World's best.

We are, collectively, 100,000 days in to the World Surf League’s fourth stop which happens to be an extremely user-friendly point break in El Salvador. Fun to mind surf, as it were. Difficult to appreciate for an organization that once touted “world’s best surfers, world’s best waves.”

Whilst the hot action may be severely wanting, sports-washing going ham etc., the comfortable point is a happy place for perpetually mediocre surfers, like you, but also downright lousy surfers, like me.

I’ve had the good fortune to surf some fine points in my day. Yemen, Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch, Southern Mexico, or as cosplayer and World Surf League announcer Mitchell Saladbar pronounces it, “Sunburn Mehico.”

Well.

You’ll be happy to learn how it should look courtesy of Channel Islands here. Featured are the surfers you actually want to watch including, but not limited to, Michael February, Britt Merrick, an Australian, Dane Reynolds and Bobby Martinez.

Martinez, I’d argue at this point (no pun intended), is the world’s most interesting surfer.

Tell me I’m wrong.

Suck it, San Clemente.

Just what you were hoping for!

“There comes a time when it's more unhealthy for me not to surf than it is for me to surf in gross water..."

There was a time, a few years back, when quit-lit dominated these pages. The belletristic sub-genre focused, of course, on when is the right time to quit surfing, reasons for quitting surfing, the general satisfaction felt after quitting surfing etc. Classics included Steve “Longtom” Shearer ‘s “What would make you give up surfing? Be honest!” Jen See’s “If you want to surf forever, how do you do it? How do you keep it new and fresh? Is it a worthy or even possible pursuit?” JP Currie’s “This past weekend I put a bullet in another surf dream and in some ways I couldn’t be happier about it!” And of course Surf Ads, “Sometimes I look at everyone in the line-up and think to myself, I’d just love to smash your face in with a crowbar. Every one of ’em.”

Well, Los Angeles area surfers are staring down the barrel of a mass quitting as spring blooms. The devastating Palisades fire, which ripped through the tony Pacific enclave in January, not only destroyed over 6000 structures but also polluted the ocean. Is cancer worth scratching for 2 foot closeouts?

“There comes a time when it’s more unhealthy for me not to surf than it is for me to surf in gross water,” comedian Lloyd Ahlquist told KCRW on the sands of Venice, trying to put a brave face on a bad situation. According to the local public radio station, though, he is in the minority and most surfers are choosing to do other things.

Annelisa Moe from environmental group Heal the Bay agrees with Ahlquist and thinks the cautious are being big babies. “Just anecdotally, from the experts that I’ve spoken to, everybody [is] in agreement that it’s not as bad as we all expected it to be,” she declared. “What we’re seeing initially is that there is nothing in the water that’s going to immediately cause harm, but some of the things that we are seeing … are categorized as carcinogens.”

NBD.

But are you a Los Angeles area surfer?

Care to mark your name alongside Shearer, See, Currie and Ads in the quit-lit annals?

Have at it.

"No one’s watching, no one cares."