Stephanie Gilmore, under fire for partnering with Woolworths.
Stephanie Gilmore, under fire for spruiking controversial Australian supermarket giant Woolworths.

Surfing legend Stephanie Gilmore slammed by fans over supermarket sponsorship

Derek Rielly

By

“Really sad, Step…”

The world’s greatest-ever female surfer Stephanie Gilmore has come under fire after an innocuous post of the eight-time champ eating an apple on Instagram whipped surf fans into a righteous fury.

The post, a paid partnership with Australian supermarket giant Woolworths, was bought to push healthy eating and exercise habits on the country’s flaccid and chubby and altogether unappealing children, brittle spines bent over their telephones, dirty fingers stabbing away at the virtual buttons.

A fine initiative, whoever is pushing the buttons.

As Stephanie Gilmore writes,

“I’ve partnered with the @woolworths_au team to help Aussie groms learn how to pick the best waves and the best fuel to keep them surfing all day! Head to the Woolworths Pick Fresh Play Fresh hub and through fun games & activities you can learn and go into the draw to win great prizes, including 1-1 time with me!”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Stephanie (@stephaniegilmore)

A harmless enough post and on-game for the wholesome champ who counts Sanitarium, a company owned by a strict Protestant group called The Seventh Day Adventists whose central belief is that the Second Coming is just around the corner, as a long-time sponsor.

Surf fans, however, were unimpressed.

You are a brilliant role model Steph and I love the intent here – but are Woolworths a good values match?

Great achievement in Surfing, but please lose Woolworths. Absolute bandits when it comes to supporting our farmers, and they couldn’t even have Aus flags for Australia Day.

Steph FYI East, big grocery stores, including Woolworths just destroying the farmers and the government. It’s also unfair know you need to honey, but not with Woolworths bad news! Wish you All the Best!

Whoa! Siri sure did mess up that! Naughty All major big grocery stores like Woolies treating the farmers with No respect!

Love you as a sportswoman, but Woolworths are ripping off everyone including the farmers. Really sad Steph

You are better than helping those grubs out

Lost me on this one.woolies are thieves.

Stephanie Gilmore is a good role model and athlete. Probably not a good partner choice. I don’t think there monopolizing ways align with her own morals. Similar to when you get to your naturopath early and bump into them smoking outside!

Give them the flick Steph, they insult Australians with their greed

And on and on it goes.

The supermarket giant Woolworths, which runs the food biz in Australia alongside Coles, came under fire during those heady days post-COVID when grocery prizes skyrocketed, accused of price gouging and so on.

The company has also been accused of shafting farmers and suppliers and, lately, being “woke” after dumping its Australia Day merchandise.

 

Kelly Slater and Kalani Miller share baby news

Kelly Slater set to become a father for second time, 28 years after birth of daughter Taylor

Derek Rielly

By

Fifty-two-year-old Kelly Slater and Chinese-American girlfriend Kalani Miller, 36, share exciting baby news!

The rumours of Kelly Slater becoming a new daddy had been swirling, as they say, for months.

Now, Kelly Slater and his Chinese-American bikini mogul girlfriend Kalani Miller, have finally revealed the pregnancy in a poignant black-and-white short shared to both their social media channels. Set to the moving sounds of the old Ben Harper tune The Three of Us, we see Slater, fifty-two, and thirty-six-year-old Kalani strolling the Hawaiian sands, embracing, Slater’s hands wrapped protectively around Kalani’s pregnant stomach. 

 

Kelly Slater and Kalani Miller celebrate pregnancy
Kelly Slater and Kalani Miller celebrate pregnancy.
Kalani Miller and Kelly Slater baby
Kalani Miller’s baby bump!
Kelly Slater and Kalani Miller share baby news
Kelly Slater and Kalani Miller, together since 2009.

It’ll be Kalani’s first kid and Kelly Slater’s second. 

Back in 1996, Tamara Michelle gave birth to a daughter, Taylor, in Slater’s home town, Cocoa Beach, Florida, where she was raised. In a country famous for its tell-alls, it spoke well of Tamara, Kelly and Taylor that, despite media pressure, none of ’em spoke of their lives, although Slater did talk briefly, about the guilt he felt for not being a “full-time Dad.”

“The whole time my daughter has been raised by her mother almost 100 percent in physical time and I’ve been traveling,” Slater told Graham Bensinger. “The hardest part, I think for me, is my daughter feeling like she doesn’t have a dad there all the time. And that’s hard for her. I know it was especially hard for her when she was younger.”

Taylor Slater, who is twenty-eight, is a noted photographer and painter.

“My paintings directly reflect my mind, my experiences, and my passions. My mind because I started painting to find peace, my experiences because I paint the places I’ve seen, and my passions because I paint dreamy beach scenes with resin (the same medium used to make surfboards). I think my paintings really reflect who I am and everything I’m about,” she says. 

 

Boycott Rip Curl campaign
Furious Rip Curl customers vent online.

Two months after calls to boycott Rip Curl over trans misstep, parent company reveals “significant business decline.”

Derek Rielly

By

Shares halved, profit down ten percent… 

Go woke go broke is the overused saying, but from Budweiser to Boeing to Disney to Target to Nike to Gillette and, lately Rip Curl, there ain’t a lot to be gained by corporations embracing whatever the latest progressive trend is, alienating and confusing customers.

The Kathmandu-owned former surf icon Rip Curl, now under the auspices of CEO Brooke Farris after decades in the hands of, ugh, men, had joined a conga line of Australian swimwear companies in pivoting to the growing trans-woman market.

In an Instagram reel as part of Rip Curl Women’s Meet the Local Heroes of Western Australia campaign, Rip Curl Women featured the inspirational T-girl Sasha Jane Lowerson.

Lowerson, as you know, was one of Australia’s leading male longboarders, even winning the men’s longboard div as Ryan Egan, before transitioning three years ago and joining the women’s side of the draw.

Rip Curl refused to react even as the firestorm spread worldwide and customers were filmed burning boardshorts and throwing their booties in the trash and the hashtag @boycottripcurl trended on X.

They got so much heat, including from high profile anti-trans-gals-in-sports activists Riley Gaines ad Taylor Silverman as well as from their own former team rider Bethany Hamilton, who reportedly split from Rip Curl ‘cause of her anti-T gal stance, they removed the post and apologised. 

“Our recent post has landed us in the divisive space around transgender participation in competitive sport. We want to promote surfing for everyone in a respectful way, but recognize we upset a lot of people with our post and for that, we are sorry. To clarify, the surfer featured has not replaced anyone on the Rip Curl team and is not a sponsored athlete.”

Which in turn got ‘em into the fire with the queer crowd. 

Surf Equity described the “so-called” apology as “divisive, anti-trans, and discriminatory. The LGBTQIA+ community is appalled. Aligning with bigots harms your brand identity and fails to support your LGBTQIA+ employees.”

Now, it can be revealed, Rip Curl sales had already plummeted almost ten percent or twenty-five mill over the first half of the financial year, and the results of the Boycott Rip Curl are yet to be felt. 

Keen followers of BeachGrit will remember those glorious couple of weeks a month back when Rip Curl slashed the prices of its best-in-category wetsuits, selling its top of the range suits for $35o, in an attempt to move a warehouse full of inventory. 

One year ago, the parent company’s shares were a buck apiece, now they’re less than fifty cents. 

Surf City, USA under attack from above?
Surf City, USA under attack from above?

Surf City, USA forced to shutter iconic beaches due lightning strikes as culture warriors fear divine wrath!

Chas Smith

By

Is the left or the right to blame?

Huntington Beach is a national treasure. The Southern California town, which boasts 8.5 miles of beautiful sandy beaches that deliver waves universally praised as “soft” and “I guess ok if you’re into that sort of thing.” Surf City, USA, as it is officially known after winning a bruising fight with Santa Cruz, to the north, hosts the annual U.S. Open of Surfing, is home to Surfline and has long held the best surf-adjacent riots.

Lately, Huntington Beach has also planted its flag in the culture wars, or rather not planted its flag, as it were, outlawing breast cancer survivors, Stanford graduates or rainbow fans from flying their banners on city property. One of many moves the municipality has made to counter the “woke” apocalypse.

Well, you can imagine the terror, then, when, yesterday, the aforementioned 8.5 mile thaumaturgy was shuttered due “sky anger.”

Per KTLA 5:

Multiple beaches in Orange County were closed Monday afternoon due to the threat of lightning strikes in the area.

Huntington Beach closed its beaches around 3:20 p.m., and officials said they would remain closed until “weather conditions are deemed safe.”

The Seal Beach Police Department also announced that beaches, as well as the pier, would be closed while a storm system moved through the coastal area.

The National Weather Service announced early Monday morning that an upper-level low-pressure system near Phoenix would be “drifting slowly southwestward” through the afternoon, bringing with it a slight chance of afternoon and evening thunderstorms.

KTLA Storm Tracker radar showed a surge of moisture building Monday afternoon, with the best chance for thunderstorms expected around 3 p.m. through 6 p.m.

No word on if electricity touched the ground but who do imagine felt most scared? Trans activists wanting to read library books to children or those busily writing laws that will enshrine “use the bathroom of your birth” into Huntington Beach’s charter?

More as the story develops.

DJ Paul Fisher (pictured) on one.
DJ Paul Fisher (pictured) on one.

Extreme sport media company astonished to learn beloved DJ Paul Fisher surfs well!

Chas Smith

By

They're losing it.

Now, grumpy locals of a certain age hear the name DJ Paul Fisher and think one thing. Battle-tested QS warrior of some repute. Fisher, who hails from Australia’s wave-rich Gold Coast, once lived a rashie dream, paddling out against the likes of Bron Heussenstamm and Josh Hoyer in surfing’s halcyon days. Times were good, and money flowed from sponsors such as Reef and Creatures of Leisure, but our hero was meant to be shared with the world, and share himself he did.

Known today as FISHER, the king of the turntables draws mind-bending crowds, treating them to aural delights whilst he stands above them, on a raised stage, and flicks his tongue.

Some are so new to the show, though, that his first act as Qualifying Serial is lost and his ability to shred, a shocking surprise. And take it from a source that might should know better.

Teton Gravity Research, an “extreme sport media company” which launched in Jackson Hole, Wyoming as a snowboard vehicle, though opened its doors to our surfing lifestyle years ago, and has produced important surf films such as the Andy Irons documentary Kissed by God. You would imagine, then, that’s Fisher’s surf bonafides would be understood but millennials gonna millennial.

A clip of the Losing It sensation introduced thusly:

Between gigs on the endless rave circuit, FISHER found some time to paddle out for some cheeky beach breakers in Changgu – a beach town near the southwest tip of Bali. We’ve known for a while now that FISHER rips the decks harder than most on the DJ stand, but who knew this guy could rip almost as hard on a shortboard? Not I. No, surly not I. But with clips surfacing of Chris Hemsworth scoring overhead tuberides, and Nicole Kidman cruising on a log, I am starting to believe its just in the blood of our Aussie friends. So when’s the Keith Urban edit coming?

Imagine the stun in Jackson Hole when it is discovered that the actor playing Jimmy Slade on Baywatch has 11 surfing titles.

How fun does Chungoo look, in any case?

Wicked awesome.

Photo: Steve Sherman/@tsherms
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