Kelly Slater (insert) knows everything about the Lexus Pipe Pro.
Kelly Slater (insert) knows everything about the Lexus Pipe Pro.

Surf great Kelly Slater predicts “triple overhead” bombs for opening day of Lexus Pipe Pro!

Chas Smith

By Chas Smith

Welcome to the 2024 World Surf League.

When Kelly Slater speaks, surf fans around the world instantly bend their ear. The eleven-time world champion, knows a thing or two about a thing or two, as they say, including but not limited to infectious diseases, cryptocurrencies and wave forecasts.

It is no surprise, then, that the World Surf League asked the greatest surfer of all-time (male) to give his read on the officially open Lexus Pipe Pro. The waiting period began just hours ago, though Kona winds are ravishing Pipeline’s iconic teepees.

Slater says don’t worry, though, Wednesday should deliver double to triple overhead bombs and clean conditions. Thursday might be ok too and then next week will also provide the sort of conditions professional surfing at its highest level needs. Throbbing conditions that separate the worthy from Filipe Toledo.

Exciting.

But did your heart skip a beat, this morning, after realizing professional surfing is back? Yago Dora, Matthew McGillivray and Kade Matson paddle the first heat. Slater will go against Jack Robinson and Rio Waida in the third. On the women’s side, Tyler Wright kicks off her 2024 campaign in the first heat against Bettylou Sakura Johnson and Luana Silva. The just-retired and greatest surfer of all-time (all categories) Carissa Moore appears in heat two.

Who you got?

Surfive here if you feel bold.

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Rip Curl ambassador Mick Fanning (pictured) no stranger to controversy.
Rip Curl ambassador Mick Fanning (pictured) no stranger to controversy.

Worldwide fame reaches relatively obscure surf brand as “Boycott Rip Curl” trends on Twitter!

Chas Smith

By Chas Smith

No such thing as bad publicity.

The surf industry, as you know well, has fallen upon extraordinarily hard times. Once-proud brands like Quiksilver, Billabong, RVCA, Hurley etc. have been scooped up by large management companies, their logos slapped on everything from toilet plungers to beard oil companies and dumped into big box retailers. Professional surfers, formerly employed to surf professionally, are joining bread lines as their contracts are shredded.

Metaphorical death and real destruction everywhere.

But a bright spot?

Torquay’s Rip Curl, not previously a household name, has reached international fame even trending on Twitter.

Yes, #BoycottRipCurl has leaped past the numerical mark of roughly 7000 tweets required for “trending” with over 18,000, and counting, the wetsuit and soft good manufacturer’s name in lights.

Huzzah!

The reason for the spike is, of course, due Rip Curl’s Instagram post celebrating trans surf star Sasha Jane Lowerson that read:

Meet Sasha – a West Australian waterwoman who loves the freedom found in surfing, disconnecting from the mainstream, and the feeling of dancing on constantly changing waves. When we were adventuring through Western Australia recently, we were keen to know what The Search means to the surfers who crossed our paths. These surfers live on a wild stretch of coast where there’s always a new wave or campsite just a little further down the road or off the beaten track. It’s a state of mind, always being ready to try something new, curious to seek out knowledge and learn the rules – and break them.⁠

Lowerson was pictured wearing a cute Rip Curl bathing suit.

Backlash to the message was instant, especially in light of Bethany Hamilton’s recent departure from the brand over her views on transgender surfers competing in the women’s division.

As the pile on continued, Rip Curl quietly disappeared the missive which is, honestly, curious. The Rip Curl marketing team certainly would have been aware of the Bud Light brouhaha alongside other “Go woke, go broke,” actions against progressive companies. The cost counted before hand?

Apparently no but now what? Will Rip Curl’s C-Suite team hunker down in the flashbomb shelter and wait for the storm to pass? Apologize publicly? Double down?

Whatever the decision, Rip Curl being on the tip of tongues from Denver to Dubuque has to be good, right? No such thing as bad publicity, yes?

Or will the weight of outrage crush the house that Mick Fanning built?

More as the story develops.

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Riley Gaines and Taylor Silverman slam Rip Curl for stance on T-Girls.
Riley Gaines and Taylor Silverman lead attack on pro T-Girl surf co Rip Curl.

Rip Curl removes post celebrating trans-surfer after boycott and pushback from US athletes Riley Gaines and Taylor Silverman

Derek Rielly

By Derek Rielly

"This won’t undo the damage they have already done to their company. It will only make trans activists hate them too."

Three days ago, a post on the Instagram page of Rip Curl Women celebrating the pioneering trans-surfer Sasha Jane Lowerson went viral after anti-trans-women-in-sport activist Riley Gaines slammed Rip Curl as “crazzzyyyy”.

“You mean to tell me that Rip Curl dropped Bethany Hamilton for opposing men surfing in the women’s league then picked up male surfer who surfs in the women’s league as a women’s ambassador?” wrote Gaines.

Rip Curl deletes trans psot
Rip Curl deletes post celebrating Sasha Jane Lowerson, inspirational T-Girl.

Rip Curl and Bethany parted ways, it’s believed, because of Bethany’s opposition to trans-women in gals’ sports. 

Calls to boycott Rip Curl grew from a murmur to a raw.

Skateboarder Taylor Silverman joined in the chorus, unsparing in her criticism of the New Zealand-owned company.

“According to Rip Curl this man is a ‘waterwoman’…reality is he’s just a mentally ill man making a complete mockery of actual women and “The “community” is so supportive that Rip Curl had to disable the comments!”

For context, Sasha Jane Lowerson is a talented strawberry blonde goofyfooter of middle age who created history last year when she added the Western Australian women’s longboard trophy to her mantlepiece where it sits alongside the trophy she won when she was still Ryan Egan. 

“Trans-girls aren’t going to take over the world, we just want to be included, we’re humans too,” Lowerson says. “I’ve been hiding in this male shell up… for 42 years. To still be made to be that guy that I’m not, it’s shattering,”

Very inspirational and pioneering and very much on the prevailing progressive zeitgeist.

Rip Curl had joined two other Australian swimsuit brands in a pivot to the queer market describing their trans ambassador as, “West Australian waterwoman who loves the freedom found in surfing, disconnecting from the mainstream, and the feeling of dancing on constantly changing waves… It’s a state of mind, always being ready to try something new, curious to seek out knowledge and learn the rules – and break them.⁠”

After the post was disappeared late last night skater Taylor Silverman delivered her coup de grace,

“This won’t undo the damage they have already done to their company. It will only make trans activists hate them too.”

Rip Curl can’t win for losing, no?

Meanwhile, for the first time I can remember, Rip Curl are selling their suits, which are some of the best in the game, at wildly discounted prices.

Flash bombs at half price? Those buttery two mm short-sleeved steamers at two hundred Australian shekels?

To hell with the boycott, buy here! 

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Chas Smith says Jaden Smith is everything surfing needs right now.

Jaden Smith is the future of professional surfing!

Derek Rielly

By Derek Rielly

Candy haired son of cuck Will Smith new face of surf!

In the latest episode of Chas Smith Hates Surfing, the author of Cocaine and Surfing and Welcome to Paradise, Now Beat it Haole Kook, posits on the new-look world of professional surfing, which includes candy haired minstrel Jaden Smith.

(Despite same last name and similarity in appearance, no relation.)

In a story published over the weekend on BeachGrit, and featuring footage of Jaden Smith, Chas Smith wrote:

There was once a time, and not long ago, when parents who observed a flash of water talent in their young charges could easily imagine a gilded future just over the horizon. Watching, say, their little seven or eight year snag a pocket barrel, maybe even little air revo, and boom. A straight path to sponsorship riches. Incentives. Film and travel budgets.

Alas, that time not long ago but, also, an entirely different era. The surf fan has observed top-level World Surf League Championship Tour talent showing up to events with sticker-less noses. She has watched as the last remaining mega-brand, Authentic Brands Group x Bluestar Alliance, flexed its monopoly muscles and shredded contracts.

Things are, indeed, as bleak as they appear for our heroes and heroines. An industry insider with direct working knowledge of such matters informed me, yesterday, “I am seeing good money is now 25% of what it was for the elite of elite. Everyone else it’s zero.”

Bleak? No!

Jaden Smith, the progeny of fist-swinging cuck Will Smith, will save pro surfing!

Watch, listen, agree!

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Boatload of new Americans arrive at La Jolla
The newly arrived Americans-to-be landed at La Jolla, quickly scattering into the gorgeous and very privileged town.

Billionaire enclave La Jolla welcomes beach arrival of Illegal immigrants near Alicia Keys’ $21 mill Razor House!

Derek Rielly

By Derek Rielly

In a bold and inspiring daytime landing, the new Americans beached their panga boat and swiftly headed for the hills and new lives in the USA.

Pretty La Jolla, that surf-rich jewel a dozen miles north of downtown San Diego, was privileged to welcome a boatload of new Americans a couple of nights back.

In what has become the new norm in a country that has swung open its golden door to the huddled masses, the wretched refuse, the new Americans made their beach landing near the $21 mill La Jolla home of Alice Keys, the chanteuse famous for Empire State of Mind.

Designed by the noted American architect Wallace E. Cunningham, the La Jolla Razor House, as it is called, was the inspiration for Tony Stark’s cliffside joint in the Iron Man franchise.

“Every wall in this house, every bit of it, is sculpture,” Cunningham told AD. “These beautiful S shapes, these chevrons going down the hillside, curvatures flying in space over your head. It’s more akin to sculpture than architecture.  It is incredibly important to me. It’s dearest to my heart.”

Anyway, in a bold daytime landing, the new Americans beached their panga boat and swiftly headed for the hills and their new lives in the United States. Very inspiring.

You’ll recall a few months back when Malibu was put into a state of euphoria after a boat filled with twenty-five New Americans disembarked on its privileged shores.

The twenty-five new Americans scattered once they hit the golden sands of what used to be Chumash lands, and just under the $100-million clifftop compound of chanteuse Barbara Streisand.

The location of the Malibu landing was significant.

In 2019, Streisand, who is a long-time donor to the now-disgraced Democratic Party, criticised the ghastly Donald Trump for his plans to build a border wall.

“Trump only cares about this ‘wall’ in order to build a monument to himself. Just like the bankrupt ‘Trump’ buildings, the nation cannot afford to pay for his ego – not financially, not morally,” Streisand wrote on X.

And to Vogue magazine,

“Unless you’re an American Indian, you know, you’re a child or grandchild or great-grandchild of immigrants, even the president,,” she said.

Streisand’s house at 6838 Zumirez Drive in Malibu ain’t that far from Paradise Cove, the upscale trailer park famous for its celebrity residents including iconic surf writer Sam George.

(Built in the nineteen-fifties on eighty-five acres of classic Californian beachfront land, the park became the go-to for ocean-lovers who wanted affordable seclusion amid the craziness of Los Angeles.)

American readers, particularly those from La Jolla and Malibu, does this golden new era of unfettered immigration fill you with pride or do you find a little off-putting?

And, non-American readers, what is your view from afar?

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Photo: Steve Sherman/@tsherms
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