by 2020”. It’s not clear what happened to that. Instead of liberating the black community, Candace began giving platforms to anti-Israel voices like Andrew Tate, a Muslim convert who said that “ISIS are the real Muslims because ISIS do exactly what the book says.”

The David Horowitz Freedom Center has previously criticized Candace’s promotion of Tate. But because of our history with Candace and our hope that she would pull out of this spiral, we did not make an issue of it.

The atrocities of October 7, the appearance of ignorant mobs in the U.S. chanting “Hitler was right” and supporting the Hamas terrorists, and Candace’s moral equivalence about these neo-Nazis have changed the stakes. We have decided to issue the present statement because of her recent promotion of Hamas’ genocidal lies.

For example, she has falsely compared Israel to the “segregated South.” This is the sort of ignorant ‘Apartheid State” slander that we expect from Black Lives Matter – and the Jew-killers of the Middle East.

When Candace implied that Israel was engaged in “genocide” for defending itself against the atrocities committed by Hamas, that’s the kind of genocidal lie we expect to hear from Hamas.

And when she suggested that to remove the Hamas auxiliary — Students for Justice in Palestine — from campuses would increase antisemitism, that’s what we expect to hear from the New York Times.

It’s not what we at the Freedom Center stand for and it’s not what the patriotic movement we have been helping to build over the last 35 years represents.

Instead of focusing on the meaningful activism and defense of American values that brought her to our attention, Candace Owens has become obsessed with her own fame, stirring up drama to compensate for a lack of real achievement. Her comments about Israel and her promotion of people like Andrew Tate are part of a pattern. Candace tackles a subject she knows nothing about, never bothers to learn anything about it, and then rides the backlash by playing the victim to generate more fame and money.

What a tragic misuse of talents.

In 2018, Candace tweeted that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was clueless. She’s “programmed to hate Israel and she has no idea why.” Now she has become AOC. Candace hates Israel for the same reason that AOC does. Fame. She proved that she knows as little about Israel as AOC does when she falsely claimed that the Muslim Quarter in Jerusalem is the only place that Muslims are allowed to live, thus “proving” the Hamas canard that Israel practices apartheid. It does not.

But this is not just about Israel. It’s about the survival of western civilization which the Islamic jihadis have been working to destroy. And it’s about the sad caricature that Candace has become, and the end of the promise we saw in her.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center wishes to express its deep disappointment with Candace’s ignorant, hateful and morally obtuse remarks about Israel and the Jews. But, of course, it’s not just about the Jews. The Jews are the canaries in the mine. The West is next and America above all.

It’s one thing to have been alive in the Thirties and not realize where the Nazis were heading. It is quite another to be alive during a 75-year campaign by Islamic jihadis to “finish the job that Hitler started,” and fail to stand against their open campaign to create a second Holocaust.

Here is the irony that the so-called pro-Palestinian left and Candace fail to grasp. For nearly two decades Israel and the West sent millions in humanitarian aid to Gaza, which was used instead by the Hamas government to build 300 miles of terrorist tunnels and turn Gaza into a military base, sending thousands of rockets into civilian areas in Israel – war crimes. Where were the protests in Gaza and on college campuses then? They were demonstrating in behalf of the war criminals.

We are in a civilizational war and Candace is either on the sidelines or actively supporting the crusade against the West.

We at the Freedom Center remain committed to finding and supporting the activists who will do the work, rather than chase the clicks, who will stand up for freedom and the sanctity of human life, who will refuse to compromise with evil and retreat into a delusional isolationism that says if the evil doesn’t affect me immediately, I don’t really care about its victims or the future that it intends.

Goodbye Candace, we will continue to support those who truly strive to raise up the movement for liberty and life, not selfishly tear it apart. 

Where do you fall in this terrific battle of ideas?

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Dog nearly gets swept away by large surf infuriating pet lovers!

"OMFG, this infuriates me...."

Now, at this point you would have to be living under a literal rock not to know that California spent the past week experiencing the “swell event” of the century. Big, serious, meaty waves crashed the shore from San Diego’s south all the way up to Oregon’s border. Single, double, triple overhead. An unrelenting pound.

Mammoth stuff.

Santa Cruz, just south of earthly paradise San Francisco, received plenty big though it was messier than down south. Not exactly Pipeline East. Whatever the case, one particular incident got people right mad. A pup, you see, wandered down to bomb spot and almost became one with Davey Jones. The action was captured on video and… watch.

@ksbw_8

DOG NEARLY SWEPT AWAY | A dog made a miraculous escape against high surf in Santa Cruz on Thursday. After being nearly washed out to sea, the dog was then thrown back onto the road by the surf.

♬ original sound – KSBW 8

As you can imagine, folk were furious that such a lovely creature would be left alone that close to the pump.

“OMFG, this infuriates me,” one viewer bemoaned. “So glad that baby is OK.”

“My heart literally stopped,” someone else declared.

“Do not take [dogs] near the ocean when it’s like this,” yet another added.

Imagine when they learn of the current and various wars killing children around the world.

Much more “infuriation” just over the horizon.

PETA.

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Maui surfer suffers fatal shark encounter while chasing super swell

A dark day.

Tragedy struck the Valley Isle of Maui, yesterday mid-morning, as a thirty-nine year old surfer died following what was dubbed a “shark encounter.” The unnamed man was out partaking in the glorious super swell event at Paia Bay, on the north shore, when hit. Ocean Safety Officers, per the report, picked him up in the water and transported him to shore where “life-saving measures were performed by first responder personnel until medic personnel arrived to transport the male to the Maui Memorial Medical Center for further treatment.”

He succumbed to his injuries at the hospital, foul play being ruled out.

The County of Maui closed Baldwin Beach and Lower Pa’ia Park while it investigates, posting signs to let visitors know of shark activity.

This is the eighth shark incident this year in Hawaii, the third in Maui. Earlier, a shark bit a surfboard, biting its tail right off and, another, bit an inflatable SUP.

Pa’ia Bay is a wonderfully scenic strip of white sand and turquoise water named after the town which is known for quaint restaurants and shops though a French tourist had her arm bitten off by shark while swimming a year ago.

The entire incident list is here.

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