"We love you brother, keep fighting! ‍You got this!"

A Florida surfer was critically injured after hitting the Sunglow Pier off Daytona Beach on Friday morning. Jorge Alvarado, 49, was enjoying a fun little end of summer pulse when disaster struck around 9:00 am. Witnesses say that the Port Orange man might have hit a sandbar first but then struck his head on a piling, disappearing underwater afterward. It took other surfers in the water “several minutes” to free him, rush him to the sand and then directly to the hospital while life-saving measures were being administered.

Tamra Malphurs, director of Volusia County Beach Safety Ocean Rescue, wrote, “Sounds like the lateral current pushed him into the pier after he hit his head.”

Alvarado’s friend, Justin Gore, has set up a GoFundMe in order to help with expenses, explaining, “He (Alvarado) is currently on life support and needs all of the prayers and support he can possibly get. Jorge is loved by so many people and we want to make sure as a community that we take care of him and his family during this difficult time. If you can donate, anything would be greatly appreciated. If you can’t donate, please continue to pray for Jorge and his family. Thank you to all whom help contribute financially and thank you for all of the continued prayers. We love you brother, keep fighting! ‍You got this!”

Thus far, nearly $12,000 of a $25,000 goal has been raised.

Donate here.

All eyes on Kelly Slater.

Political pundits have, as you know, been keeping a hard eye on America’s surf vote as the nation careens toward its next presidential election. The race between current Vice-President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump is neck and neck, both parties scrambling to find heretofore untapped voting blocs that might just maybe tip the scales.

Team Trump made early inroads by flipping the one-time Inertia darling Tulsi Gabbard. She, alongside Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who also turned MAGA, were thought as the best possible chance to bring surfing’s biggest fish, Kelly Slater, into the blue tent.

Slater famously declared he doesn’t vote, though has made his passion for Kennedy known and was also just spotted in Las Vegas eating healthy green food with Gabbard.

Great times in the desert and, maybe, dessert depending what was ordered.

Disgraced ex-World Surf League CEO Erik Logan, who has since become an influencer, was also courted directly by Trump, trying to capitalize on a shared hatred of singer-songwriter Taylor Swift.

Things were looking ever so bleak for Team Harris until, that is, white knight revealed he is also a white guy for Harris. And also Kelly Slater’s friend. Big fish back in play.

Well, the surf vote is not just an American phenomenon. Across the Pacific, Japan will participate in its own snap election in just days, pitting a model aircraft enthusiast against a woman who played drums in a rock band and a young and photogenic surfer who thinks fighting climate change might be “fun” and “sexy.”

Current PM Fumio Kishida flipped the country on its head with the announcement that he would not run at the end of the month, citing the need for “new blood.” His party, the LDP, has ruled Japan for 70 years and is looking to maintain power for another 70s.

The surfer, Shinjiro Koizumi, is currently trailing the rock dummer, Sanae Takaichi, but not by much. His ability on surfboard is described as “keen” by local news, vice-president of political risk advisory firm Teneo James Brady adding he offers, “a nebulous promise of generational change and modernisation of the ruling LDP” though his election would be a win for the status quo, part of a “glut of hereditary politicians.”

If the surf candidate can, anyhow, topple the model aircraft one and the rock drummer one, Teams Trump and Harris will certainly take note and, likely, triple down on efforts to woo wave sliders.

Kelly Slater growing in importance by the day.

"The boards I made are titled “Softboard #1” and “Softboard #2” and essentially exist in opposition to each other."

Surfers certainly consider the boards we ride to be art, but fancy culture rarely considers them such. No surfboards, for example, hang in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art nor Paris’ Louvre. Surfboards are seen as cute or fun kitsch but not serious art. Never to be thought of in the same vein as Matisse nor Rubens.

Never, maybe, until now.

San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, up Central California way, is currently hosting the show “Whose Waters?” in which “nine artists, some who surf and some who don’t, offer their experiences, reflections, and criticisms of all that surfing is and can be.”

Included amongst the tintype photography and investigations into queer imagery using repurposed wetsuit neoprene are two additions by wildly talented local shaper Shea Somma that “play with how specific surfboards signify expert or beginner experience in the water, engaging an exploration of class and privilege in surf culture.”

One appears to be a Wavestorm dangling from its leash plug in undiluted Costco glory.

The other presents as a progressive thruster with wild rails.

Somma declares, “The boards I made are titled “Softboard #1” and “Softboard #2” and essentially exist in opposition to each other: a hand shaped, traditionally built board that looks like a softboard, and a (very)soft board that at first glance appears to be a high performance shortboard. The commodification of surfing, and surfboard manufacture, the shifting culture and demographics of surfers, the conscious and unconscious judgments we make about other surfers vis á vis their equipment, and the processes by which we make these objects were some of the themes I had in mind while making the pieces.”

What emotions do they evoke?

Art, like most things, is best witnessed live and show will be running through Oct. 20.

Find information here.

Speaking of art, though, the great surf filmmaker Joe G. and I once decided that any girl named “Sloan” is a 10 (see above). I think it still holds.