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.

Load Comments

Kelly Slater (insert) and his dream.
Kelly Slater (insert) and his dream.

Kelly Slater set to open “private surf community” in Austin, Texas

(Slater) continued to amass land holdings that now total more than 190 acres...

I thought that dreams belonged to other men ’cause each time I got close they’d fall apart again. I feared my heart would beat in secrecy. I faced the nights alone. Oh, how could I have known, that all my life I only needed you? Oh almost paradise. We’re knockin’ on heaven’s door.

And, friends, it just so happens to be in hotter-than-hippo-tank Austin, Texas, that door.

But you certainly recall the NLand tank from many years ago. One of the first public surf pools to debut, and featuring Wavegarden technology, the facility harkened a bold, new world. The final realization of Herbert Hoover’s 1928 promise for American families to have a chicken in every pot and a wave-generating pond in every neighborhood.

Alas, I can’t really remember what happened, but it fell upon hard time and shuttered, only to be purchased by the Kelly Slater Wave Company and remained… shuttered.

Austonia, a favorite local website, opined three years ago that, “Austin’s surf park made a splash when it opened in 2016, astounding the city’s land-locked surf-lovers with new artificial wave technology. Two years after a company led by the world’s most famous surfer took over, an Austonia drone photo survey shows a desolate site where there once was a thriving attraction that brought surfers from both coasts, and beyond. Surf pools drained and empty, wave generating equipment apparently dismantled, parking lots empty, surf shop and pub closed. Mud, weeds, and only the sound of prairie wind, where once big waves broke to the sounds of joy from excited surfers.”

Well, I suppose the locals with much excess cash on hand can rejoice as the property is being turned into a private “surf-and-condominium community.”

Per the local NBC affiliate:

Over the last several months, details have trickled out regarding what’s being called Austin Surf Club. It’s a partnership between Arizona-based Discovery Land Co. and Kelly Slater — perhaps the most famous surfer in the world — and it’s located not too far from the airport along Navarro Creek Road off State Highway 71, about 15 miles from downtown Austin.

NLand closed for good in November 2018, and companies tied to Slater subsequently purchased the site in southeastern Travis County. Slater had been working to turn the project into a world-class surf destination, similar to a Surf Ranch community operated by his company in Lemoore, California. But the project appeared to be in limbo since then — even as he continued to amass land holdings that now total more than 190 acres, according to Travis County property records.

Are you titillated? Tempted to hop on a waiting list?

While we’re in Austin, did you watch Trump and Rogan’s three hour chat last eve?

Thoughts?

Load Comments

Surf prodigies Bella Kenworthy and Erin Brooks

Women’s surf tour rocked by arrival of teenage surf prodigies Bella Kenworthy and Erin Brooks

Five women advance to the 2025 Championship Tour. Five is not enough women, but life has a way of dealing out numerous disappointments…

Last Wednesday, the women’s Challenger Series came to an end in Brazil. Were you watching? I was not.

At the time, I was in Moreno Valley, California, which seems like a perfectly fine place except for its location very far from where I live.

I wrote the freeway numbers on my arm and actually made it. This felt good! And, I made it back to the coast with just enough time to run out and jump in the ocean at sunset. This also felt very good.

Five women advance to the 2025 Championship Tour, which begins at Pipeline in January. Five is not enough women, but life has a way of dealing out numerous disappointments and we must soldier on despite them. Three women are almost entirely new. The other two, we have seen on Tour previously. On the subject of women we have seen previously, Lakey Peterson has a wildcard for the first seven events.

Let’s get to know the five new girls. It’ll be fun — or at least, more fun than driving all the freeways I could find and a few I couldn’t. Just about anything must surely be better than that.

5. Vahine Fierro

There was a pretty damn fierce battle for this final qualifying slot among Yolanda Hopkins, Luana Silva, Nadia Erostarbe, and Vahine. A second-place finish in Brazil sealed it for Vahine. Now 24, Vahine’s the queen of Tahiti and won last year’s Shiseido Tahiti Pro, where her semifinal against Tati West was one of the best women’s heats of the year. She’s been trying for a few years now to get on Tour, and the rights on the beach-break heavy Challenger Series hasn’t suited her super well.

She’s made it at last, and I’m looking forward to seeing Vahine mixing it up at Pipeline. The rest of the pre-cut schedule, though, is not super goofyfoot friendly. She’ll get to go left in Abu Dhabi, but otherwise, it’s one open face right after another until the cut. Though she’s improved her backhand significantly in recent years, I think Vahine will have a hard time staying above the line. Hopefully, there’s a wildcard ready for Tahiti with her name on it, because she sure does surf Teahupo’o beautifully.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by @vahinefierro

4. Erin Brooks

Oh hey, I guess we all know who Erin Brooks is, don’t we. In 2024, Erin, 17, won the Corona Fiji Pro at Cloudbreak, her first victory at a Championship Tour event. I doubt very much it will be the last.

Erin opened the Challenger Series with a win and caught just about everyone’s attention with a deep, backside barrel at Snapper.

All the same, the Challenger Series turned into a bit of a nail-biter for her. Erin picked up a second in Sydney, then struggled through a series of early round exits. Qualifying fourth, her CT spot wasn’t secure until Brazil, where she left the door open with a ninth. But she did make it, just not with the emphatic performance that Snapper suggested she might bring to the project.

At Pipeline, Erin’s a potential winner, but she won’t have it easy. The veterans will bring the confidence that comes from competing there for the past three years. The importance of last year’s finals day for women’s surfing at Pipe can’t be overstated. Erin is very good, but so, finally, are many of her competitors. If she takes to the air at the wave pool, it will certainly liven things up. I’d love to see it. Otherwise, though, Erin faces a similar challenge to Vahine. The Tour has a hell of a lot of open face rights, where Erin’s style could use some fine-tuning, and not a ton of juice, where she seems to thrive.

3. Isabella Nichols

Not really a new girl, Isabella, 27, has bounced between the Tour and the Challengers for the past two years. She’s had some notable results, but too often goes out in the early rounds to stay on Tour. She’s at her best on long rights and at the beach breaks, so she’ll enjoy this year’s Tour schedule. In 2022 Isabella won Margaret River and she’s been third at Bells. She just has to get through Pipe, where she’s never finished higher than ninth.

Isabella’s a stylish surfer, but she doesn’t seem to have that one magic thing that would make her stand out. I think she belongs on Tour, and I’d love to see her notch up some results at Bells or Snapper. She has a knack for beach break surfing that served her well during the 2020 Covid-shortened Tour year and on the Challenger series. This year’s schedule offers her a better chance to make the cut, but the women’s field is now crowded with talent. If this whole surfing thing doesn’t work out for Isabella, she’s also got an engineering degree.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Isabella Nichols (@isabella_nichols)

2. Bella Kenworthy

After qualifying in Portugal, Bella, 17, skipped the final Challengers event in Brazil. Instead, she went to to Indo, where she’s been busy chasing barrels with Sierra Kerr and Sawyer Lindblad. All of which is to say, Bella is making some excellent life choices. A San Clemente girl, Bella originally caught the eye of Vans as a park skateboarder, so she isn’t exactly what you’d call a shrinking violet. Sure, she grew up surfing T Street and Trestles, but she also charges. I am a fan of this sort of thing.

On the way to qualifying, Bella won the Balito Pro and she finished a painful second at the US Open to Sally Fitzgibbons. She’s made it on Tour, though, and she’s got a good shot at staying there. Like the rest of the younger crew, Bella’s a well-rounded surfer. She can get barreled in heavy lefts, she can surf beach breaks, and she’s got an air game. She’s also pretty obviously been working to refine her style on the open faces Trestles offers. Relative to some of the other women coming on Tour, Bella’s superpower is her strength. Girl works out hard, and it should serve her well.

Bella Kenworthy in big tube

Sally Fitzgibbons

Growing up, Sally always wanted to be a professional athlete. She didn’t really know what sport she would pursue, but she knew what she wanted. So, it should come as no surprise that she’s still competing at 33. Sal has boundless energy, and made it back on Tour after winning the US Open and the Ericiera Pro. She’s been outspoken in her criticism of the limited spots for women on Tour and has called for its expansion. I doubt it’ll happen in time to help her, but she’s right, especially with the horde of talented girls coming up.

In recent years, Sal’s evolved her surfing to be more dynamic and progressive, but I think her days on Tour are numbered. There’s just no way she’s keeping up with the likes of Caity, Erin, and Molly as they grow in skill and confidence. Pipeline still confounds Sal and she’s never placed higher than ninth at the Tour’s opening event. The right-heavy schedule will suit her, and she might squeak through the cut. But there’s only so many more times she can play this game. To her credit, she seems to be making the most of it and there’s nothing to hate in that.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Sally Fitzgibbons (@sally_fitz)

See you in January, new girls!

Load Comments

Club Hawaii.
Club Hawaii.

Fears grow Pipeline to fall off WSL tour after Bahrain unveils plan for “Club Hawaii Experience” surf park!

Bye bye Banzai.

The World Surf League’s 2025 Championship Tour is still months from its debut but surf fans are already tittering with the various and sundry storylines. There is, of course, the return of J-Bay and Snapper, Finals Day being moved from Lower Trestles to Cloudbreak but mostly there is Abu Dhabi and its gleaming Kelly Slater surf tank.

Our heroes and heroines will fly directly to the oil rich Middle East petro kingdom from Oahu’s North Shore, after launching the season at the iconic Banzai Pipeline but will all of them fly? Two-time champ Tyler Wright’s family has raised multiple red flags, openly wondering if their bisexual sister, married to a woman, might receive the death penalty in the land where same sex relationships can lead to criminal penalty. Will others follow, signing on to a petition being circulated by the famously anti-woman advocacy group Surf Equity?

Will the World Surf League decide that the Banzai Pipeline is finally redundant and no longer necessary?

An unforeseen twist!

But you are certainly aware of the enmity felt by the “global home of surfing” for the second jewel of the Triple Crown. Pipeline, of course, used to end the season and crown champions. Now it begins the season and is meaningless. Gone altogether in 2026?

For the petro kingdom of Bahrain, just north of the UAE has just unveiled plans for its own surf tank called “Bahrain Surf Park – Club Hawaii Experience.”

Set to open in two years, the development is a partnership between Edmah, the real estate branch of Bahrain’s soverign wealth fund, and GFH Financial Group. It will include shops, luxury hotels, residences and a Wavegarden Cove.

HE Shaikh Abdulla bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, CEO of Mumtalakat and chairman of Edamah, declared the venue “will be transformational for the tourism and recreation sectors in the Kingdom of Bahrain,” continuing, “This pioneering project reflects Edamah’s commitment to innovation and our focus on investing in local initiatives that will strengthen the tourism infrastructure in the kingdom, while also enhancing Bahrain’s attractiveness as a tourist destination.”

And also a World Surf League Championship Tour destination.

Soz Wrights.

Back to Club Hawaii, though. Will Bahrain seek to recreate more of the North Shore, like Spam Musubi and cracks to the head or satisfy itself with deadly waves breaking over shallow reef alone?

More, certainly, as the story develops.

Load Comments

Dolphin bitten in half at Angourie
Dolphin takes one in the guts and, inset, Will Webber back when he almost drowned at Spooks in 2022.

Surfers warned of “expected” shark attack after dolphin found bitten in half at popular surfing reserve

“For a shark to do that it would have to be a Great White and twelve-to-fifteen feet at least…”

It ain’t no secret that Australia’s east coast is a hive of frantic shark activity as whales and their vulnerable babies return from the far North Coast, Byron etc, back down towards their summer hangs in Antarctica. 

One week ago, two surfers, pals of mine as it happened, were chased out of the water by a juvenile Great White at Lighthouse Beach in Seal Rocks, the familiar white belly of the fish visible in the azure water, its fins flared and ready for action. One of the surfers had the foresight to paddle up to his pal and wrap his arm around him to create one, big solid figure. The Great White hesitated, they caught waves. Got ‘emselves a fine, if increasingly common, fireside story. 

Yesterday, at Angourie, that “gemlike pointbreak in rural North Coast New South Wales, Australia, three miles from the fishing town of Yambathe Angourie-based surfer and shaper Will Webber, brother of concave pioneer Greg Webber, reported a dolphin washed ashore after being bitten in half. 

Dead dolphin killed by shark at Angourie
Dolphin bitten in half by large shark, likely a Great White, and washed ashore at Angourie, Australia’s third surfing reserve.

BeachGrit consulted a local shark fisherman, unnamed ’cause oowee that particular game is fraught with politics, who said it was, a, definitely a Great White and, b, bigger than four metres or fifteen-feet on that beautiful imperial scale still used in the US.

Surfers are being warned an attack is “expected” up from “probable” from earlier in the year.

Surfers along Australia’s north-east coastline are acutely aware of the danger the area  brings, with Great Whites regularly hitting surfers.

In late July, surfer Kai Mckenzie survived a belting from a Great White, his right leg washed to shore shortly after he beached himself. 

Load Comments