Evidence that surf great Kelly Slater has actually retired grows with release of sensual new photo book

"From his famous morning pancakes to strumming guitar with his friends."

It is certainly beginning to feel that Kelly Slater might be retiring from professional surfing. The 11x world champion has been on a “best life tour” of late, popping around Europe, golfing, attending college football games with famous friends. Of course he is taking some time to surf his various tubs, also with famous friends, and generally seems to be in a good mood.

That easy life.

To cap off the overall sense that the greatest competitive surfer of all time is moving gracefully into his golden years, a retrospective photo book by the legendary Todd Glaser has just hit the shelves. Forwarded by Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder, Kelly Slater: A Life of Waves “celebrates fifteen years of Slater’s exhilarating adventures, from 2008 to 2023: Slater’s most iconic surf sessions including the first-ever wave ridden at his Surf Ranch, as well as behind-the-scenes shots inside Slater’s home, from his famous morning pancakes to strumming guitar with his friends.”

The tome has raced up Amazon’s best-seller charts and is currently the #1 new release in surfing (#5 overall) and #5 in celebrity photography.

There are currently no customer reviews but the whole business certainly does have the essence of finality, no? That 2023 is, officially, the end even though Slater surfed through 2024. So, will you be sad, come Pipeline Pro, when he is surfing as a wildcard, also surfing as a wildcard in Abu Dhabi, J-Bay, Tahiti and a smattering of others?

The end of an era, certainly.

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Kolohe Andino and Julian Wilson online fued
Beach fight between Julian Wilson and Kolohe Andino, as imagined in the movie Point Break.

Surf Olympians Kolohe Andino and Julian Wilson square off in wild online blood feud

“Surfing’s fun brother. Stop spraying your negativity.”

Former tours surfers Kolohe Andino And Julian Wilson, two men who are popular, admired, celebrated and let’s face it, erotic artifacts for any breathing homosexual man, have squared off online in a wild blood feud.

Two days ago, on the Instagram account of Rivvia Projects, Julian Wilson’s start-up clothing label famous for a style which suggests the sex kitten look meets New Romantic, a clip of Wilson surfing Lowers, Kolohe’s home wave, was posted along with the caption:

“Straight from the cobblestones of Trestles to the social media internet. A very recent clip of the boss himself, Julian Wilson, giving the Lowers lineup a bit of an education in high performance surfing.”

 

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A post shared by Rivvia Projects (@rivvia.projects)

 

Lowers, of course, is the high-performance wave that gifted Filipe Toledo two world titles and Kolohe has long been associated with the wave.

Kolohe shot back, “Sick wave. Fucked caption.”

Since leaving the tour Kolohe has discovered a fine candour in his work. When launching his own clothing label, 2 percent, he stunned surf fans with a profanity laden screed on Instagram.

“Surfing culture, big time surf brands and the ‘surf lifestyle’ are FUCKING dead,” wrote the thirty-year-old Daddy of two. “You got every FUCKING up and coming kid thinking they are one of the Paul brothers. Trying to gain cloud in any way, shape or form, with no gumption, no backbone, or no idea. These kids are not leaders, they are followers.”

The short message on the Rivvia account launched a cavalcade of stunned responses, some for, some against, the Californian.

“Surely this isn’t the real Kolohe? No way he could be this big a wanker.”

“Fkn sook. Have a listen to yourself.”

Brother’s a bit neggo now he’s washed up.

Then, this exchange tween Kolohe and Wilson.

Wilson: “Surfing’s fun brother. Stop spraying your negativity.”

Kolohe replies, “Tell your IG intern to get a grip. Trestles don’t need no education on high performance surfing.”

Wilson retorts, “It’s called tongue and (sic) cheek. Lighten up kid.”

And the intern himself,

“IG Intern here. Really sorry if I offended anyone. I was just trying to keep the boss happy so I can hopefully get a full time job. Julian Wilson told me if this post gets 1000 likes I’m officially hired.”

BeachGrit has always held Kolohe Andino close to our hearts. I knew his daddy Dino during his wild nineties epoch and first met the boy prodigy, then sixteen, on a holiday to the Canary Islands where he exhibited what were then exotic flavours of aerials. Kolohe’s sense of humour is light and legendary.

My favourite Julian Wilson moment came some years back when I was commissioned by Surfer to do a Hot Seat interview with the kid. Without any responses to my questions that deserved ink, I made up the interview using quotes from George Hamilton, Adolf Hitler and a few other notables.

Crazy thing? No one noticed.

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Hero (pictured) in action.
Hero (pictured) in action.

Heroic New Jersey surfers break from surf contest to save drowning fishermen

"The incident made all the more impressive due the fact that surfers and fisherpeople are oft enemies."

New Jersey has nothing left to prove itself as the best surfing state in the contiguous 48. A coastal strip of such heartiness and heroics as to deeply shame the lily-livers of Florida and California. But tough don’t take a day off and, therefore, let us travel to Avalon Beach in South Jersey wherein we meet the Cape May County Boardriders.

The fellas were in the water for the yearly “Battle at the Jetty” surf contest when disaster struck. A rogue wave, you see, caught two fishermans there on the aforementioned breakwater unawares and swept them right into the boil.

Thinking nothing of priority interference or “sliding into the excellent range,” the champions broke straight away and paddled over to save the day. Amongst them was an 18-year-old nursing student named Cooper Lysinger. Thinking nothing of his own safety, the young man used his board to float one of trawlers to the comforts of shore.

“It reinforces the fact that I want to be a nurse and just go and help people,” Lysinger said afterward and will no doubt be soon flooded with marriage offers from eligible bachelorettes from around the nation.

Witnesses declared that the fishermen needed no medical attention once upon the sand and were able to appropriately thank the white knights for their assistance.

The incident made all the more impressive due the fact that surfers and anglers are oft enemies. I, for one, feel an internal boil at those who stand on the shore and cast their evil hooks into the sea at beaches that have fine enough waves in Southern California. What are they hoping to catch? Stingrays? I can’t say that I would magnanimous if one of them lost footing and became dragged out to sea.

Do you think lesser of me, now?

Sorry.

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Mitch Parkinson surfing Aragum Bay, Sri Lanka
Happy lil Mitch Parkinson back in 2019 when he won a WQS contest in Aragum Bay.

Three Sri Lankans arrested in connection with threats to kill Israeli surfers in Aragum Bay

The terror threats in retaliation for Israel killing Hezbollah's revolving door leadership…

Four days back, Israeli surfer were warned to get the hell out of Aragum Bay, a pretty beach town two hundred miles east of the capital Colombo and famous for its soft and easy-to-shred waves. 

Per Chas Smith, author of Reports from Hell, read the review here,

“The United States National Security Council strongly exhorted Israeli surfers in, and around, Sri Lanka’s Arugam Bay to leave the region after receiving what it described as credible threats indicating an imminent attack.” 

Of the roughly seven hundred Israelis kicking around the town, which has a population of seven thousand, all but three have now either fled the town for other parts of Sri Lanka or flew home to be bombed in the safety of their communal bunkers.

“I love coming here and my family loves coming here, and we surf for about three to four hours every day when my sons are here,” one Israeli surfer told Reuters “I don’t think there is a serious security threat.”

Still, there are 16 armed men, including police commandos, stationed around his little house in Aragum Bay. 

The two other Israeli surfers now share their homestay with eight cops and special force personnel.

The Sri Lankans, who only got ‘emselves out a twenty-six year civil war in 2009, have very little appetite for Islamic terrorism despite it being in vogue on college campuses in the intellectually and morally compromised, and confused, West.  

On Easter Sunday in 2019, 350 people were killed in a spate of suicide bomb attacks by Islamic State targeting churches and hotels. Reprisal mobs quickly followed. 

Three Sri Lankans have been arrested over the threats to go on a Jew-killing spree, in retaliation of the killing, over and over and over, of Hezbollah’s revolving leadership in Lebanon.

There have been unconfirmed reports the men were to be paid $US17000 for the hits.

Mulsims make up around ten percent of Sri Lanka’s twenty-mill population, Christians run in at seven, Hindus at thirteen and Buddhists the overwhelming majority at seventy percent.

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Longtom reviews Chas Smith’s Reports from Hell: “Chas Smith looks, as my Grandaddy would say, like a ‘long streak of pelican shit.”

"This is the first Chas Smith book I’ve read but I already know it’s by far the best."

Four years ago Chas Smith’s Middle East memoir Reports from Hell was loosed into the world. As of two days ago, it was re-rereleased. Here is the great Longtom’s original review.

Fifty-five dollars I paid. Hard cover.

Ordered it in and had to wait weeks like a custom board for it to show up, all the way from America.

“Fifty-five dollars hey,” the babe at the counter of the Lennox book shop smirked at me. “What? You gone off your fuggen Russians?”

“Nah, nah” I waved a little penguin copy of Dostoevsky’s “White Night” at her as rebuttal.

“It’s just, Chas,” I pointed at the name printed in yellow under the Title “Reports from Hell”, “is a kind of colleague, boss and I wanted to pay full tick so the cunt wouldn’t feel I was treating his book kindly because I got it for free”.

“Ah, yep” she nodded, “the reviewer’s curse”.

I paid overs because I wanted no bias.

If I got gypped, then I could feel justified in giving it to Chas, full blast. Also knowing: when I take up my 80 grand (plus benefits) package at the WSL he could go after me without kid gloves. I hate kid gloves.

Reports from Hell is a very funny book, a rollicking adventure yarn, geopolitical exposition and chronicle of a period in recent history that already feels incredibly ancient. I refer to the post 2001 War on Terror, whereby the West, principally the United States of America referred to by Al Qaeda as the far enemy, invaded the Middle East as retribution for September 11 and caused a conflagration that the World is still coming to terms with.

The basic narrative outline of the book follows Smith and his pals as they make multiple journeys – more than journeys actually, more like the Homeric odysseys of old – to the Middle East in search of the well-spring of Islamic terror, or what his pal Josh more accurately terms: the roots of violent, anti-state radicalism.

The twist in the tale, as we all know, is that Chas combines the search for the roots of Islamic terror with a surf trip. This leads to some very funny scenes. Successfully pitching Surfer mag editor Sam George to bankroll the trip is a highlight of the opening chapters of the book.

The prologue where Smith both interviews and regales former US commander David Petraeus with tales of surfing in Yemen is classic Chas Smith. The prologue ends with a piece of prose which can be regarded as peak Chas: “I have seen and experienced a world vanished forever by an epic explosion, and as General Petraeus starts to drone on about Saudi Arabia being our great ally and a great investment opportunity, I put my Tom Ford sunglasses on, slouch deeply in my chair, and stare into the burning klieg light”.

The prologue hooked me, but one of my terrible weaknesses is reading the ending of a book after I’ve read the first beginning to see whether the juice justifies the potential squeeze, so to speak. Reading a book is a substantial investment of time. Smith’s final line is a classic too, a commitment to a life as a “violent anti-state surf journalist”. I knew I would finish the book after reading it.

That last line, and the book as a whole, can be read both as a prequel to Smith’s surf journalism career and the modus operandi of said career. It illuminates the rambunctious fixation on the superficial which somehow uncovers the swirling morass of absurdity below. Seen through that prism a surf trip to Yemen with a side mission to discover the well-spring of Salafi jihadism in one of the most violent countries on earth makes a weird but perfect sense.

I spent the opening chapters with some unease about whether I would find Smith’s travelling companions Josh and Nate likeable enough to enjoy the book. Soon enough though these fellow young Christian Americans revealed themselves to be perfect foils for the main narrator.

That Christian innocence and lack of depravity did strike me as odd through the opening stanzas, somehow I expected more sex, drugs and rock and roll from our protagonists. Scenes where the guide, driver and protector of the first trip to Yemen, Major Ghamdan is keen on some whoring while the Americans shake their fingers at him in moral disgust have a peculiar comic flavour from the inversion of expected values.

You’d expect the young Americans to be the ones sucked down by what Osama Bin Laden called “the most decadent culture in human history…corrupted by a depth of moral licentiousness never before seen.”

There are very many classic scenes chasing surf in Yemen with Major Ghamdan, which I think justify the price of admission alone.

Smith is very far from the only writer to employ provocation as a chief rhetorical weapon, even if in the chummy world of surf journalism back slapping, pocket pissing and mutual appreciation of flatulences are the far more accepted methods. By the measure of provocation, even if delivered in good faith, he is aligned more with both classic American satirist/humorists like HL Mencken and Mark Twain and more nihilistic European writers like Michel Houllebecq.

Houllebecq stated, “I admit that invective is one of my pleasures. This only brings me problems in life, but that’s it. I attack, I insult. I have a gift for that, for insults, for provocation. So I am tempted to use it,” adding in a later interview, “My desire to displease masks an insane desire to please”.

Without too much speculation, the same motivations could be applied to Smith. The list of stinks his provocations have landed him in is a long and legendary one. Mick Fanning, Rip Curl, the WSL, former BG writer Rory Parker, the Ashton Gogganses, many more I’ve forgotten and, most notably, Hezbollah.

A good chunk of the middle third of Reports from Hell is spent detailing the adventures of Chas and colleagues as war correspondents for an Al Gore internet channel when Israel invaded Lebanon. It’s very good, very funny, very tense writing. A send-up of classic war correspondents and a damn fine account of being taken hostage by Hezbollah during an actual war.

What makes Chas relish for the stink so comic is his lack of genetic gifts as far as the pugilistic arts are concerned. He looks, as my Grandaddy would say, like a “long streak of pelican shit”. Or, as my wife whose roots are in the swamps of Essex would say, “he’s all prick and ribs”. Which makes Smith less physically qualified to stare down Hezbollah bro’s or infuriated surf journos than it does to embrace designer jeans.

His development of a new genre of non-fiction, war fashion, with it’s delicate and detailed inventories of clothing and accoutrements pays homage to Bret Easton Ellis’ infamous character Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.

The final third of the book, carried out in an increasingly melancholy tone as the three protagonists began to disentangle and the various dreams and aspirations that had united their quest began to fade bought forth weird and conflicting feelings in me.

It took some time to identify them.

The War on Terror, as horrific as it had been, now seemed far enough back in the distant past to bring on a strange feeling of nostalgia. Nostalgia for a simpler time. And despite my intense fear of Islamic mobs, I felt strange yearnings to be among the goat herders and believers of Yemen.

Radical Islamic fundamentalism is the new alternative discourse claimed Josh at the beginning of the book. Despite the tale being told from the point of view of the Americanos it was increasingly the Yemenis and the Lebanese who’s positions I began to identify with.

That yearning for the pre-modern may be something more universal than accounted for.

Smith runs through a potted history of Islam, up to the development of Al Qaeda by Yemeni-Saudi Osama Bin Laden and Egyptian physician Ayman al-Zawahiri. My ignorance of this geopolitical as well as religious force had been as complete as my lack of knowledge of the surf potential of Yemen.

In a real sense, Reports from Hell, with Christian gents analysing the Middle East is a mirror image of the book the Father of Salafi Jihadism Sayyad Qutb wrote after returning to Egypt after two years in America. In his book, “The America that I have Seen” Qutb found American life primitive and shocking; he saw Americans as “numb to faith in religion, faith in Art, and faith in spiritual values altogether”.

It’s hard to say what Qutb would have thought of Smith and his pals but lacking in faith would not be a criticism he could level against them.

Courage, insouciance and a true belief somehow unite Islamic radicalism, surf culture, war, American decadence and the hunt for true adventure in this very funny book.

This is the first Chas Smith book I’ve read but I already know it’s by far the best.

Buy here.

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