"Essentially worthless."

Stab Magazine has added another page, as it were, to its gilded literary history. The subscription surf blog famous for declaring modern surf media “essentially worthless,” is certainly being shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize after publishing a glowing profile on onetime surf brand Hurley.

Hurley Can Now Legally Rent a Car begins thusly:

Surfing’s noughties industrial powerhouses had to adapt to survive.

Perhaps none so more than Hurley.

The brand who crashed onto the already-hot scene in 1999; reached the upper-echelons in lightning time; brokered bar-none the biggest takeover deal in surfing history when they sold to Nike in 2002; spearheaded the surfing tech revolution; signed the biggest athlete deal in surfing history (John Florence in 2016); then weathered the blur of crashes, mini-crashes, famines/floods and a plague on all of our houses, to emerge in 2024.

Still here. Still Hurley.

The author, unnamed though will hopefully reveal himself at the Pulitzer Prize Award Ceremony, goes on to describe in lush detail how the brand came into being and how its new owner, Bluestar Alliance, is actually cool and core and that beard oil, pool toys, fingernail clippers and deeply discounted men’s tech pant Costco drops are the future. Or, in his words, “Hey, that work/life balance birthed the surf industry the first time around. Who’s to say it won’t work again?”

Stab fans, and lovers of the written word, are relishing passages like… “Then along came this plucky, all-American surf brand from ‘Surf Mecca’ called Hurley — hand, meet glove.” And… “So you’ve got a stellar team — including two recent World Champs — a mix of new and old talent on staff, and a whole treasure trove of technical gear to reference and re-purpose, in a time when the world’s mad for technical gear.”

Reading them back and forth in reverential tones.

Essentially worthless indeed.

Huzzah.

"We regret that an event that was meant to be a conversation to celebrate an iconic movie instead became a platform for political views."

Surfers are a diverse-ish group ranging slightly in age, sex and race though all, everywhere, consider Richard Dreyfuss a hero. The 76-year-old actor has brought many wonderful characters to life though none more inspirational, to surfers, than Matt Hooper. Yes, the brave oceanographer who correctly identified that a massive great white shark was hunting ocean players, later crawling into a cage in order to poke it with poison, is a patron saint for wave sliders, many wearing his visage around their necks in small medallion form.

You can imagine the shock, then, when days ago, Dreyfuss attended a screening of Jaws, arriving in a flattering floral dress and proceeding to break into what is being described as an “anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ+” screed. The event was scheduled in the small town of Beverly, Massachusetts and supposed to be a simple chat with the Hollywood icon with tickets running $300.

The subject matter, which also included a takedown of Barbara Streisand, was not appreciated by all.

Sarah Hogg and their partner, Jonah Hoffmann, attended but marched right out in protest, Hogg telling the Boston Globe, “I’m queer, I’m nonbinary. This is personal to me. It’s one of those moments where you feel like you’re having an out-of-body experience. It was horrifying.”

Cheri Ziegra forwent the media and took her disgust straight to Facebook, penning, “Apparently (I found out too late), he has a reputation for spewing this kind of racist, homophobic, misogynistic bullcrap. … We did NOT get what we paid for (which we all assumed would be a light, fun evening listening to stories and anecdotes about RD’s time on the Vineyard making ‘Jaws.’) This was offensive and we demand a refund.”

Theater director J. Casey Soward, feeling very bad, declared, “We regret that an event that was meant to be a conversation to celebrate an iconic movie instead became a platform for political views. We take full responsibility for the oversight in not anticipating the direction of the conversation and for the discomfort it caused to many patrons. We are in active dialogue with our patrons about their experience and are committed to learning from this event how to better enact our mission of entertaining, educating and inspiring our community.”

Surfers mortified.

The Dreyfuss team has yet to address the matter but will hopefully before the Tahiti Pro kicks off in under 24 hours.

Exciting.

"A massive swell expected to bring sizeable waves, potentially matching the memorable CT event here in 2014."

Now, there is longstanding tradition in the theater to not jinx an upcoming performance by wishing “good luck” or telegraphing maximum success. Dancers, actors and musicians are generally superstitious, not wanting to spoil the future by being overly bullish. Thus, ballerinas tell each other “merde” before the curtain opens, or shit, actors pine for broken legs and violin, cello, timpani etc. players go “toi toi toi,” spitting three times in each other’s faces.

The World Surf League, though, is bucking that trend and boldly predicting that the waves will be so good, come Wednesday, or maybe Thursday, that it needs Monday to gloat. Yes, in an overnight missive, the “global home of surfing” declared that folk should tune in Monday at noon Tahiti time in order to hear the gang talk up the upcoming swell, sparing no superlative.

Per the release:

The WSL Commissioner’s Office is eyeing a massive swell expected to bring sizeable waves, potentially matching the memorable CT event here in 2014. More updates will be shared tomorrow afternoon for the call times and anticipated schedules for Tuesday, May 28, and Wednesday, May 29.

“Even though there were some remnants of yesterday’s swell, the biggest set was the size of the average sets yesterday,” said Renato Hickel, WSL Deputy Commissioner. “With this swell forecast to fade further, it was an easy decision to wait for the next set of bigger swells starting on Wednesday. Wednesday and Thursday are looking great to run the competition with the anticipated swell, and we’re looking at Friday as our backup day. We’ll share more details about the call tomorrow afternoon, but we might have a look on Tuesday, and we’re expecting to have a big day on Wednesday.”

Do you think the fates will reward this boldness or might some devil wind be conjured in order to ruin the proceedings?

Also, do you think Pip is still scared by even the thought of “massive swell” hitting the Cave of Skulls?

Recall the aforementioned 2014 Billabong Pro while formulating your thoughts.