"Unexpected, to say the least."

As you now, I’m currently in New York City, enjoying the heat dome and reading august local papers in the morning whilst drinking hot coffee on a beautiful hot deck, gazing over a melting Central Park South. Important broadsheets like New York Post but you can imagine my shock when, flipping through, I saw Mick Fanning right there in the middle of a pack of the “female boss surf club.”

Whoa!

The feature, titled, Female bosses have surfing club at Rockaway Beach: ‘Everyone wants to catch that wave’ showcased Tracy Obolsky, chef and owner of the local Rockaway Beach Bakery, Anya Ferring, owner of online clothing company ARTbutt who also runs Manhattan-based design-consulting business The Factory 8, Claire Canfield, co-owner of Bloom Beauty Lounge in Chelsea and Event planner Stacy Snyder.

The three meet at Rockaway whenever it’s pumping, or even not, to shred.

Obolsky declared, “You can’t really plan to go surfing whenever you want. The conditions have to be right and the stars need to align and you just have to go when the opportunity arises.”

Ferring added, “Everyone wants to catch that wave. You have to have a spirit of community and communication.”

Canfield simply said, “When you’re surfing you can’t think about anything else because there are finite waves.”

Synder called surfing, “A spiritual exercise.”

The three discuss the general vagaries of this surfing life, things we all know and feel, but back to Fanning. It being morning, and hot, my eyes were blurry, but as I brought the paper closer, there it the Australian champion was. His stylized MF very clearly on Stacy Snyder’s 8ft or 9ft yellow soft-topped surfboard.

The MF line of soft-topped surfboards get very much less attention than sisters Wavestorm, Gerry Lopez, Ben Gravy’s Wave Bandit or Jamie O’Brien’s Odyssea. I don’t often see them in lineups but if forced to pick a soft-topped surfboard, think I might go with the MF.

You?

David Lee Scales did not, anyhow, discuss during our weekly chat but did chat about important things like flossing teeth in front of significant others and influencer surfers.

Enjoy.

"Let them SURF!"

I am currently in New York City on the brink of an intense ballet summer and it is very hot. A heat dome has descended driving temperatures up near 100 and the natives mad. Reports of men running wild with knives, warnings of rolling brownouts, general hysteria.

None of them, apparently, have visited Djibouti where the aforementioned are all daily occurrences, year ’round, except the temperatures are up past 120 also year ’round.

Well, relief is in sight for east coast surfers who can hardly wait as the “ritualistic opening of the Atlantic Ocean” occurs tomorrow all thanks to cosplay mermaids and mermen.

Per The New York Times:

It is time for an extravaganza on Coney Island that is hip, tacky and wacky. Hundreds of mermaids — sequined and finned — will splish-splash their way down Surf Avenue in the annual Mermaid Parade on Saturday.

“The Mermaid Parade is as New York as it gets,” said Adam Rinn, the artistic director of Coney Island U.S.A., the nonprofit organization that runs the parade.

Daniel Murphy, the executive director of the Alliance for Coney Island, which represents neighborhood businesses and will have a float in the parade, said the spectacle is “the most conveniently located parade for a hot June day.” It will end with the ritualistic “opening” of the Atlantic Ocean by the king and queen of the parade.

I asked: If you had to describe the Mermaid Parade to a Martian who had just landed and had no idea what it was all about, what would you say?

This was his answer: “Do you remember ‘Abbott and Costello Go to Mars’?” I didn’t, so he provided the briefest of synopses: “Abbott and Costello end up at a Mardi Gras parade. The Mermaid Parade is exactly that.”

East Coast surfers care much less about the hip, tacky and wacky than they do about actually getting to surf legally. The Rockaways are currently running 2 – 3 ft, according to Surfline, and I’d imagine the sands are filled with the waxed n’ ready just waiting for the King and Queen of the Mermaid Parade to wave their tridents over the waters and declare them open.

Huzzah!

The Package has arrived.

Sid Abbruzzi is surfing’s patron saint. The spot has been held, for the last thirty years or such, by Saint Christopher, who has long been venerated by “athletes, mariners, ferrymen, and travelers.” The amalgamation, I guess, extending to surfers but sharing a saint is not the same as having a saint and ours is now Sid.

The Water Brother should need no introduction. The fact that he might, simply testimony to his holiness. But we will get in to that later. For now, you should examine your heart. If you do not know of Sid Abbruzzi, you should deeply question your own attachment to this surfing life. If you do know of Sid Abbruzzi, well, I don’t have much to add here except for the time I met him at Surf Expo in Florida.

It was the year that the former surf personality Ashton Goggans decided the look du jour was tightly rolled yellow beanie and delicately oiled beard, in Florida, but never mind that. Sid had stopped by the Florida Surf Film Festival booth with a crew of Rhode Island heavies, all tattooed and tough. I immediately recognized him as something entirely unique. He said, “Hey, come back to our hotel room with us.”

Intimidated, but with no other option, I accepted.

Now, I had no idea what this hotel room would hold but showing weakness in the face of true ideological belief is tantamount to complete human failure. Sid had an aura. A look. A piercing seriousness and commitment that is altogether rare in our western world. I’d seen it in the eyes of Hezbollah commanders and Yemeni freedom fighters.

I saw it here.

Turns out, I was right but in ways I’d never expected.

I’ll get to that later too. For now, though, a film has been made about Saint Sid’s life. It’s not out yet but I’ve seen it. Twice. So enraptured by the first go through that I replayed, from the beginning, for the wife, immediately after.

She wept too.

The official trailer dropped seconds ago. The film, itself, out mid July.

Gird your loins.