The Bad
Too many beach breaks on the World Tour are bad. Photo: ASP
Beach Break Tour
Did putting more “butts in the bleachers” pay off? Not according to Quiksilver and Billabong’s latest stock numbers. But I’m not a stock analyst, and these things are difficult, if not impossible to quantify. What I can say is that I wasn’t as interested this year as in year’s past. Not all of that can be pinned on having more beach break waves, but if you suffered through any of the early rounds at Long Beach, and even some of the later rounds that the media gushed about, you will have to accept that sand surfing should be confined to one or at most two comps a year.
What Happened to Andy Irons?
They say you don’t find out who your real friends are until the shit hits the fan. If that’s true, a lot fewer people cared about the late Andy Irons than they let on. You don’t honor a surfing legend by naming expression sessions after him, you honor him by at least trying to clarify how he came to die, alone, in a Texas hotel room. Silence just makes you look guilty.
Dusty Payne
Payne made it clear in an interview for his much-lauded Lost Atlas section that he thinks all women are terrible surfers. I’m not going to criticize him until he learns how to win more than one heat in a World Tour competition. At the rate he’s going, I’ll never say a word against him.
Surf Bloggers
A bunch of angry men who haunt message boards and ramble about conspiracy theories is not a movement, it’s a circle jerk. If you really want to see change, follow the facts. If you don’t print them yourselves, send them to me at ted@theinertia.com and I’ll investigate if I think there is an actual story there. That is my New Years resolution.
Electronic Music
Air reverses and music running at around 140 bpms mix like oil and water. After having been to a few clubs in Surfer’s Paradise and Sydney, I blame the Aussies for this one. I know you have a cultural connection to Europe, but you need to pick and choose what parts of their culture you import. Leave the house music in the old world. To my fellow Americans: the same goes for California punk and anything played in Momentum. Sorry, Unwritten Law.
Sea Shepherd
How did we let a real, informed discourse about the health of the world’s oceans get hijacked by a bunch of neo-imperialist media monkeys? Paul Watson is so bloated with hot air, if you stuck him with a pin, he wouldn’t bleed, he would pop. Their latest “crusade” was a campaign to smear a group of Reunion Island surfers who went on a shark cull after a body surfer was fatally attacked. The Shepherds have good intentions. Their problem is that they can’t see outside of the privileged, lily-white, achingly smug, faux-liberal, loving the smell of their own farts bubble that they spend their lives casting judgment from. Whaling and seal hunting should be stopped, but: Operation Divine Wind? Operation Desert Seal? Please. All Sea Shepherd cares about are the ratings for the latest season of Whale Whores and its donations.
Continue to Page 3 for The Ugly
