Wavepool pioneer creates slab that destroys pros!

As noted yesterday, surfing’s great thinker, Tom Lochtefeld, the man who created the Flowrider thirty years ago, had created the tech for the new Magnusson-Robb pool in Palm Springs.

(Take a lil trip down memory lane here to the Flowrider with Tony Hawk and Christian Fletcher.)

Tom’ new tech, which is called SurfLoch,  is diff to KS, Wavegarden, American Wave Machine and so on. It uses a combo of vacuum and pressure to make waves.

The promo lit goes,

“An opening at the bottom of each chamber allows the wave energy pulse to be released into open water independently of each other. The controlled variations of the independent pulses can generate an infinite variety of wave swells.”

In this film by Vans, Dylan Graves circles the Palm Springs pool and is given the grisly job of trying to negotiate its slab during a test session.

“Hold on! Wait a second! Hold on! I just pulled back in a pool,” he says after.

That’s entertainment.

Here, in this little fishing village, the world champ is an absolute king.

It might come as a surprise that James O’Brien, the chubby red-haired daddy of surfing’s guiltiest treat, is a serious entrepreneur who has built a lucrative career around a YouTube channel.

Talk to James and you don’t get the goofy clown, you get hard kisses that leave little flecks of blood on your lips. A serious person with both eyes on the future.

In this episode of James’ weekly vlog we get part three of his journey to world champ Italo Ferreira’s Baía Formosa empire.

Here, Italo is the absolute king.

He owns the lineup, the best house and a hundred-gee beach buggy that can, and is, employed as a vehicle for towing in.

James, meanwhile, is bright, smart and happily demonic.

More proof hippies are the worst!

Here’s a story as old as time, compelling as ever.

Women stuck under the jackboot of the male patriarchy, denied opportunity to flower, harried at every turn etc.

A new documentary by Dutch filmmaker Juul Hesselberth called “Just Go Fucking Surfing“ follows four Gold Coast surfers, with emphasis placed on their struggle.

One of the surfers, Audrey Styman-Lane told the ABC, “Male surfers do drop in on women surfers a lot and, when you ask them why, they say, ‘oh, sorry, but I didn’t think you were going to make it.”

Her twin sister Grace said old hippies were the worst.

“They’re like, ‘save the planet, peace brother’ — and then ‘Get off my wave, bitch.'”

Both said they’d lost sponsors ’cause they didn’t want to wear revealing swimwear.

“We want to be seen as professional athletes,” Audrey told the ABC. “Not sex objects.”

Jess Grimwood said she had to hide her homosexuality while competing.

“When I was doing it you couldn’t be a lesbian. All the chicks that were gay, were behind like secretly gay,” adding the WSL was planning a women’s surf contest to coincide with Sydney’s Gay Mardi Gras.

Watch trailer here.