One of the finer trends of the last few years
has been the rise of the mid-length surfboard. Once relegated to
the unseemly community of eggs and fun boards, the mid climbed out
on its own thanks to the likes of Devon Howard and Torren Martyn
who have demonstrated the gorgeous flow and glide of the 6’10 to
7’8 set.
Leave it, then, to the greatest surfer of all-time, and
under-appreciated satirist, Kelly Slater to skewer the trend in a
must-see new clip.
It is impossible, today, to escape news of the
quickly escalating hip hop war civil war pitting the biggest names
against each other in all out mortal combat. For surf fans aware of
the landscape, but confused, I offer a short primer.
Drake, who hails from Toronto and why he named himself the 6 God
(due area code), and Kendrick Lamar, who calls Compton home, have
had long simmering, though genteel strife. All that changed when,
in March, Lamar provided guest vocals on a track that was critical
of Aubrey Graham (Drake’s given name).
The gloves came off and everybody from Rick Ross to Travis Scott
to Suge Knight piled on Drake who, days ago, fired back using
artificially intelligent 2 Pac and Snoop Dogg in the ditty Taylor
Made Freestyle.
Now, I’ll be honest. Before today I was aware that rap battles
existed though never followed one closely in real time. The genius
of the actors involved in this current civil war, thus, cannot be
overstated. Barbs flying from camp to camp. Millions upon millions
of looky-loos becoming involved, listening, picking sides etc.
Mass engagement.
Peak entertainment.
Stupid surfing.
Since I first dawned surf journalism’s door, back in 2004, I
have tried to make rap-style beef with any or everyone in order to
spruce up our otherwise staid amphitheater. Mick Fanning, Michael
Rodrigues, the entire protectorate of Puerto Rico, The Inertia’s
Zach Weisberg and staff, the World Surf League’s Erik Logan plus
others, Ashton Goggans, Surfer Magazine’s AI assistant “Jake
Howard” just to name the ones I can remember at breakfast.
What slams have I received in return?
Fanning decided to step up to the mic and while his initial diss response
was spicy, he chased with the entirely weak follow up
rhyme, “I acknowledge that my decision to use words that were
inappropriate — albeit in an attempt to be ironic, knowing they
were of the type favoured by the magazine — was misjudged and
wrong.”
The stories, the quotes, the anecdotes are as rich as you might
imagine when two men who’ve known and trusted each other of
thirty-five years meet with loose tongues and time on their
hands.
To know where to begin with faced with the treasure trove which
is Kelly Slater’s remarkable life is difficult.
He is born to a one-eyed fisherman-surfer Dad, an alcoholic, who
rode switch on lefts so he could see the face of the wave and a
Mom, who’s been married before, who works at NASA. They live at
Coco Beach in the shadow of what used to be the world’s greatest
space program.
How the Slaters ended up in Coco Beach, Florida, is the most
remarkable of all the stories. His Mama Judy tells him that her and
Daddy Stephen Slater were driving through the ski town of Telluride, Colorado, in the late
sixties and were…this…close to buying half the town for
two hundred gees and setting up a mountain lifestyle.
These days, Telluride is the home of the rich, the famous, the
beautiful. Tom Cruise sold his ranch there for forty mill, and ten,
twenty, thirty mill for a house or ranch, don’t surprise anyone in
those parts. It’s been described as a “crucible of
billionaires and ski bums.”
“My Mom told my Dad, let’s move to the mountains and live in the
snow,” says Kelly Slater. “My Dad was, like, no, I want to be at
the beach. So, I mean, if we owned half of Telluride we’re probably
be billionaires at this point.”
“Well, you’d be a snowboarder,” says Barton.
“Probably be a skier, you know, back then and maybe I’d
understand the snow and the mountains the way I do the ocean. But
our destiny, our fate, was to be at the beach. My Dad wanted to
camp and fish and hang out at the beach and have a beer with the
boys. So we ended up the beach and I wouldn’t change a
thing.”
An essential two hours.
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Somehow, Tyler Wright transforms what should be a
radical turn into a whippy little spinny thing. Tyler’s version
never seems to land too close to the pocket. It’s like a top turn
trying to be something more interesting in the same way a writer
might try to use bigger words to look smarter. It’s easy to see
through the lie.
"If people who actually like surfing get bored and
wander off, maybe it’s time to rethink the thing."
I have a stupidly short attention span. This
makes me extremely fun on roadtrips. Are we there yet? What if we
just decided that here was good enough?
Recently, for example, I drove to San Clemente and back in a
single day. I did not enjoy it. I sat parked on the PCH, stared
at the shuttered Boardriders store at Topanga, and wondered what
the hell I was doing.
Sometimes, things take far too long, is what I’m saying.
Sometimes, I am not that patient at all.
This has both nothing and everything to do with contest surfing.
The way the Championship Tour works now involves a whole lot of
waiting. There we are, grinding along through opening rounds in
small, inconsistent surf. It’s rarely that interesting.
Try to watch heats live, and there’s more ad breaks than waves
ridden, and most of the waves are shown on delay. Watching the
replay the next day feels more live than the live show. Also,
there’s only two ad breaks on the replay. I try to find joy in
unexpected places.
All of that waiting and patience, two skills in which I don’t
excel, is to hopefully someday make it to the promised land of
finals day. That’s the thing that’s supposed to make this whole
trip worthwhile. Sometimes, it even works. It might be nice,
though, if a few more roadside attractions popped up along the
way.
By the time finals day came around, I felt pretty sure that the
comp at Margaret River had lasted the entire year. Pipeline? Oh,
that was five years ago. Like driving the 405, time had lost all
meaning.
But at last on Sunday in West Australia, finals day arrived just
in time on the last day of the waiting period. No hate here, I
believe in procrastination. I am a writer. Game recognizes
game.
On Sunday Kaua’i girl Gabriela Bryan won her first ever CT event
after beating Sawyer Lindblad in the final. She also rocketed up
the rankings to slide into the top five. It might look like a
surprise result, but Gabriela’s been making heats consistently and
she was the only rookie her year to make the cut. It was only a
matter of time.
If you didn’t know what a perfect layback should look like, John
John showed how it’s done in his semi against George Pittar. Rail
engaged. Body extended. Deep in the pocket. This is how you do it.
Why am I talking about John John? Because once you’ve watched John
do that turn, you can’t possibly bear to watch Tyler do it. It’s,
like, so painful.
In the quarterfinals, Tyler surfed a clean, if not especially
inspired heat to beat Caity. To be clear, Tyler deserved to win it.
But that layback, man. She used it twice in that heat and the
judges rewarded it both times.
Somehow, Tyler transforms what should be a radical turn into a
whippy little spinny thing. Tyler’s version never seems to land too
close to the pocket. It’s like a top turn trying to be something
more interesting in the same way a writer might try to use bigger
words to look smarter. It’s easy to see through the lie.
At the moment, the judging panel does not seem to reward
variety. Or at least, they don’t punish repetition. It’s possible
to win heats, even very important heats, doing the same turn over
and over. I don’t think I’m being super controversial here if I say
that this is not super exciting to watch.
It also seems to go against the whole point of the thing. At its
heart, surfing is creative self-expression. The Championship Tour
should showcase the best surfers in the world. Surely, the best in
the world can muster up more than one turn at a time. I know I am
impatient and bad at all kinds of things, but I don’t think this is
too much to ask.
Tyler may have sold the judges on her layback, but Caity also
made it easy for her. Caity’s inconsistency as a heat surfer is her
weakness — and maybe her only weakness. In her quarterfinal against
Tyler she fell on two scoring waves and left points on the
table.
On her opening ride, Caity’s extra carves and wiggles made her
look indecisive rather than stylish. The judges like smooth polish
and Caity didn’t convince them. Despite her loss to Tyler, Caity’s
still world number one. And she has plenty of time to shapeshift
her dynamic, expressive surfing to fit what the judges want to see.
I just hope that procees doesn’t kill the spark that gives Caity’s
best surfing its magic.
In fact, Caity’s not alone in this dilemma, and the heat between
Brisa and Molly had a similar quality. Brisa brought a fairly
straightforward approach to the table, and she looked steady and
controlled. The judges liked it. Her power and her tidy, carving
turns have kept Brisa above the cut line this season and vaulted
her into the top five. It’s a notable shift from last year when she
missed the cut.
By contrast, Molly desperately wanted a big section to bash.
That’s where she thrives. Out on the face at Margarets, she looked
ragged around the edges. The thing about Molly is, she’s figured
out the hard stuff in surfing first. She got a frickin’ 10 at
Pipe. She can smash the hell out of giant sections at
Sunset. Now she has to perfect the nitty-gritty details.
My favorite surfer of the day had to be Sawyer. She ripped it
out there. Her solid backhand is doing an excellent job of
memoryholing that bobble-headed paddle interference she had at
Sunset. She’s animated and feisty. Who the heck wears a springy at
Margs? Sawyer does. During her semi against Tyler, she nailed a
legit hammer on the end section.
After beating Tyler, Sawyer made her first ever CT final. At
Bells, she made the quarters for the first time. The San Clemente
girl is starting to find her rhythm with this whole CT thing, and
she flung herself over the cut line. In the process, she sent
12-year CT veteran Lakey Peterson to the Challenger Series.
In the final, Gabriela went on two waves early, but couldn’t
find a score. Sawyer came out swinging and took an early lead with
a mid-six on her opening ride. Gabriela could only find a five to
answer, and it wasn’t until around the twenty-minute mark that she
began to swing the heat.
Dancing with dolphins, Gabriela
turned a two-turn wonder into a 7.83. Her first turn
hooked deep into the pocket. An arcing bottom turn set her up
perfectly for a closeout bash. Gabriela’s strength and short-legged
stance allow her to pull her turns in tightly. At a time when the
judge’s have fallen back in love with power turns, her surfing’s
like catnip to them.
With ten minutes to go, Sawyer came close to retaking the lead.
She needed a 7.44, a tall order with the onshore building. On a
mid-sized set wave, she bashed out two solid hits and rode out some
weird Margs double-up shit on the inside. The score, a 7.27 came
heartbreakingly close. Not enough.
Inside the final minutes, Gabriela slammed it shut with an 8.10.
The score mostly came from a heavy closeout hit, but it felt like
the judges had painted themselves into a corner on this one. They’d
been paying two-turn waves all heat. They’d already thrown high
7’s. There was nowhere left to go but up. Gabriela rightly won this
one, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Sawyer get hers soon.
We’ve got about a month until the tiny post-cut women’s field
heads to Tahiti. You have already heard my views on the cut and how
bad it is for women’s surfing.
I will not bore you with that sort of thing again here.
Ten women. That’s fucking absurd.
I like to be optimistic, sometimes.
And in that mode, I would like to hope that the new CEO takes a
hard look at the product his little sports league is offering. It
is, I would argue, not the showcase the athletes’ talent deserves
nor is it especially entertaining to watch most of the time. If
people who actually like surfing get bored and wander off, maybe
it’s time to rethink the thing.
In the meantime, I’ll just be over here trying to stay awake in
traffic.
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Geoff McCoy and Hawaiian great Barry
Kanaiaupuni.
Legendary surfboard designer Geoff McCoy,
“creative, intense, cocksure”, dead at seventy-nine
“The most dominant force in surfing around the
world…”
They sure don’t make ‘em like ol Geoff McCoy anymore and
maybe there’ll never be another like him. A child of the
fifties and sixties, a man of the seventies and eighties, unsullied
by the viruses of the modern world.
The legendary surfboard shaper and designer whose no-nose
concept paved the way, at least partly, for the modern thruster
outline has died in Tasmania, aged seventy-six.
Geoff McCoy, described so poetically by Matt Warshaw as
“creative, intense,
cocksure” is best-known for his Lazor Zap design, a
tear-drop shaped surfboard with a big ass and a needle dick that
Cheyne Horan rode to consecutive world title runner-up finishes in
1981 and 1982.
McCoy never recovered from the setback, at least financially,
and drew a narrative that he was being crushed by the “industry”,
although he continued to shape in his little factory there in Tweed
Heads.
Apart from the Lazor Zap, you could buy a Quazor Zip, an Astron Hot or
a Nugget.
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Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by
@theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros
