Will Leonardo DiCaprio join Team Pyzel?

Well what a week it has been. Our surf heroines, and heroes, have begun landing in Tahiti ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympiad, surf champion Kelly Slater has broken his self-imposed social media exile to launch broadside at Brit Pop icons Oasis and the kindest of Southern California surfboard shapers found himself on the pointy end of many sticks.

Yes, Album Surfboards certainly has had a run over the past five plus years, dropping lusty model after lusty model, Josh Kerr, Jack Freestone, Coco Ho and friends just ripping the Matt Parker designs while he humbly goes about his business.

Shock, then, when Stab Magazine put on its paternalistic pants and whooped Album a good one. Actually, not shock there. Stab‘s “Royal We” of interns and “associate editors” love nothing more than coming in aggressively and passively. Shock, though, for real when the model handsome Jon Pyzel told Parker to keep his “uninformed opinions to himself.”

Yowza.

Parker, in any case, might be smarting except he has received boisterous support from it boy Cole Bennett and that should be just enough to get through these dark days.

Bennett, a rap music video director, has mostly flown under the radar except now he appears to be dating Leonardo DiCaprio’s ex Camila Marrone.

The latter was attached to the actor famous for coupling with younger women then jettisoning them when they near 25. She was with the Kelly Slater eskimo brother for four years. She is currently 27.

Bennett, anyhow, is 28 and People Magazine is reporting, “They (Bennett and Marrone) were taking a stroll (in New York), with his arms around her. They looked happy as they shopped, and Cole was gazing lovingly at Camila.”

Wonderful but more important to our story is the fact that the Chicago native dawned a Album hat amidst the furor. No telling if the lantern jaw’d blonde surfs but what does that even mean anymore?

David Lee Scales did not directly speak of Cole Bennett, Leonardo DiCaprio or Camila Marrone during our most recent chat but we did cover Stab.

What little bay shrimps.

Listen here.

"If you are in the sun a lot make sure you get checked regularly by a qualified skin doctor."

Now, the BeachGrit peruser is no stranger to the various dangers present in this surfing life. Shark attack, rabid seal, rage-filled local, reef, sandbar, wetsuit rash, angry spouse etc. The fact that each and every reading these words have not hung up the proverbial leash, as they say, a testament to sheer stubbornness and low IQ. Yes, we should all quit surfing, but if we are going to keep on keeping on there is one most important precaution of all, according to surf icon Mark Richards.

The Newcastle, Australia native is a first ballot legend, changing the very game through the late 70s and early 80s. His “MR” surfboard logo becoming synonymous with progression and flair. Richards went on to win 4 World Surf League championships (circa International Professional Surfers) and is, to this day, an innovator.

Thus, when he speaks, we listen and the 67-year-old just delivered a hammer on, possibly, the biggest surfing danger of all.

That sun.

Bubbling and boiling, overhead, shooting radiation toward earth, the sun is nothing to mess with.

Richards explains:

A Basal Cell Carcinoma in the middle of my forehead which was cut out last week. 12 stitches including the internal ones. This one was picked up on my recent skin specialist check up. I hadn’t noticed anything on my forehead, no freckle, discolouration or raised reddish mark.

Stitches came out next week & I’m back in the water.

If you are in the sun a lot make sure you get checked regularly by a qualified skin doctor. Years of sun exposure & damage are catching up with me. Every visit to the skin doctor over the last few years has resulted in something being frozen or cut out. In my younger years the only sun protection I remember are Zinc & a Coppertone brand that seemed like yellow grease. In my later years I have always been good with sun cream or Zinc on my face but rarely anywhere else.

Thinking back I’ve surfed through a lot of summers in boards shorts with my back getting fried.

I now always surf in a wetsuit or Lycra sun shirt, also wearing a surf hat due thinning hair & having a “solar panel” on the top of my head.

Well, what are your thoughts on wearing a surf hat? Have you taken a position yet?

"Badass."

If there is anyone professional surfers adore, worship even, it is Meta founder-in-chief Mark Zuckerberg. If the world’s fourth richest person posts a surf adjacent video clip, you best believe top tier watermen come calling. Billy Kemper to Lauren Sanchez to Nic Von Rupp each and every one with hearts in their eye emojis.

You can be certain, then, that political watchers are zeroing in on the surf vote after Zuckerberg threw his light strawweight behind former president, current candidate, Donald J. Trump.

The tech vote, of course, has swung heavy DJT post assassination attempt and Zuck is right there lead following with his own hearty endorsement but hours ago. “At some level as an American, it’s hard to not, like, get kind of emotional about that spirit and that fight,” Zuckerberg told Bloomberg about Trump’s response to the shooting. “And I think that’s why a lot of people like the guy.”

He later called him a “badass.”

With the 2024 presidential election on a knife’s edge, every jot and tittle count and with Zuckerberg influencing professional surfers influencing teeming hordes, might the surf vote actually sway the outcome?

Let’s say the aforementioned Billy Kemper, inspired, takes to the trail with Trump. Fair to think it could be all over, at that point, no matter who the Democrats select as their candidtate.

Unless it’s Matthew McConaughey.

Then the roof is a manmade thing etc.