Forecasting giant Surfline accused of price gouging beleaguered Americans

Blame Trump's tariffs?

Tough days, these, for United States of Americans. Once a gilded economic wonderland, the past few years have seen skyrocketing inflation, stagnant or declining incomes and the potential for major doll and pencil shortages under Trump’s tariff seesaw. While many brands and companies have attempted to, at least, put forward sensitive messaging, feeling the consumer’s pain etc., the surf forecasting giant Surfline is allegedly not one of them.

The lid was blown right off the predatory scheme on Reddit where a US user shared news of Surfline’s most recent price increase, sharing, “Craziest move they made yet, they already get 99% of their forecasts wrong and now an upcharge? I can’t find any excuses to keep paying for this app. Not worth my money and effort to keep using this app.”

Well, global Surfline users came swinging in, shocked at the whopping $120 a year (up from $99) that Yankees pay. Australians, for example, pay $50 USD per year, Britons $46 USD and New Zealanders $56 USD. The more than double bill for the same access to the same cameras, forecasts had those in the forum scratching heads.

“Hey man they’re having to pay tariffs on all their imported waves, they can’t help it,” one opined.

Are they physically creating the waves for you in the USA?” another wondered.

Frustration quickly boiled over and the comment section soon became a safe space for the economically abused.

A sampling:

Giving me day old cam footage was the end for me. The current footage wasn’t very useful anyway, but the total corporate dick move of buying up all the local cams then giving day old footage was enough to make me boycott. I literally just go directly to the buoy from NOAA now. It’s better data anyway.

Thanks for canceling. They count the number of people who cancel and the number who just pay. That’s how they learn how much they can get away with. You are doing your part! I will do mine when my yearly renew comes up.

They’re pulling a Netflix on you

Hey. Let’s all cancel. I’ll start. Site blows anyway.

Literally the only value they add is cameras. I feel like this group puts too much importance on access to cameras. Just read the free forecasts and go when you think it will be good. If it’s not as good as you thought, oh well. At least you got a good workout.

Etc.

Kelly Slater even made a surprise appearance with one frustrated soul announcing, “Fuk Surflies and Slater !”

Do you use Surfline and have thoughts on the product? Feel free to share.

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Reason for Filipe Toledo’s “submissive hand jive” in explosive Gold Coast Pro final revealed!

“Julian Wilson was caught off guard by this vulnerable, crazy moment of admiration and truth.”

On Saturday, surf fans were privy to one of the great surf finals, the world’s best surfer in waves two feet and under and two-time world champ, Filipe Toledo, and a never-was champ but a king at every wave from Teahupoo to Pipe, Julian Wilson.

History tells us that Filipe Toledo won the explosive final in pretty little righthand runners at Burleigh Heads. Daddy of two Toledo, who turned thirty one month back, against daddy of one, Julian Wilson, thirty-six and coming off a five-year retirement. Real close and the difference a nine-pointer of Filipe’s that some commentators have described as “the most overscored wave history” although I side with the judges, the second turn as hot as watching a brawny teen jock pumping my gal dog fashion.

Towards the end of the final, Julian Wilson lit up on Filipe Toledo although the exact reason was hard to pinpoint. Was it because of Julian’s dissatisfaction with the scores Pip was getting, as I initially thought, or was it over a perceived paddling interference?

Neither as it turns out.

As Vaughan Blakey, a stud famous for his high-grade podcast Ain’t the Swell with Jed Smith and who was commentating the event, explains, Julian Wilson was bent outta shape by the Brazilian pack on the point and, not long after, by Filipe Toledo’s “submissive hand jive.”

“He was fully fucking off it,” says Vaughan. “And then if you watch the footage, because the one thing that was puzzling to me about whether it was a prior thing or whatever was like Filipe starts doing this submissive sort of explanation hand jive, you know, like he’s not fighting back, he’s properly going, and what I heard was that he was going, ‘Mate, I can’t control that. Like, that’s not my fault. I respect you. You’ve always been one of my favourite surfers.

“And he starts going into this kind of deeper space because both these guys walked away from the tour for their families. This is what I heard, is that he was going, ‘I respect what you’ve done. I respect that you left. You’ve always been one of my favourite surfers. And at this point, Jules is so steamed up that he palms him, puts his hand up, open face palm and he stopped talking. I don’t want to hear it.

“But what I heard after the fact was it fully got to him. Like he was caught off guard by this vulnerable, crazy moment of admiration and truth in the thick of the pinnacle moment of how tense that battle was. Totally. Which to me, fuck man, like I mean what a crazy moment in sport! It pulled it out of this proper battle into this beautiful little like moment of clarity and space where they were just two dad bods going at it and looking for a moment of glory.

“But it fucking rattled Fil that he wasn’t able to connect with Julian in that moment because he just basically fucking tries to hammer off down the point as quickly as he can.”

Essential.

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Photo of disinterested shark. @caveman_476
Photo of disinterested shark. @caveman_476

California surfer comforted by massive great white shark’s apparent disinterest in man eating

“I swear to God, this thing’s body was so fat, I thought it was somebody’s boat. I thought it was an orca..."

It’s shark season, again, in California. That time of year when Great Whites big and small come and enjoy the tasty waves and cool buzz that only the Golden State can provide. Now, surfers have long suspected that sharks may be near though conventional wisdom had them further north, patrolling Alcatraz, for example. Advancements in drone technology, however, have revealed they are everywhere and in droves. La Jolla, Huntington, Ventura and even Pismo Beach.

Yes, the Clam Capital of the World, equidistant betwixt San Francisco and Los Angeles, is famous for many things, including clams, clam chowder and clam digging. It is not famous for its surf but that doesn’t stop its hearty local for trying to find a corner. One, David Steiner, has been trying for 34 years and used to be fearful of the beasts malingering below. Waiting for a moment to nibble on his tender toes. Well, as fate would have it, Steiner became a drone enthusiast with a particular kink for capturing sharks.

“I started really watching what they were doing, and they were just ignoring surfers completely,” Steiner told the San Luis Obispo Tribune. “That kind of helps my mentality with staying in the water.”

Anyhow, late last month he was out flying his drone and he saw a beast making its way toward a group of surfers.

“I swear to God, this thing’s body was so fat, I thought it was somebody’s boat. I thought it was an orca. And then when I saw it was a great white, I was trembling,” he declared.

Worried, he tried to get the gaggle to head in. “I have tried flying my drone in people’s faces, and they don’t react anyway,” he continued. “They wave you off, they don’t know what you’re trying to tell them. There’s no speaker.”

They all eventually made it to shore without incident, one messaging Steiner later when he posted the footage, but his advice is, “Don’t be afraid of the water. The lack of incidents proves to me that they’re not interested.”

Be comforted here.

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Clyde Aikau, interviewed in 2023.
"Clyde was an Aikau, heart and soul, but he looked a bit like Cheech Marin, and the fact that he lived through all he lived through and retained his smile and sparkle—that is its own amazing legacy." | Photo: Tamba TV

Obituary: Hawaiian surf god Clyde Aikau, “He was an Aikau, heart and soul, but he looked like Cheech Marin”

"Clyde was the one who best channeled and reflected the light, the upside, of the Aikau family."

Clyde Aikau of Hawaii died this week, age 75, at home, from pancreatic cancer and heart disease, and while much of the coverage and commentary has been about Clyde himself, you didn’t have to read far before getting to Eddie Aikau. Which makes sense. It is hard, maybe impossible, to unlink the two brothers—a notion that Clyde himself would no doubt approve of.

Eddie, three years older, was in so many ways a template for Clyde. They surfed so much alike, for starters. Eddie had the purer gift, for sure, and if Clyde never matched his brother when conditions got truly insane, so what, nobody else could either, then or now.

Eddie died in 1978, and the brothers’ roles were at that point cast in stone—one legend and the other human. That is on many levels a difficult and unfair position, but never, not for a moment, did you get the sense that Clyde was anything but grateful and honored to be the legacy-bearer for Eddie.

In fact, it is partly because Clyde himself was so good at being the appreciative and supportive younger brother it was often easy for the rest of us to overlook just how different the two were, and how wholly remarkable Clyde was in his own right.

Surfing-wise, of course, the achievements spill forth: it was Clyde, not Eddie, who got the breakthrough Duke Classic win in 1974 (Eddie won in 1977), then of course the dramatic Quiksilver-Eddie win in 1986, and maybe best of all the fact that Clyde was still out there in huge surf—elegant and nervy and classically Hawaiian; the last of the great bow-legged “bully” stylists—into his 60s.

Meanwhile, Clyde had the lighter spirit, the innate ability to connect. Or to change the context slightly, Eddie was by nature shy and reserved—weighted down later in life, burdened, even depressed—while Clyde was always outgoing, talkative, expressive and open. He easily could have gone dark as the years rolled by. Clyde lost four brothers, two tragically and unexpectedly, and just a few years ago woke up to the news that his nephew and grandnephew were involved in a murder-suicide at the house where Clyde and Eddie grew up. 

Clyde instead grieved and processed and kept moving forward. He was a kinetic force. The public got a glimpse of this as early as 1978, in the days following Eddie’s at-sea disappearance, when a Honolulu Star-Advertiser reporter visited the Aikau family house for a Page Two feature:

The smell of hot coffee filled the damp air. Beer was in coolers. Mrs. Aikau sat leaning on a table by the entrance. She already lost one of her five sons, in a 1973 car accident which came after surfing triumphs by both Eddie and his brother Clyde. Her husband walked over to give her encouragement, but she asked to be left alone. Clyde, who flew back from a surfing contest in Australia to join the search for his brother, was alert and intense despite spending the entire day swimming and walking along the southwest coast of Lanai. “We want to check all the islands even if there is only an outside chance. We want to be able to sleep knowing we’ve done everything. Every rock, beach and cave has to be checked,” Clyde said. Myra, Eddie’s sister, announced that the family would take care of any expenses of flying people to the other islands [to join the search]—cost didn’t matter. Clyde then organized the group and decided who would go where. “This is something we have to do,” he said. “This is family.”

Clyde was the resilient Aikau. He had the greater sense of balance, and while that came through best during difficult times, it also allowed him to be joyous, playful, when times were good. Clyde was comfortable in his own skin, always, in a way Eddie rarely was. It is not a fair comparison, given the decades between the two events, but listen to Eddie speak here, and watch Clyde speak here, and you get a sense of just how different the two men were in terms of being outward-facing public figures. Basically Clyde is relaxed in front of the mic the way Eddie was relaxed dropping in behind the boil at Waimea. The Aikau family would always live in Clyde, and much of that legacy was heavy indeed. But Clyde was the one who best channeled and reflected the light, the upside, and let’s end with him sharing a memory with Bruce Jenkins about how he won the ’86 Quiksilver-Eddie.

Waimea that day had a westerly wind and it was kinda blowing onshore. When sets came in, it would look like it was breaking a mile out. And at that time, a lot of big-wave surfers never rode the Bay when it was like that. Me and Eddie surfed there a lot, though, and I knew how the waves would break. So when I was in my heat, and the sets would come in, I would scream, “Big set! Big set!” Everybody would be racing out to the ocean, and I’d be paddling the other way. And the wave would be poppin’ right where I was.

The two brothers still together, putting the moves on everybody else. Clyde still laughing about it 30-plus years later. All of us, I suppose, look for different things in the people we chose to admire. Humor is high on the list for me. Clyde was an Aikau, heart and soul, but he looked a bit like Cheech Marin, and the fact that he lived through all he lived through and retained his smile and sparkle—that is its own amazing legacy, and Clyde gets that one without having to share.

(Ain’t nobody knows surf history like Matt Warshaw. Chip off five bucks a month or fifty bucks a year to get access to his treasure trove of archives, old interviews, movies etc.)

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Pearl Jam celebrates dead surf icon Shane Herring at Nashville concert, “You may never have heard of him”

"Kelly Slater called me and he was pretty upset and I just figured I could introduce you."

The songman Eddie Vedder has led a tribute to dead surf icon Shane Herring at a Pearl Jam concert in Nashville, Tennessee.

Mr Vedder, a wiry well-constructed sixty year old with a hairy chest and what is reputed to be a fat, mouth-watering dick, made his name with Pearl Jam in the Seattle Grunge scene of the nineteen-nineties, the man that was built from the ashes of Mother Love Bone after the death of its frontman, Andrew Wood.

In front of twenty-thousand fans at Bridgestone Arena, some who’d paid fifteen-thousand dollars for VIP seating, Vedder delivered a soliloquy for Shane Herring, who died from injuries after falling down stairs at his Tweed Heads on Saint Patrick’s Day a month and a half back.

Herring was fifty three, which is real young usually, but a miracle ol Herro made it that far given he’d been shaking his fist at the reaper for thirty years slipping by multiple hits of pancreatic disease and with a joy for the drink that ate up all his teeth.

“I wanted to tell you about him because if not, you may never heard of him. He was an Australian surfer. He was one of the people that not only was huge in the Australian surf community, but his loss last week has affected the global surf community and his folks and his friends there at home.

“You know this guy was so good that at one point he was beating Kelly Slater. He was number one before Kelly Slater and Kelly called me and he was pretty, uh, pretty upset and I just figured I could introduce you. I just wanted everybody to know that we’ve lost a good one. We’ve lost a great one. Mr. Shane Herring. Thank you. If you’d be so good to maybe light up your phones and we can send this song to all the folks back home thinking about it.”

Four-and-a-half minutes in.

Essential.

 

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