Kelly Slater fails to sell beachfront compound.
Kelly Slater, inset, fails to sell sprawling beachfront compound at Laniakea on Oahu's North Shore.

Kelly Slater fails to sell redundant $20 million beachfront compound on North Shore’s most coveted street!

Fire sale prices hit the North Shore of Oahu!

Real estate is a tough game to play, but few know when to hold and fold better than Kelly Slater whose landholdings span the globe. Three months ago, Slater listed his sprawling Laniakea compound on “the most coveted street on the North Shore” for twenty mill, almost triple what he paid for it seven years earlier.

The reason for the surprise listing is unclear, although maybe the joint, as grand as it is, was more trouble than it was worth. 

An examination of its price history on Zillow reveals Kelly Slater listed it for rent in 2018 for 80k a month, dropped it to 72k in 2019, 59k in 2019 before sitting on 45k in 2020.

No word if anyone actually took up the rental, even at the cut-price rate of 10k a week.

If you didn’t know, Laniakea is a little way off the super highway traffic of Pipeline, Rockies and Sunset. It’s back on the western side of Waimea Bay and is a raw righthand point break that will reward the intrepid surfer who ain’t afraid to brave the paddle that is also home to the less-than-friendly Hawaiian tiger shark. If you like lefts, just around the headland is a joint called Jocko’s.

In summer time, great place to watch turtles cruising the shallows. I once busted a kid’s goggles I swiped in my joy at seeing the happy animals when I tried tofu ’em over my fat head.

Kelly Slater house North Shore Oahu
The surprisingly modest street frontage at Kelly Slater’s Lani’s house.
Kelly Slater house North Shore Oahu
Kelly Slater’s Lani’s house.
Kelly Slater North Shore house
Located on the most coveted street on the North Shore of Oahu, this exclusive beachfront estate is the premier offering in Haleiwa, Hawai’i. Set on an oceanfront lot traversing over a half acre, this compound encompasses elegant living while embracing the barefoot luxury lifestyle of the North Shore.

Anyway, three months on the market and no bites, a reflection, maybe, of its inflated price. It’s interesting to note the previous owner tried to sell it for twenty-two mill almost ten years ago and settled on the almost-eight mill Kelly Slater paid.

Closer to the action around Sunset and Pipe etc, beachfront houses are being sold for fire sale prices after the gov told owners they had to remove their rock retaining walls, and at their own expense.

Check this pretty little house, complete with separate studio, for one-and-a-half-mill.

Cheap, if you don’t mind watching your joint melt into the ocean. 

 

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Surf vote abandons Biden after beloved actor Gary Busey posts lively 80th birthday tribute to self

"Angelo Pappas 2024."

It is election day, today, in France and the punditry is calling it one of the most important of the last century. I have no doubt that it might be true with the right leaning Rassemblement National surging much to Macron and his center left Renaissance on the ropes. Tense etc. but one wouldn’t know it ambling through the gorgeous streets whistling La Vie en Rose especially if one is American.

Yes, at least the various French candidates don’t have full blown dementia unlike the staggering octogenarian candidates across the proverbial pond in the United States of America.

There President Joe Biden continues to shed support after his senile debate performance against challenger Donald J. Trump. While the surf vote had been firmly behind the Dark Brandon thanks to a 2020 endorsement from Surfer Magazine, it has just joined the exodus after beloved actor Gary Busey posted a stirring birthday tribute from his 80th.

“It’s my #birthday week! The big 80!” the famous Big Wednesday and Point Break actor penned.

Surfers immediately recognized the energy, the agile mind and compared it to Sleepy Joe’s comatose stare.

“You don’t look a day over 150,” one supporter gushed.

“Angelo Pappas 2024,” another added.

Could the Hollywood star replace Biden on the ballot? It’s anyone’s guess at this point, to be honest.

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Victoria Feige and Kelly Slater.
The gorgeous and inspirational Victoria Feige and Kelly Slater, also gorgeous, vivacious eyes etc, and inspirational.

Kelly Slater leads push for inclusion of para-surfing at LA 2028 Olympic Games!

“We need 10,000 signatures!” says champ.

While it might’ve been a little difficult to include para-surfing at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, which is being held at a wave so difficult to master even world champions, or at least one, is given pause, the push to include para-surfers at LA in four years is gathering steam. 

And, Kelly Slater, the world’s greatest surfer who narrowly avoided becoming the child of billionaires when his parents knocked back an offer to buy half of Telluride, investing instead in Cocoa Beach, Florida, has come out swinging on behalf of para-surfers. 

In a piece to camera posted on Instagram, Slater appears alongside five-times para-surfing world champ Victoria Feige, the gorgeous smiling face of para-surfing who would up in a chair when she busted her back after a snowboard jump went real bad.

 

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The pair are at the 44th Annual Da Hui Paddle Race, which Slater had just won.

And, as Feige explains how parasurfing has been accepted by the ISA and the paralympics as worthy of inclusion into the Games, Kelly, wound up like a spring, jumps in,“We need 10 000 signatures, only two thousand now, right?”

Yeah, says Feige,

“We need 10,000 signatures. Help us push para-surfing in the Paralympics.”

As the beach commentator booms, Slater Slater continues,

“We’re trying to overpower the speaking back there, but if you guys could support the para-surfing at the Olympics in Los Angeles, it would be great… We just need a few signatures to get you guys in the water.”

Sign the petition here!

 

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A post shared by Victoria Feige (@victoriafeige)

 

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Sea Sea Hotel, Crescent Head. The sexiest in the world!
Sea Sea Hotel, Crescent Head. The sexiest surf-themed hotel in the world!

World’s sexiest surf-themed hotel readies for opening just metres from iconic pointbreak

Twenty-four hour surf-inspired TV channel, sexy-as-anything seventies-styled rooms, trinkets by Ozzie Wright.

While I’m loathe to describe surfing in this epoch as sexy, surf ponchos, surf hats, beach wagons and VALs earnestly describing two-stage pop-ups over espresso martinis in bars from Aragum Bay to Canggu would puncture any libido, there was a time, believe it or nay, when surfers were as bewitching as any movie or rock star. 

That was the nineteen-seventies, of course, when men like the baseball-bat swinging, send-the-king-of-the-Hui to jail hell-raiser Ian “Kanga” Cairns was showering anyone within a 12,000 nautical radius with his testosterone fountain and Bunker Spreckels, surfing’s divine prince of decadence as his Taschen book would be called, who employed Art Brewer to follow him around and record his surf and carnal adventures.

And it’s this epoch the the world’s sexiest hotelier and Ksubi denim founder, George Gorrow, along with model wife Cisco Tschurtschenthale, has channeled as they transfigure the old Crescent Head Resort & Conference Centre, five hours north of Sydney, into a 25-room hip hotel. 

 

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Ain’t nothing romantic about the old joint at 30-34 Pacific St, four hundred or so metres from the relatively fun, if undemanding, point that last shot into the news in July, 2021, when a longboarder was hit by a ten-foot Great White.

It’s taken a few years for Georgie and Cisco to get the joint open, it was supposed to open back in late 2022. But, this is Australia where tradesmen rule the labour market and if you ain’t dipping c-notes for every hour he’s on the tools, ain’t nothing gonna happen. 

But, here we are, four months away from opening of the  Sea Sea Hotel, inspired, says George, by a “70’s surf club hotel.”

There’s a lot of dark timber on the walls, unpainted bricks, concrete floors, photos from seventies photographer maestro Peter Crawford, who once, shortly after dying, visited your old pal DR in a dream while he was in Morocco. and art from Ozzie Wright, among others. 

“I love surfing and the wave is one of the best in Australia,” says George.

Georgie and Cisco’s attention to detail is apparent in the 24-hour music vid channel called Sea Sea TV (CCTV), described as a “surfer’s version of the old legendary MTV.

Bookings just opened for November and, oowee, ain’t it just the fit for a swinging little trip up or down the coast with a side-serving of logger point waves or, slightly further afield, the Hossegor-like trenches of the beachies.

 

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Filipe Toledo (pictured) and that Hotline Bling.
Filipe Toledo (pictured) and that Hotline Bling.

Small wave wizard Filipe Toledo channels former rap star Drake ahead of Olympic surf debut

Wop, wop, wop, wop, wop.

The Olympics is but weeks away now and the Parisienne streets are teeming with preparation. Workmen busily spackle exteriors, apply signage to walls, generally hustle and bustle about. Yes, it will be a glorious Games, of this I’m certain and even more certain after hearing about Antoine Arnault admitting that his family’s Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy is designing the medals that will soon be hung around athletes’ necks.

Ahhhh the City of Lights but, of course, our surf heroes will not be here to enjoy. They will be halfway across the world on the island of Tahiti facing clawing over that Teahupo’o ledge.

Surf fans, near and far, are very excited and throwing their money at bookies after odds just opened. Derek Rielly dutifully reported that “the market expects Gabriel Medina to win (3-1) followed by John John Florence (4-1), Jack Robinson (4.90-1), Kauli Vaast (8-1), Griffin Colapinto (14-1) and Filipe Toledo at 26-1.”

Yes, the brave coward has better odds than countryman, and hell charger, Joao Chianca, Australia’s Ethan Ewing and Japan by way of Huntington Beach’s Kanoa Igarashi even though he has famously refused to paddle Head Place, scoring a historic 0.00 heat score, and, years later, losing to two elderly men.

But maybe the aforementioned bookmakers see something we don’t (due BeachGrit’s severe Instagram blockage)? Might the Li’l Lion be channeling his inner 6 God?

In a stirring post, Toledo can be seen brushing his teeth with braided hair calling in the power of Drake. Except has the small wave wizard, and bookies, not been following popular culture? As you clearly know, the Canadian rapper was once on the top of his game until, that is, he decided it was a good idea to paddle Kendrick Lamar and then…

…an over the falls annihilation that somehow gets worse by the day.

In any case, have you ever ad your hair braided?

In Bali or Mexico or somewhere like such?

Be honest.

Also, have you ever taken a bathroom selfie cuz you thought you looked tres sexy?

Same honesty applies.

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