Jamie O'Brien (pictured) at Pipeline.
Jamie O'Brien (pictured) at Pipeline.

Distressed shoe maker Vans capitulates to pressure and invites elderly Jamie O’Brien into Pipe Masters

"This event deserves to be taken over by someone who truly understands and respects the sport and the surfers."

One of the many tempests blowing in our teacup, last week, involved distressed shoe maker Vans, its Pipe Masters event and, arguably, the greatest living wrangler of that iconic wave. Yes, James Duncan O’Brien, born and bred as close to the Banzai as one can get, was left off this year’s invite list.

Reaction from the public was swift and severe.

Josh Moniz sizzled the waffle-soled cobbler with:

When I heard that JAMIE was given an ALTERNATE spot in the event, that’s when I felt something has to be said. How can you leave out arguably the greatest Pipeline surfer of all time? To suggest that he doesn’t deserve a spot in an event he has helped define is baffling to me. Many surfers who have barely surfed Pipe have been given spots over the years, which feels like a slap in the face to the locals and internationals who show up season after season without ever being invited. It’s nothing personal against these surfers—they are simply accepting an opportunity that any surfer would take. But the way these decisions are being made feels unfair to those who have truly earned their place.I understand that with invitational events, it’s hard to make everyone happy. However, making sure that the spots go to those who deserve them and have put in the time is all anyone can ask for.

O’Brien himself added:

I’ve been processing how the Pipeline Masters has become a joke. Whoever is making these decisions clearly doesn’t understand what’s happening in the water pipeline on the day today! Or season two season It’s long overdue to speak out, and trust me, they won’t hear the end of it. It’s so sad see such a prestigious event mishandled like this, with no regard for the athletes putting in the work every day, has completely lost my respect. It’s time for a change – this event deserves to be taken over by someone who truly understands and respects the sport and the surfers.

The carrot-topped 41-year-old was initially told by Vans that he was “too old” to be in the event but organizers apparently rethought their overt agism and now he is in the draw alongside Cam Richards and Tosh Tudor.

The Pipe Masters window opens Dec. 8 before shutting Dec. 20.

But does the buckling under pressure make you think that Josh Moniz should be recruited to write more open letters addressing things that we surfers dislike?

Maybe a note to Kelly Slater about his perpetual need for attention?

Something to think about.

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Tom Carroll injured in the surf.
Tom Carroll reveals head wound! | Photo: @derekrabeloofficial

Tom Carroll rushed to ER with suspected spinal injury after collision in surf!

Update: Tom's out of hospital with stitches in head and sore neck.

The Australian Tom Carroll, who would win two world titles and three Pipe Masters, was a rare gem in that eighties manicure and bruises surf crowd, looking like a quizzical Botticelli nymph but equipped with the intellectual heft you’d expect from the son of a one of Australia’s greatest newspaper editors.

Earlier today, Tom, who is sixty-three, suffered a suspected spinal injury while surfing three-foot windblown waves at Sydney’s North Narrabeen.

Vividly described as “small and well-muscled (5′ 6″, 145 pounds), with huge energy-storing thighs” and “a power surfer with uncommon finesse” he was pictured holding his back before being placed on a spinal board and rushed to hozzy.

Tom Carroll is no stranger to injury. The tough little man has experienced, at different points in his career, infected fin gashes, a ruptured stomach, knee reconstruction, ankle ligament tears and various cuts and lower-back strains.

His most famous injury happened in 1987 when his surfboard fin visited his rectum during a shore break re-entry, or rear-entry as The Sun called it, at Nijima Beach in Japan.

Tom Carroll was warming up for a contest when he attempted a re-entry in the shorebreak. His board dug nose-first into the sand, and as he fell, legs akimbo, a fin lodged itself in his anal canal.

The injury resulted in a significant anal perforation. Thirteen stitches were required to close the wound, with eight of those stitches being internal.

After his injury, during subsequent surfing sessions, spray could often be seen spouting from the site of the injury, particularly during violent backhand hacks. This incident has been humorously referred to as giving him a “brand new arsehole” or an enlargement of the existing one.

More on Thomas’ latest injury as it unfurls or he jumps back into his DMs.

Update: Tom’s been patched up and is back in biz!

 

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Jen See on “kinky AI surfers” and Surfline’s attempt to regulate adult beginners

Can Surfline convince all these lost souls to find the right spot for their abilities? I don’t hate them for trying!

Surfline killed Surfline Man. I can’t tell you the exact time of death, it was sometime last week while I was out surfing, probably.

But it happened all the same.

A reel posted on Instagram plunged a wooden stake through our hero’s hapless heart. Standing on the beach, I saw the incriminating clip and that’s when I knew.

Part of the new Surfline project aimed at improving lineup etiquette, the clip features a surfer named Dayton who can’t decide where to surf. It’s firing and he can go surf with his friends at the very best spot or he can pick an easier, more accessible break. In an effort to teach us to surf within our abilities, Dayton chooses the B-grade spot.

Surfline Man’s essential characteristic has always been his utter and complete lack of self-awareness.

No matter what happens to him out there, he’s never imagined that he has anything to learn. Surfline Man is an expert surfer. He just needs the perfect board, the ideal fins, and a seasonally appropriate, limited edition HydroFlask.

Throughout his many misadventures, and he’s had a few, Surfline Man has never realized just how much he is constantly and forever fucking up. Even though his problems have mostly been self-inflicted — paddling out at Ocean Beach on a board that was too short, surfing his precious midlength without a leash, to name just two — he has never gotten any smarter.

Last week Dayton realized that he should not follow his friends to the best wave in his area on the very best day. Instead, he should be honest and think about his surfing abilities in a realistic way. Dayton doesn’t run off to buy a new board or a fresh changing robe. He just, like, goes surfing at a spot where he might actually be able to catch a wave.

How self-aware. How enlightened.

The push from Surfline to educate the surfing community about lineup etiquette and instill wiser judgment is admirable. But there is a catch. It requires more surfers like Dayton — self-aware and realistic — than maladroit dreamers like Surfline Man. I’d love to believe in Surfline’s optimistic vision, but I’ve seen Surfline Man out there. I know exactly who he is.

One day last winter I was out surfing the top of Rincon. It was overhead, windy, and beautiful. It wasn’t the kind of surf that is trying to kill you or anything ridiculous like that — just a winter day in California.

I turned to go on one, and when I looked down, I saw a lost soul drifting around below me. Perched on a bright yellow, seven-foot Craigslist special, with his legs spread, he could barely paddle. Obviously, Craigslist wasn’t going to move anytime soon.

Yes, I could have gone, and most of you probably would have. And you know what? It probably would have been totally fine. But I have a deep aversion to getting hit by a loose Craigslist special. That thing’s definitely going to leave a mark..

Craigslist didn’t belong out there. That’s not because of some exclusive, gate-keeping idea that the ocean isn’t for everyone, which is the argument often leveled against lineup rules, localism, and hierarchy. Instead, it’s a reflection of the simple reality that the ocean isn’t for everyone on every single day.

I’ve walked away from spots that looked a little too unruly, and if you’re honest, you have, too. Sometimes the challenge is fun. Other times, it’s a lot of water up my nose. I like surfing a lot more than I like drowning. Despite a lifetime in the ocean, or maybe because of it, I’m actually really fucking scared of drowning.

The reality is, surfers who are in way over their heads show up to just about every known spot now. The internet tells them there’s surf and out they go. They have an uncanny knack for paddling out on wildly inappropriate boards on days they have no idea how to surf. None of this is super great for anyone in the lineup.

A while back, I used to surf with a guy who would yell, “Go to Mondos” whenever someone got in his way. Mondos is a spectacularly perfect beginners’ spot between Ventura and Santa Barbara. I doubt most of the people he was yelling at had any idea what he meant.

Also, it didn’t work. Even then, there were a seemingly endless supply of fools who needed to go to Mondos, but didn’t realize it.

Can Surfline convince all these lost souls to learn some etiquette and find the right spot for their abilities? I definitely don’t hate them for trying! In fact, I would love for more surfers to gain even an iota Dayton’s self-awareness. I would love for them to actually go to Mondos — and not just in the hope that it means more waves for me.

There’s a value to progression and to learning things like surfing step by step. You don’t buy a mountain bike and go drop Rampage lines on the very first day. I hope you don’t, anyway. Like, please don’t do this. I like you and I don’t want you to die.

If you have ever learned a thing from the ground up — surfing, music, riding a bike — you know there is satisfaction in accumulating skill over time. I’m still working on the “write a decent sentence” thing, for example.

Another day, another apocalyptic crowd.

“You just have to be an asshole to get a wave out here,” my friend says. He’s not wrong. You can wait your turn, not burn anyone, and do all the right things — and you’ll have been super nice and a good person. But you’ll also probably go home without having ridden any waves.

Play the asshole or the asshole plays you. I’d like to move through this life without turning into the worst possible version of myself, but surfing doesn’t necessarily reward this way of thinking.

In a past life, I studied nuclear strategy which is a thoroughly depressing thing to study. I do not recommend it. The essential thing about nuclear weapons is that they can destroy the world many times over. This is all very chill and fine.

Suppose two countries sign a treaty agreeing to “no first use” of nuclear weapons. If both countries hold to the treaty, everyone wins and there’s no nuclear war. If one country cheats on the treaty, they blow up their enemy and they win. If both countries cheat, everyone loses and the world is destroyed. Cool story, bro.

What’s called the prisoner’s dilemma — where there is an incentive to cheat, but also where cheating means that everyone loses — also applies to stuff that has nothing to do with blowing up the world. In an anonymous lineup, so overcrowded as to be laughable, there are few incentives to follow the rules. Burn someone, and you’ll get a wave. Breaking the rules pays off. When everyone gets burned, though, no one has a good time.

Repeated interactions are one way to break the incentive to cheat. In a small circle of surfers who see one another day after day, there’s more reason to follow the rules. These people know you and they will punish you in various ways if you cause trouble. They may even start working together to turn a cheater into a pariah.

Without these relationships — call it a community — there’s less incentive to follow the rules. No punishment, no problems, brah.

Of course, following the rules might improve the situation for everyone. And that’s the hopeful perspective Surfline is bringing to their project. They want us all to have a good, safe time in the water. That’s the message at the end of their short video about our new bestie Dayton, who’s kinda cute if AI-generated men is your kink.

The disparate, selfish individuals who populate the lineup, the people how just want to have some fun and get a couple sick selfies on a Saturday — I don’t think rules or learning are really what’s on their minds when they show up at the beach. The effort to save our lineups from ourselves feels like too little, too late. Surfing is well and truly cursed.

We’ve met the enemy; the enemy is us.

And so, Surfline Man isn’t dead yet. The rumors of his death are entirely premature. He is totally still out there.

Right now, Surfline Man is pulling into the parking lot in his Sprinter with his new personalized Stanley cup in hand. HydroFlask, so yesterday! Bounding out of the car, he changes into his wetsuit under his favorite fuzzy changing robe and saunters down to the beach with his brand-new board tucked insouciantly under his arm.

Riding waves! It’s the best thing in the whole world!

And Surfline Man is not about to let even a hint of self-awareness ruin his day.

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Man enters “Women on Waves” surf contest in Santa Cruz sparking outrage

"It’s juvenile, immature, pathetic behavior."

The “Women on Waves” contest, a yearly Santa Cruz area bacchanal nearly two decades old, was the scene of much acrimony over the weekend after a cisgendered male surf instructor, Calder Nold, entered, and surfed, in the masters category. Liza Monroy, author and event finalist, described surfing against him on Saturday. “He wore the requisite jersey wrapped around his neck and was bare-chested and in board shorts,” she penned for Lookout Santa Cruz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning website.

Wanting to get to the bottom of why he was there, she asked. Nold responded a friend had “nominated him.” After further pushing, he offered, “This is an inclusive event for charity, right? I just want to support.”

But maybe more to the story?

Monroy later learned that Nold had entered the contest as a protest to the inclusion of trans women and at the behest of a local chiropractor named EmilyAnn Pillari who penned an opinion editorial wherein Monroy surmised “she admits she entered him as a provocation, to test the rules and make a point that as supportive and appreciative Nold is of women surfers, he can easily outpaddle even the strongest surfer. She says that wouldn’t change if he ‘thought he was a woman.’”

Surf Equity co-founder Sabrina Brennan, who usually trains her fire on women, momentarily shifted to describe Nold’s “stunt” as “mean-spirited, disrespectful, unkind, and selfish attempt at making a point.”

Not finished, she continued, “I don’t care how nice and polite the cis guy was, he was there to make fun of them. It’s juvenile, immature, pathetic behavior. To engage in this behavior to be exclusionary is so targeted.”

The Women on Waves organizers stated, “We’re dealing with two issues. What EmilyAnn was trying to say about trans women and the women in the contest who were upset they had to surf with a man.”

Calder Nold also once saved a dying baby seal.

Monroy, anyhow, interviews the women in the contest as to their feelings about the matter all while addressing the larger trans issue, leaning very much toward inclusion and sensitivity.

David Lee Scales and I, as chance would have it, also discussed other overlooked trans issues during our now twice weekly get togethers. Helpful for potential sticky conversations at upcoming Thanksgiving Day feasts.

My gift to you.

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Leonardo DiCaprio (on phone) caught being rude.
Leonardo DiCaprio (on phone) caught being rude.

Leonardo DiCaprio to lose World Surf League Finals Day invite after blatantly ignoring Fijian ceremony

“Don’t waste your energy my fiji whānau (family), he’s so disrespectful.”

After two or three years of the World Surf League crowning its champions at “baby soft” Lower Trestles, surf fans around the globe rejoiced when it was announced that Cloudbreak would host Finals Day ’25. The powerful Fijian left-hander, pitching into glorious barrel, is truly a marvel an there shall be no asterisks placed behind the name of the winner like there is following Felipe Toledo.

The ticket will undoubtedly be a hot draw with surf-adjacent celebrities vying for limited space on Tavarua, Namotu and the various yachts bobbing in the blue though one mega-movie star is likely on the outside looking in.

Leonardo DiCaprio, 50, was recently in Fiji on vacation. As anyone who has had the pleasure of visiting the Pacific island paradise knows, ceremony is very important to the culture. Welcome songs, kava blessings, goodbye dances.

Here we can see Association of Surfing Professional surfers enjoying the opening rites of the Volcom Fiji Pro in 2012.

Look how cute li’l Julian Wilson was.

In any case, it would be absolutely unheard of to blatantly ignore the ritual which brings us back to DiCaprio. The climate activist was checking out of his hotel where the staff had gathered in the lobby to serenade him with blessings. Instead of clapping along, DiCaprio dipped his head, pulled out a phone and pretended to have a conversation whilst paying the locals no mind.

The move was, surprisingly, blasted on social media where Fijian culture experts weighed in.

“Being humble is the key to success,” one opined. “Don’t waste your energy my fiji whānau (family), he’s so disrespectful,” another added. A third, extra worked up, screamed, “SHOULD’VE ACKNOWLEDGED THE FIJI WELCOMING PARTY.”

With DiCaprio likely out of Finals Day, surf fans are petitioning the World Surf League offices for a Mini Driver invite.

A star worth loving.

More as the story develops.

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