In stunning slap, abusive World Surf League
omits “Crowner of Champions” Lower Trestles from new sweatshirt
ahead of Finals Day
By Chas Smith
Love 'em and leave 'em.
Currently, things could not be going worse for
the World Surf League and its relationship with Lower Trestles. Its
2024 Championship Tour season is limping into San Clemente with a
forecast so dismal, so sad, that even its forecast partner Surfline
is having trouble mustering enough energy to actively lie.
Making matters even more troubling, after three years spent
touting the “skate park” as the best place on earth to crown surf
champions, the WSL recently pivoted away, deciding next year’s
champions at Fiji’s Cloudbreak.
If that was not abusive enough, the “Global Home of Surfing” has
just dropped its hottest swag yet, a stone grey hooded sweatshirt
with the WSL logo big at the top, a list of its favorite waves
underneath.
Banzai Pipeline, Oahu, Hawaii
Sunset Beach, Oahu, Hawaii
Supertubos, Peniche, Portugal
Bells Beach, Australia
Margaret River, Australia
Teahupo’o, Tahiti.
That’s it.
That’s all.
No Lower Trestles, San Clemente, California even though it
hosted the inaugural Finals Day and the subsequent two.
Even though small wave wizard Filipe Toledo was crowned twice
upon the cobbled stone.
Even though former and disgraced CEO Erik Logan changed the
spelling of great to gr8 on Cair Paravel’s stage.
Absolutely cold blooded and Cloudbreak, Tavarua, Fiji should
take note of how the World Surf League treats its exes.
Like trash.
Like worse.
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In shot over World Surf League bow,
Brothers Gudauskas release scintillating Lowers compilation on eve
of Finals Day
By Chas Smith
Welcome to the dark side.
By all accounts, the World Surf League
lightly-ballyhooed Finals Day will both commence and wrap tomorrow
in what is being called “chest-high” surf. Favorites, on the men’s
side, include Italo Ferreira and John Squared Florence. The women’s
cup likely lifted by Caroline Marks and her “overscored,
metronomic” backside attack.”
But, and again, all surf above the waist, maybe, but below the
chin.
Un-serious.
The Brothers Gudauskas, Tanner, Pat and Dane, have long been
favorites in our surfing world, adored for their good vibes and
smiling faces. But might darkness lurk right underneath those shiny
happy visages? In a cruel move not seen since Kelly Slater unveiled
his fake wave hours after the hard working li’l plumber Adriano de
Souza won his world title, the three have just dropped a
scintillating Lowers edit that will certainly overshadow whatever
happens on the cobbled stone tomorrow.
I did not think they had the mean in them, to be honest, but am
here for this new Dark Gudauskas turn.
Suck it, WSL.
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Debra and Martin Robinson. Photo: 9News
Parents of Australian brothers murdered
while surfing in Mexico give heart-wrenching first interview
By Chas Smith
"We don't have a family anymore."
The surf world was rocked to its core, last
spring, when news came out that two Australian brothers, Callum and
Jake Robinson, and their American friend, Jack Carter Rhoad, had
been murdered while on a Baja California surf trip. So many travel
south, to Mexico’s northernmost peninsula, for warmer waves and
better food making the brutal killing that much more visceral.
After having gone missing, Mexican authorities found the burnt
pick-up the three had been driving before discovering their bodies
pitched into a well at a remote campsite. Four Mexican nationals
were soon arrested, the motive described as “a robbery gone
wrong.”
Now, for the first time, the Robinson parents are speaking out
about the anguish, the torture of losing it all. Martin and Debra
sat down for an interview with
9News, Debra saying, “We had these dreams, as every
parents do, for their children.”
“And I just wanted them to have a good life. Now, they’re not
going to happen and we have to readjust to that, that fact we don’t
have a family anymore,” Martin added, heartbreakingly
Callum, 33, and Jake, 30, were both ambitious, talented and
successful. Callum a member of Australia’s national
lacrosse team, Jake set to start working in a hospital in Geelong.
Through the tragedy, hundreds of people donated money to the
family, some $500,000 USD raised. The parents have set up a charity
to be used for people wanting to go into sport or medicine.
“Something that we learnt about our children which has become
more apparent is that they really encouraged other people, so we
are hoping that the money will be used to encourage other people to
pursue what they need to,” Marin closing at the end.
Impossible to imagine this pain.
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Game-changing shredders Molly Picklum and Caity Simmers
at Pipeline. "For the fucking girls," as Caity correctly pointed
out.
On eve of world title showdown, gender
equity still evades embattled World Surf League
By Shane Durian
Despite everything, in 2024 men still get the mine
and women still get the shaft!
Six years ago today, the WSL announced that female
athletes would receive the same prize money as men across all its
events.
A landmark decision and a first among US-based sports
leagues.
The equity-minded folks of the WSL followed that up in 2022 by
fully aligning the stops on the Women’s Championship Tour with the
Men’s, bringing the top surf ladies of the world back to hallowed
and dangerous locations like Pipeline and Teahupo’o.
Gender equality locked and loaded.
Or is it?
Every surfer knows that the most valuable currency among surfers
is not money, but waves. And if we look at equity in terms of
quality waves, it paints a very different picture.
Sunset notwithstanding, the first half of this year was a
shocker for waves on the Championship Tour. Surf fans endured the
spectacle of pivotal heats going down in blown-out, marginally small or inconsistent conditions.
(As an aside, you can always tell a crap day of competitive
surfing by how the highlights video is edited – unremarkable single
manoeuvres intercut with lots of b-roll? Them some shitty
waves…)
If you’ve clicked on the links above, you may have noticed a
pattern: the ladies feature heavily.
The picture becomes even clearer if we look at the numbers.
Behold my pie charts, coded in Surfline-speak.
The pies don’t lie! Men get the ring, women get
the finger!
The men have actually done OK this year. They’ve only had to
deal with six days (out of 32) held in “poor” or “poor to fair”
waves.
Meanwhile, the long-suffering women of the CT have done nearly a
third of their surfing (nine out of 28 days) in “poor” or “poor to
fair” waves. For ladies who were unlucky enough to suffer the
dreaded mid-season cut, over half of their run days were on the
crappy end of things.
The tragedy of this is that when the girls have been sent out in
epic conditions, we’ve seen some all-time performances: Molly
Picklum charging a perfect Pipeline pit that would’ve got at least
a 9 in a men’s heat, and then whacking a massive Sunset section
that many male pros would dodge; Tatiana Weston-Webb earning a
proper 10 in a throaty Teahupo’o pit; Erin Brooks threading caves
and whacking sections with whiplike poise at Cloudbreak.
The consensus is clear among surf fans, male and female alike:
the women’s competition has been more exciting than the men’s this
year.
So why are we sending them (and not the men) out in blown-out
side-shore slop in Portugal, tiny Pipeline and even smaller
Margaret River?
Sure, we’ve come a long way since the bad old days when the
women would be sent out once the tide or wind had gone real bad.
But we’re still far from the promised land of equity and
equality.
Jerusalem next year?
Meanwhile, there is another dimension by which the WSL is
unequal.
At the start of each year, the Championship tour boasts a stable
of 34 men and just 16 women. At the mid-year cut that’s whittled
down to 22 men and 10 women. At no point does the number of women
on tour reach even half the number of men.
(There’s another statistic for you).
It’s hard to argue that we need more than 16 women on tour at
this point in women’s surfing. If you look down the competitive
ranks, there’s just a of couple ladies who have never featured as
full-time competitors on the Championship Tour and who look like
they belong there. That’s Erin Brooks and Sierra Kerr. Erin’s well
on her way to clinching her spot on the CT for 2025, and Sierra
will follow soonish.
What’s easier to argue is that 34 men is far too many. There are
some talents who would miss out on qualification if we dropped the
number of surfers on tour. But it’s indisputable that the current
men’s draw is bloated to the max in terms of scheduling. Before the
cut, the first 16 men’s heats eliminates just four surfers. That’s
over a full day of competition spent lightly rearranging the
basement of the rankings. Sometimes, that first day of
near-meaningless heats has wasted the very best conditions of the
waiting period.
My favourite fix here is to rip the band-aid off and cut the
men’s draw down to 23 surfers. This would not only move the number
of surfers on tour to a more equitable split, but also make it
easier to send the women out in waves that don’t suck.
What’s more, the wave quality for the men would improve too.
With less heats to run, it’s way easier for contest directors to
be picky about the conditions. For evidence, just look at how much
better the second half of the year has been compared to the first
half.
Huey has been slightly kinder to the WSL in recent months, but
the difference in the pie charts below is principally that events
before the cut need around five full days to run, and after the cut
only need three days.
Again, pies find it impossible to lie! Better
waves in back half of year but still men get the mine, women get
the shaft!
Will the WSL do the right thing and move towards both gender
equality and a better quality product?
Probably not this year, or the next.
But as the shift of Finals Day from Lower Trestles this year to
Cloudbreak next year illustrates, if enough people start calling
bullshit on their current modus operandi they’ll eventually
bite.
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Depp or Gerr? You be the judge. Photo:
Instagram
Johnny Depp mobbed by surf fans at airport
after getting Brad Gerlach lookalike teeth!
By Chas Smith
"Brad Gerlach looking fire!"
Johnny Depp is an American treasure, having
starred in more iconic movies than John Waters can shake a
moustache at. The now 61-year-old entered the consciousness, as t
were, with a 1984 turn in the classic franchise A Nightmare on Elm
Street but really became famous as a teen-appearing cop on 21 Jump
Street.
From there it was the moon, or, rather, stars. Cry-Baby, Ed
Scissorhands, What’s Eating Gil Grape, Benny and Joon etc. etc. and
etc. culminating in the bigger-than-anything Pirates of the
Caribbean series.
Life was good. Great, even, until… Amber Heard.
The trial ‘tween Depp and his ex-wife became a sordid bit of
ugly, much behind-the-scenes business shared that tainted the
cinema hero’s reputation including… well, I guess limited to his
bad teeth.
Photos of Capt. Jack Sparrow’s chompers went viral during the
courtroom proceedings with followers aghast at their
rotten-looking appearance. The peanut gallery
immediately throwing peanuts. “Why do i have to see closeup pics of
johnny depp’s teeth against my will,” one X-user asked, while a
second declared, “Johnny Depp just looks like someone grabbed his
teeth and painted them black.”
A third, going for the jugular, simply stated, “Seeing that pic
of Johnny Depp’s teeth on my tl just ruined my mood.”
Well, it appears that Depp listened, pondered then went and got
a fresh pair of tusks, clearly asking the dentist to give him the
“full Brad Gerlach.”
New photos just emerged of
Donnie Brasco at an airport in the Bahamas by surf
fans mistaking him for the Wave Ki master.
Gerlach, of course, beloved by the aforementioned surf fans for
generations.
Brad Gerlach? Photo:
killerbartender/Instagram
Johnny Depp? Photo:Instagram
“Am I right too [sic] see that his teeth are looking brighter
than ever before???” one Instagram commenter triple asked. Another
added, “Is it [me] or does [sic] his teeth look more straight?”
A third, right to the point, “Brad Gerlach looking fire!”
