“He claims I threatened to slit the throats of white children and said, ‘The night of the long knives is coming.’”

The pretty surf town of Jeffreys Bay, just off the N2 Highway, 75 clicks southwest of Port Elizabeth there, has long played hard in the imaginations of surfers. 

The long, not-so-heavy but challenging enough. righthand point has hauled in some of the greatest performances in surfing history: Tom Curren’s second-ever war there, as featured in Sonny Miller’s 1993 film Searching for Tom Curren, Filipe Toledo’s double-oop in 2018, Andy Irons, Kelly Slater, Occy, Mikey February, Stephanie Gilmore, all of ‘em painting gorgeous timeless lines. 

The J-Bay Open was a regular fixture on the tour from the eighties until 2023 when it was abruptly pulled from the tour following Jamie Curries’s devastating claim the contest had killed pro surfing and that it was an “an endless drone of punditry, empty statistics, half-remembered anecdotes apropos of not very much, tales of waves that were, been and gone and meaningless.”

Jeffreys Bay has again come under the microscope after a black surfer claimed he was told to fuck off and called what is euphemistically referred to as the K-word, a wildly offensive racial slur that has deep roots in South Africa’s apartheid history. 

Rasool Hendricks, forty-nine, said him and his pal were about to hit Supertubes back in March when, they allege, local guest house operator and J-Bay shredder Remi Petersen told ‘em to beat it and allegedly used the ol K-word. 

“I struggled to understand why he wanted to keep me out of the waves,” Hendricks told the local press. “We are acquainted, he knows I surf in Jeffreys Bay all the time, and I was very surprised when he and some other surfers approached us and told us to leave. The matter escalated and an argument ensued. At one state, they tried to grab out surfboards. Then Remi (allegedly) called me a k**** and told me to fuck off and go back to the location. The whole thing was quite upsetting.” 

Hendricks said he wrote a letter and thought about sending it to the Human Rights Commission. It then went up on a chat group where “other surfers of colour” were asked for their opinion. 

And, here’s the twist. 

“I thought the whole thing was behind us, but then I got a phone call that I needed to appear in court in Humansdorp,” says Hendricks. “When I arrived Remi was there with an attorney and an advocate and I heard he was applying for a protection order against me. He claims I threatened to slit the throats of white children and told him, ‘The night of the long knives is coming.’” 

Back in 2013, photos appeared of a man, allegedly Rasool Hendricks, baptising an Australian surfer in the water.

“When asked if he was indeed the surfer depicted in photographs dunking another surfer, Rasool Hendricks told the Cape Times: “The whole thing was a joke. It was pure speculation.”

On a different post about the same alleged baptism, one commenter wrote:

There is no place for violence in the surf, not of this nature. Opinions about localism are mostly a grey area, but putting someone in headlock and almost choking them out while in the water is, legally speaking, assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. It is typically punishable by 3 to 10 years prison sentence.

Regardless of whether the victim presses charges or not, I think it is our duty as a surf community to make it known to him that his behaviour is unacceptable and that he is unwelcome to share the water with us. By this I don’t mean lowering ourselves to his level of personal violence, but there are many ways to skin a cat, as the saying goes.

Furthermore, I’ve also heard from many friends within the surfing community, and have personally seen him being verbally abusive and disrespectful to everyone in the water, regardless of sex or age. 

Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly. Sheeeeesh.

So, anyway, Hendricks lawyers up, applies for a counter protection order and, not real sure why, but the World Surf League has sent their regional director Tasha Mentasti to monitor court proceedings.

“Once the matter has been finalised in court, we will make a decision on possible further steps for the good of the sport,” Mentasti told The Herald.

Further steps unspecified.

"The Toecutters, Australia's most murderous gang, was named after the way they tortured and killed the only father I'd ever known.”

The once cute-as-a-button Australian surfer Larry Blair, who famously won back-to-back Pipe Masters titles with long flaxen hair sprouting from the middle of his crown, back when the Pipe Masters meant something, has revealed the gruesome torture and murder of his step dad, and his family’s life on the run.

In a new book titled The Outside, written with his pal Jeremy Goring, Lazza says his Daddy, the bank robber Frank “Baldy” Blair, was part of a gang that stole almost six hundred gees in a robbery of an armoured van, one of the biggest heists in Australian history. It was the equivalent of nine mill in 2024 cash. 

The robbery would inspired the 1978 film Money Movers, directed by two-time Academy Award winning director Bruce Beresford.

“Dad and his two new Melbourne comrades, Steve, the Bomber, and Al (Alan Jones) from the Oshey, followed the armoured van to the bank then watched it stop at the usual luncheon spot in the adjacent car park. As always, after a half hour or so, the van door opened and one of the guards got out to dump the rubbish. At this point, Dad, the Bomber and Al, who had been crouched behind the van, pointed their silenced pistols at him and ordered all three guards to let them into the van or else they’d blow their fuckinging heads off. The only violence that occurred was when one of the guards had his glasses broken.” 

Larry’s mama, Patricia, was a hot as hell jewel thief and he says she kept the family together as they kept one step ahead of his Dad’s pals who wanted to kill him for his share of the cash. 

They got him in the end.

“They asked my father where the money was and to give up his share. Word has it that Baldy wouldn’t tell them anything. To get him to talk, Kevin Gore blowtorched his testicles and other parts of him with his trusty oxy-acetylene torch. He then lopped off his toes one by one with the boltcutters while Billy held him down. Frank “Baldy” Blair, the womanising bully, died of his wounds, and The Toecutters, Australia’s most murderous gang, was born: named after the manner in which they had tortured and killed the only father I’d ever known.”

Larry says his Dad’s corpse was dissolved in a barrel of acid and buried at Sydney airport. 

Amid all this Larry was finessing his surfing and when a scam with his mum was foiled when he was fifteen he jumped a plane to Hawaii.

Five years later he’d famously win the Coke Surfboard at Manly, followed by Pipe Masters wins in 1978 and 1979. 

Many wild stories! No trannies but still, very good. 

Buy the book! 

Owner of the three-level palace overlooking the surf at Laguna has taken a two-mill haircut after the joint fail to sell earlier this year.

The surf industry titan Joel Cooper, CEO of Lost International and co-founder of iconic eighties surf brand Gotcha, has listed his Laguna Beach compound, for twenty-three million dollars. 

Cooper’s house, which has been styled in the form of a Balinese villa hatched on Californian shores, turtles in little ponds, antique Balinese day bed, heavy wooden doors, slate roof and so on, is in the “ultra-exclusive” gated Irvine Cove community there and stares down the canyon at pretty Laguna. 

It was built in 2002 and squats on half-an-acre of dirt, has six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a guesthouse, spa, soaking tub, cabana and a kid’s cubby house.

Cooper has been trying to sell or rent the joint for the past ten years. Back in 2017, you could’ve scooped it up for a reasonable enough nine mill. In March, 2024, Cooper was chasing twenty-five mill. Now it’s back to twenty-three.

“One of the goals of building this house was to be able to experience living in Bali and yet living in California,” says Cooper. “As a young child growing up in South Africa, I always dreamed of coming to America. My second dream was to build a home and there was one place that represented everything that I wanted in a home, and that was Bali.” 

Cooper says he wept when he got the keys to the finished house and says it was a moment he’ll never forget. 

Bit of history on the owner. 

Along with his pal, the pro surfer and coke aficionado Michael Tomson, Cooper co-founded Gotcha in 1978. The brand quickly became iconic, pioneering a shift in surf culture and fashion. 

Under Cooper’s business acumen, he’s got a degree in accounting, Gotcha’s sales escalated dramatically, reaching $200 million in annual revenue.

After he split from Gotcha in 1997, Cooper hooked up with BeachGrit’s fav shaper Matt Biolos’ Lost Enterprises Inc, where he became CEO.

Buy the joint here.