"I wonder if some of you get up every day and stir the milk into your coffee, thinking about what you can write that day that might humiliate the WSL."
A worse start to the 2024 World Surf League Championship Tour could not be imagined. Balky messaging beforehand led directly to a much-anticipated day one of the Lexus Pipe Pro. It was a moment that should have been applauded by those who toil on either side of the Wall of Positive Noise. Fine waves greeted the morning, crossed up and weird but crackling with the possibility of superlative.
As the sun set, though, only one storyline would dominate. The World Surf League’s twice, and sitting, champion, crowned at Lower Trestles both times due the introduction of “Finals Day,” was too afraid to paddle and got bumped out citing “food poisoning.
The Filipe Toledo drama metastasized in the days that followed, called off thanks to unfavorable conditions, with the world’s best small wave surfer becoming extremely defensive and surly, his surrogates more defensive and more surly, the World Surf League maintaining its patented head-in-the-sand silence.
After days upon days of “Toledo Wouldn’t Go” headlines, nature gifted a swell large enough, exciting enough, to bury the Brazilian lede.
Except.
While surf fans sat at home watching bombs on Surfline, reeling as Italo Ferreira, Ethan Ewing and more threaded the glories, the World Surf League hemmed, hawed, delayed then finally called the day off with the narrative of it being “too big” baking in.
Surf fans lit fire to the World Surf League’s social medias while its twin acting, though non-surfing, CEOs kept hush hush alongside lower downs.
The World Surf League’s owner, billionaire Dirk Ziff, has only been forward-facing once in his stewardship of professional surfing. Back in 2018, when being crowned co-Waterperson of the Year alongside his wife, Ziff took to the stage and delivered a memorable speech including the passage:
Some of you are here in this canyon. Journalists, and other influential voices who unload on social media. I wonder if some of you get up every day and stir the milk into your coffee, thinking about what you can write that day that might humiliate the WSL. It goes way beyond constructive criticism, which we all need and which the WSL frequently deserves, and into the realm of foul spirited attack, which I think we can all agree we have enough of right now in this country.
I have a message to the haters, and it is simple. Be tough. Call us out. Keep us honest. Tell us what we need to improve.
But don’t pretend you don’t know that when you go beyond constructive criticism and cynically try to rally negative sentiment towards the WSL, when you try to take us down, you are not just going after us. You are going after Kelly Slater. You are trying to take down Lakey Peterson. You are going after the dreams of Caroline Marks and Griffin Colapinto. You are undermining the hopes of every kid who lives with salt in their hair, dreaming of being a world champion one day.
And I ask you: Why? It seems pretty obvious that if the WSL keeps growing in popularity, and surfing takes its rightful place among the great and elite competitive sports, everyone connected with our sport, and certainly all the members of SIMA, will prosper, except maybe a few grumpy locals who have to deal with some new faces in the lineup. So…why not work together?
Imagine how he feels now.
Foul-spirited attacks to the moon.
I think we also must assume the “why not work together?” is officially off the table.
What a complete tool.
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I wish they’d just let you guys embed video so we can comment and watch in the same window. It’s just a nice little thing the WSL could do for the little piggies like me that lop up any slop the WSL puts out.
Ahhhhh well, cunts will be cunty. The wozzle are the surfing equivalent of business hippies.
All faux good vibes. Just cunts.
Xox
As long as has beer for his horses does anything else matter?
RIP Tobey Keith!
pre-empted The Johnny Carson Show/
All empires, even those built on waves, arc toward tyranny. And an authentic ripping back of every veil, an unmasking of every ‘wizard,’ a calling out of every naked emperor, is the only rational, indeed the necessary, response.
heya Chazzie,
maybe you are too young to remember of this, below,
so i, from real Venice+DogTown, can pass on to you, some Pipe history,
ok, kook?
“STEVE “BEAVER” MASSFELLER, 1983, Pipeline Masters, Hawaii
Looked like a routine wipeout on an 8-footer, but Beaver went head
first into the reef and was pulled out of the water unconscious some
minutes later; airlifted off the beach with massive skull fracture over
his right eye requiring a steel plate. To this day he has problems with
his sight, memory and speech. In ’87, however, he returned to the North
Shore to surf.”
heya Chazzie,
when wuz the 1st time you ever paddled out at The Pipeline?
2 “DogTown’z” boys, Andy + Travis, have died surfin’ that wave, f**k.
shove your h8’n up your arse, bro…
randy
All competitors have the option not to paddle for a wave or not paddle out all.. Remember the Fiji swell comp was called off? That swell event was outside 95% of competitors abilities. I don’t think yesterday exhibited those conditions. Yesterday was Pipe at size unlike today. Let them run and let the best man win! Cosell is rolling in his grave.
https://youtu.be/CsvvhqpKRQ…
right on, i can dig a difference of opinion, ok?
that said, would Howard Cosell have been clappin’ from his grave after “Beaver” ate sheee~it on that 8fter and wuz air~lifted with severe brain trauma after hittin’ that reef in competition? i doubt it…
by thee way,
Andy Chuda,
whom died at The Pipeline in March of 1989 wuz an experienced surfer too,
yet that wave took his life. he did not have to paddle out that mornin’ before the lifeguards were on duty, but he did. he is dead. he wuz #1 in an oooold Santa Monica surfin’ club that i ran, he died tryin’ to get a barrel, i saw his Natural Progression gun, his surfboard, as it lay next to his open coffin a few dayz l8er at his funeral, where i wuz thee last guest speaker, gnarly sheee~it.
Howard Cosell would not have been ‘stocked’, in my opinion,
like we, his friendz+Family were not, i’d betcha.
but hey, your opinion might differ though…
bye, randy
I wonder if those still working for the WSL get up every day and stir the milk into their coffee, thinking about what they can do that day that might further humiliate the WSL.
That’s me in a nut shell fuck the WSL all of it , every little tiny bit of it fuck it all and those that leach of it.
I have black coffee, for men. It’s when I stir the Lions Mane in that I think about all the shit I’m going to throw.
Xox
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
After yesterday I am in no mood for toxic positivity.
Where’s the Pipe thread at?
Just flexing the fingers now to burn the piss out of Joe Bot Turpel when he starts his Insta live feed
Dirk 182
Yesterdays debacle all sarted with a premature open comment thread. The first dominoe of sorts.
Thus, the first excited comments on that thread were premature ejaculations.
Nah just a lil pre cum.
Xox