San Clemente wins Rookie of the Year.

San Clemente slaps surf world upside head after sweeping WSL Rookie of the Year honors!

5 days ago

"It’s insane and such a big accomplishment because there are so many incredible surfers on the list of Rookie of the Year..."

The surf world was rocked to its very core, overnight, after a sleepy Southern California beach town made famous by Richard Nixon swept Rookie of the Year honors for the 2024 World Surf League Championship Tour season. Griffin Colapinto’s brother Crosby and Sawyer Lindblad each won in their respective, though maybe antiquated, gender category in what should be the teeth of a Brazilian Storm.

In its The World Surf League declared it proudly “recognizes Sawyer Lindblad (USA) and Crosby Colapinto (USA) as the 2024 Rookies of the Year following an outstanding season on the Championship Tour (CT). The San Clemente, California, duo, Colapinto and Lindblad, finished the season as the highest ranked among the 2024 CT Rookie class. At 19-years-old Lindblad capped her year ranked No. 8 in the world. Colapinto at 23-years-old made the Mid-season Cut and finished ranked No. 10. Both join an elite group of Rookie of the Year recipients, including WSL Champions Caitlin Simmers (USA), Stephanie Gilmore (AUS), Carissa Moore (HAW), and Italo Ferreira (BRA).”

Lindblad, ever gracious, stated, “It’s super cool to be Rookie of the Year and join surfers including Carissa and Steph on that list. I had a goal of being Rookie of the Year this year, and I’m so happy I was able to accomplish it. Some challenges I faced this year was having to surf waves like Pipe and Teahupo’o. I’ve never surfed waves like that in my life and it was a really fun challenge and also really intimidating at times. But, I was happy to get past those fears and get some of the best waves of my life.”

Colapinto added, “It’s insane and such a big accomplishment because there are so many incredible surfers on the list of Rookie of the Year and to join that is really special. Being in a rookie class this year that was strong with Cole, Kade, Eli, and Jacob Willcox and getting to be on top is really cool. I think one of the biggest highlights was Portugal, just because the Mid-season Cut was coming up, the pressure was on, and I made it to the Semifinals. Griffin was in the other Semifinal and he made it to the Final. It got really close to us having a man-on-man Final. It didn’t happen, but just the idea of being so close, getting a big result and Griffin winning was really special.”

All very cool but, again, no Brazilians even close to the honors, San Clemente thoroughly whipping the Land of Order and Progress. Do you think there will be a national reckoning, there, in preparation for the upcoming 2024 World Surf League Championship Tour season or do you imagine the surf-mad nation will cross that proverbial bridge when it comes, knowing that both Gabriel Medina and the aforementioned Ferreira are considered title favorites what with Finals Day moving to Cloudbreak.

Filipe Toledo’s journey, unfortunately, finished.

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Westerly Windina shortly before transitioning back to OG surf hunk Petey Drouyn.

Controversial documentary explores trans surf icon Peter Drouyn’s decision to de-transition

By Derek Rielly

6 days ago

“People definitely felt the film was too hot to handle. They were scared of it.”

Over the course of the next few months, the beautifully crafted documentary The Life and Death of Westerly Windina will be showing at a handful of film festivals while its producers work out a way to get the film in front of a larger audience.

The rough back story you know.

In the late sixties and through the seventies Queensland surfer Peter Drouyn was one of the hottest in the biz. And when he wasn’t giving hell in the water he was busy putting his wildly creative brain to work. He invented man-on-man surfing, which continues to this day, introduced surfing to China, became a lawyer, owned a fleet of surf stores, ran a drama school, and, at age fifty four, slipped out of his masculine shell to reappear as head-turning show-girl Westerly Windina.

Ten years later, and followed by directors Alan White and Jamie Brisick – Briz wrote a book about Drouyn called Becoming Westerly, buy here, you should, etc – flew to Thailand for gender reassignment surgery.

A happy ending of sorts, you’d think, but Drouyn was never afraid of doin’ the old switcharoo and, hence, The Life…and Death…of Westerly Windina.

Earlier today, I gave Alan White, whose 1999 film Erskinville Kings launched the careers of Hugh Jackman and Joel Edgerton, a call to discuss The Life and Death of Westerly Windina.

First, you gotta congratulate the director, who is sixty-four but looks oh so many moons younger, like a haggard thirty-nine-year-old nightclub habitué maybe, on what he calls “an epic journey” but you gotta also, say, a dozen years, brother, what took you so long?

Ol Al laughs and says,

“If you’d gone back to 2011 when Jamie and I are about to jump on the plane to come over and interview Peter for the first time, we thought the project would be complete within eighteen months, two years tops. It was a super interesting story and one worth telling. There’s really only one Peter Drouyn and only one Westerly Windina. And it was right at the beginning of the Caitlin Jenner transgender sports movement and the Peter Drouyn story needed to be out there. His transition was such a unique journey that we strongly felt we needed to chase it. We’ve really ridden the rollercoaster of the whole transgender zeitgeist for good or bad.”

Alan points out that two of the executive producers were transgender, which was real important for one pivotal part of the film, like, the ending, which we’ll hit a little later.

“We got a surprising pushback to the film, people definitely thought it was too hot to handle, they were scared of it. It was really surprising. We thought, is this another one of Peter Drouyn’s stories that is hobbled or lost or doesn’t get the attention it truly deserves? Because Peter’s a visionary thinker. He’s such an unusual human being, the way his creative mind works. He’s written multiple screenplays. The guy doesn’t stop trying to find ways to express himself.”

It’s right now in the interview, and at this point I haven’t seen it although I will shortly after, that I note that Alan only talks about Peter Drouyn and not Westerly Windina.

That’s one hell of a plot spoiler, I say.

Surf hunk to showgirl and back again.

“It is and…look…I prefer people to see the film and to see where Peter and Westerly are now. Peter was never put to bed and Westerly was never put to bed. They’ve coexisted as an idea over that period of time and the film supplies the answers to that. You have to see it to contextualise the movie.”

And, yeah, the ending. Westerly transitions back into Peter.

But, says Alan, there was pressure to end the film at the Hall of Fame awards sequence where Drouyn accepts his award as Westerly and where he’s all dolled up to look like Marilyn Monroe.

Detransitioning, for the progressives, has got a stigma around it, y’see. A bit of a whiff of the right-wing crowd. Only fairy tales allowed in the happy world of rainbows.

But the exec producers, by virtue of being trans, and aware that what makes a good story is truth telling, got it through.

“A lot of people originally said that this was a desperate cry for attention,” says Alan. “But there is absolutely no way on earth you’d ever go through what Peter went through. That transgender transition is like psychic upheaval on a major scale. It takes courage and commitment.”

Peter Drouyn, who is seventy-five now, still lives in a crummy lil joint in Labrador, a down-at-heel adjunct to the northern end of the Gold Coast with his thirty-something son Zachary, the fruit of his one marriage

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Greatest surf character actor ever, Keanu Reeves, on stage at Ohana Fest.

Surf fans pitched into frenzy as Keanu Reeves’ Dogstar takes stage at Eddie Vedder’s Ohana Fest!

By Chas Smith

6 days ago

Makua Rothman too.

It is flat in Southern California, still, with a strange mucky gloom hanging in the sky. It has been this way for months, now, driving surf fans to the brink of madness though, today, none of that matters. For a mania has begun to take hold that has nothing to do with no waves nor sun.

A hysteria.

For but yesterday, Keanu Reeves’ band Dogstar took the stage at Eddie Vedder’s Ohana Festival in Dana Point, California.

Johnny Utah himself plucking his bass strings while surf fans, crazed, rubbed their eyes in the audience. Dogstar, of course, was formed in Los Angeles, California in 1991 when Reeves saw a man wearing a hockey sweater in the supermarket. The two got to talking, then jamming, then, as Reeves tells it, “You know, we started in a garage, and then you end up starting to write songs, and then you’re like ‘Let’s go out and play them!’, and then you’re like ‘Let’s go on tour!’, and then…you’re playing.”

There is not word, yet, on how the show was as surf fans are still in a cloud of disbelief but take a gander here.

Makua Rothman also opened the day.

Vedder and his Pearl Jam closed it.

But were you there, live, in the audience? How was it? I heard that Pearl Jam played a never-before-performed tune off a 1999 release called “The Whale Song.” Vedder said, from stage, “It’s a song written by one of our great drummers named Jack Irons. We asked Jack but he could not be here. But we didn’t just get the next best thing, we got something equally as good as his dad, it’s Mr. Zach Irons who’s gonna join us on this next song. He’s gonna play guitar, left-handed, and we’re gonna sing and we hope it connects and sends vibrations to our friends under the water.”

If you missed yesterday and have fallen into the deepest of depressions, don’t worry. The festival kicks on today with Sting headlining. Tomorrow it’s back to Pearl Jam and Alanis Morissette at the top of the bill.

No more Dogstar but one hand in pocket, the other giving a high five ain’t bad.

Buy tickets here.

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Westerly Windina ponders her gender assignment surgery. Big decision!

Transgender surf icon’s battles laid bare in brave new documentary, “The Life and Death of Westerly Windina!”

By Derek Rielly

7 days ago

"Westerly has been living in public housing on Australia’s Gold Coast. She is alone, poor, and often taunted by her neighbours.”

Fifty-five years ago, Peter Drouyn was the best surfer in Australia, better even, than the icon Nat Young. But how do you want to say it? Drouyn was, by nearly all accounts, an asshole swollen by ego and torn apart inside an infinite sense of injustice.

But then,

“In 2002, Peter suffered a traumatic surfing accident that nearly drowned him. Not long after, Peter’s feminine side fully emerged. ‘It was a supernova,’ said Westerly. ‘It just kicked in one night, and suddenly Peter went, Westerly was there.’

Six years later,

“Peter Drouyn announced on Australian national television that he was living as a woman. His new name, she said, was Westerly Windina. Since then, Westerly has been living in public housing on Australia’s Gold Coast. Her life is not easy. She is alone, poor, and often taunted by her neighbours.”

Now that’s a story, right? Surf hunk to showgirl!

The wildly well regarded surf journalist Jamie Brisick thought so and Westerly became the subject of Briz’s masterwork, Becoming Westerly.

The book is better than good. The best of all the surf bios. Part thriller, part melodrama, all page-turner. To be and not to be, if you gets my drift.

Now, and after so much ado I’d forgotten about it, almost a dozen “epic” years, the documentary of Westerly’s journey, including her flight to south-east Asia for gender reassignment surgery, is just about to light up screens.

The Life and Death of Westerly Windina premieres on October 19 at the Palace Theatre in Byron Bay as part of the Byron Bay International Film Festival.

As an addendum to all this, I interviewed Drouyn a couple of times and found a delightful egoist preparing, it seemed at the time, for his greatest performance. At one point, he confided in me when I asked him about the time he posed nude for a women’s mag that his balls were so big, like basketballs he said, that he could sit on them.

Little did I know!

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So classic and gr8.

World Surf League makes linguistic history by dubbing first-ever Abu Dhabi surf event in brand-new wave pool “classic”

By Chas Smith

1 week ago

It's gr8.

The World Surf League, global home of surfing since 2015 circa 1976 except when it comes to women’s surfing history, is not ever shy about pressing in to a wild linguistic frontier. But who could ever forget, almost two years ago, when Stephanie Gilmore won her eighth world title by storming from last to first on Lower Trestles’ cobbled stone. Then CEO Erik Logan, pre-disgrace, stood on the stage and declared, “I want to be the first to say this to you and to the world. You are the greatest and we will spell ‘great’ with ‘eight.’”

So there we are. “Gr8” used from thence forth in all official World Surf League communications.

Outdoing itself, though, is the currently running Abu Dhabi Longboard Classic. Now, this is the first ever professional surfing event in the United Arab Emirates’ proud history. It is also the very first professional surfing event in Kelly Slater’s just-finished tub. Two groundbreaking distinctions dubbed “classic.”

So gr8.

But are you watching?

Me neither but you can listen to David Lee Scales and I chat about it here. We also have a letter from someone who spotted what must have been a pro big wave surfer getting beat down by Oregon. Can you guess who it is? Discussion around the hour mark.

Enjoy.

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Eat beach grit spam!