"I changed my number and Kelly Slater put it on Instagram!"
Some wild ol scenes at Madison Square Gardens today as Donald Trump and RJF Jr took their front row seats for the main event at UFC309, two old champs, Jon Jones and Stipe Miocic, beating hell out of each other for the heavyweight title.
UFC king Dana White has been a staunch supporter of the new president and was even called up to throw a few words when Donnie Darko took the tiller away from that crazy drunk Jamaican gal and the gay-but-not-gay-but-maybe-gay school teacher man.
Anyway, as we all know, Kelly Slater, greatest surfer of all time, faded pretty hard last year, but still, so many memories, is a big fan of the fight game. Two months back he was pictured at UFC Noche in Las Vegas alongside Trump advisor Tulsi Gabbard outside Khalil Rafati’s world famous Sun Life Organics, subsequently turning the election to Trump with the powerful Surfer Vote.
But!
There were fears his relationship with Dana White had been fatally wounded after Slater posted Dana’s cell number to his 3.3 million fans earlier today.
Slater even doubled down, as they say, leaving the original post and adding Dana’s response.
Reeks of a set-up, don’t you think?
Kelly Slater sure likes to throw shade on events bigger than him and there ain’t much bigger in sports than the greatest heavyweight showdown of all time.
You?
Number goes nowhere, by the way.
But wait! Could free market capitalism save the day?
A nightmare scenario is developing in California’s other surf city. A terror so grave it is almost impossible to imagine. Santa Cruz, and its iconic waves, could be entirely undone by climate change leaving Pete Mel, Ken Collins and Jason Collins all bereft.
Santa Cruz has a surf history as rich as any hamlet on earth, of course. Three Hawaiian princes are said to have brought their favorite pastime to those pristine shores in the late 1800s and it has flourished ever since. Steamer Lane, Pleasure Point, The Hook etc. all now very famous.
But, again, climate change and its deniers might just snuff them out.
But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the Save the Waves Coalition and Black Surf Santa Cruz embarking upon the most in-depth economic value of surfing in Santa Cruz in an effort to inspire care and conservation!
Save the Waves Senior Manager Trent Hodges told Lookout Santa Cruz, “We’ve never done a holistic picture of what surfing brings in terms of economic impact, from the surfers visiting here to coastal property values and travel costs. All that information is really important when we think about how to prioritize protecting our surf breaks.”
The study will be conducted alongside California State University Channel Islands and funded by a $199,999 grant. Professional surfer Shaun Burns, the World Surfing Reserve coordinator for Save the Waves, shared that he hopes the various surveys will pinpoint exactly how much money surfing pumps into the local economy. “Everyone always starts out with millions of dollars,” he said. “But the funny thing is, no one has that exact number.”
Surfider Foundation CEO Chad Nelsen, who coined the idea of “Surfonomics” wherein the monetary value of waves causes businesses etc. to become more ecological based upon greed, declared, “There’s no lift-ticket price for swimming and surfing in the ocean. But there’s a value to the waves at Steamer Lane even though it’s free to access them.”
Economist Jason “Ratboy” Scorse was the first to ever examine how surf impact housing prices, in 2013, and discovered that people were willing to pay $100,000 more dollars to live near good waves. This new study will be much fuller, though, and the team hopes to be finished by March 2025.
If you had to guess, what Shawn Dollar amount would you put on surfing’s value to Santa Cruz?
Please don’t start out with a million.
“Stay together! It’s a big f**king one! Head in!”
It ain’t a stretch to say that Australia’s mid-to-far north coast, roughly Forster to Coolangatta, is crawling with Great White sharks. They call it a Great White Superhighway.
You might’ve even lost count of the the surfers killed by Great Whites in Australia in the last few years.
A brief timeline.
(And it don’t include attacks that didn’t kill the surfer, like Joe Hoffman, the twenty-five-year-old shredder whose arm was destroyed by a Great White at Crescent Head or upcoming pro surfer Kai Mckenzie, 23, who lost his right leg to a Great White in July.)
Mark Sanguinetti, 59, hit by Great White, killed, Tuncurry, NSW, May 18, 2021.
Andrew Sharpe, 52, hit by a Great White at Kelpies in Esperance, October 9, 2020. Never seen again.
Nick Slater, 46, hit, killed by a Great White at the Supabank, Queensland, September 8, 2020.
Mani Hart-Deville, 15, hit, killed by a Great White, Wooli Beach, NSW, July 11, 2020.
Rob Pedretti, 60, hit, killed, by a Great white, Salt Beach, NSW, June 7, 2020.
In the latest encounter, Kye Wilkinson was wearing his GoPro when he got bumped by a fifteen-foot Great White while surfing Emerald Beach in Coffs Harbour, real close to where a surfer was killed in 2021/
“It come up and hit the bottom of my board,” Wilkinson told Channel Nine. “I half fell backwards. I didn’t know what it was to start with. I looked under me, and saw pretty clearly what it was.”
The footage is pretty wild.
“Hey guys. A Great White just went past. It came up right next to me,” Wilkinson says.
“Stay together! It’s a big fucking one! Head in!”
“Usually you see them once, then they’re off,” he said. “But to see one three or four times is pretty scary.”
Are there more Great Whites around now than there were thirty years ago? It’s the simple mathematics of what happens when you protect an apex predator for twenty-five years.
After the fourth attack on a surfer in 2018, and just before a Gold Coast real estate agent was hit and killed at the Superbank, Steve “Longtom” Shearer asked,
Are we at a tipping point where we say, maybe it’s time to take the gloves off?
History proves there ain’t no tipping point.
For despite everything, despite the overwhelming evidence that Great Whites patrol beaches in abundance and with impunity, nothing, not the roll call of surfers dying, literally, in the mouths of sharks, including a seventeen-year-old girl and a fifteen-year-old boy, will shift a perception in the essential perfection and mythology of the Great White.
Who could it possibly be? Help!
I came into the house, last evening, after a run to the grocery store to find my wife watching Ali Wong’s Single Lady comedy special whilst preparing dinner. I have chuckled along with the diminutive Chinese-American-Vietnamese’s brash, often crass, jokes before so paused to listen. She had apparently become divorced, recently, and was strutting around stage in a white, flowing, ankle-length dress spittin’ funnies about dating, sex, etc. when she came to a recent date she had with an unnamed 50-year-old former professional surfer.
My ears perked right up.
She described how they met on a dating application but when he showed up he was clearly 60, not 50, though was apologetic over it. She detailed that he had extremely blue eyes and like surf sleuths everywhere, my mind began racing. 60-year-old former professional surfer with blue eyes. 60-year-old former professional surfer with blue eyes covered in what she called “glaucoma” but was for near certain pterygium.
Kelly Slater is the only name I could conjure but this has to be an easy one, no? 60-year-old former professional surfer living in Southern California with blue eyes and pterygium.
I came up with Jamie Brisick too, actually.
Wait.
Is it actually Brisick?
Whoa!
But you have to be surf sleuthier than me. There are other details in the special, if I recall it comes mid way, and maybe you can watch that bit before Tyson vs. Paul. David Lee Scales and I discussed both cultural events on today’s weekly chat, anyhow, along with stories of Chris Isaak being a core lord and sweat dripping down Mark Zuckerberg’s naughty bits.
What a wicked thing.
Listen here.
"These are exactly the laughs a hurting and divided country needs right now..."
Donald J. Trump has now been president-elect of these United States for over a week, though hurt feelings and acrimony continue to percolate in many circles. Republicans harboring resentment about being called “fascists” and “bros” while Democrats still wandering around in disbelief that their hand-picked candidate Kamala Harris got trounced.
A unifying comedy routine more necessary than ever.
The much-needed belly laugh did arrive but from the most unexpected of sources.
Our World Surf League.
Yesterday, while partisans shook fists at each other over Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard, the “global home of surfing” quietly released its annual “Purpose and Impact Report.”
Some highlights:
-WSL One Ocean creates opportunities for athletes to engage with local communities and organizations during various impact projects throughout the year.
-Since 2018, the WSL has measured, reduced, and offset emissions from the WSL Championship Tour and WSL operations. In total, from 2018 through 2023, the WSL has offset 29,067 tonnes of CO2 emissions (mtCO2e), which is equivalent to planting and growing 480,625 trees for 10 years (EPA).
-This year, the United Nations Environmental Program recognized WSL One Ocean as an Actor for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
-“Connecting the world’s surfers and their fans with other like-minded actors and opportunities has tremendous power in scaling up restoration waves and actions for our ocean and coastline ecosystems.”
– In 2025, WSL One Ocean aims to deepen its environmental efforts, strengthen support for ocean advocates, and empower coastal communities.
Abu Dhabi, here we come!
LOL.