One of our favorite Tweeters in the past few months has been @whoisJOB. For a while we mistakenly thought it might have been some ploy by Postsurf.com’s Lewis Samuels to keep things even more interested for him on the North Shore, but today we find out that it is acutally LikeBitchin.com’sCharlie Smith.
Twitter is terribly retarded, unless you are famous. Then it is fun. Jamie O’Brien is just famous enough for fun and I have spent the last few months writing his tweets. It started slow. He was in Bali so I said things such as, “I am looking for a restaurant that serves breastmilk.” People responded less than favorably. “You are a sik fuk!” It built throughout my tenure. A month ago I wrote, “Bagels are donuts for fags” and felt very pleased with myself. People responded less than favorably. “Stop hatin!”
We kind of hope he keeps going. Don’t know what they will mean for Jamie O’Brien, but we’re guessing he can probably take care of himself.
Nothing clears the line faster than a shredded wetsuit and blood, and maybe that’s one of the benefits designer/artist diddo is going for with at least one of these new wetsuit designs.
The first edition contains four original designs: a rusted iron diving suit evoking the days of Jules Verne, the anatomic musculature suit as a homage to our inner strength, a wet suit which gives the illusion that the wearer has been attacked by a group of hungry sharks and finally a whale shark patterned suit that celebrates the brilliance and originality of our natural water world.
Think we’ll just stick the the rusted iron diving suit. Then the outside of the suit can reflect the insides our knees.
The waves at The Billabong Pro at J-Bay were so good that for the past two nights we’ve been falling asleep with a computer on our laps and cracking it open each time we’d wake up during the night to check in on the comp. We were kind of hoping to wake up early enough this morning to see the finals (click here to watch it on video), but ended up missing them by about an hour and a half. Four AM has always been a rough hour for us, but not apparently for Joel Parkinson. He kicked the final off with a 9.47 and even though Damien Hobgood was killing it like few goofy footers have he couldn’t line up the scores.
“I knew the waves were dying down towards the end of the day and it was going to be important to get on the board early in Final,” Parkinson said. “I’ve been sitting up the point at Boneyards for most of the event and trying to find the ones that would run all the way down the point – that one was no different. As I stood up I had a really nice line on it and I tried to make the most of it. Turned out to be a crucial part of the heat.”
Kelly Slater and an ESPN made-for-TV pro surf association? That’s the idea being discussed in a story posted on Wetsand yesterday.
You’ve probably read the details by now, about ESPN giving the whole pro surfing thing another shot, but with real money and a completely new format that will culminate in an eight-event summer tour, ESPN coverage, live webcasts and a three-year commitment. But there is a significant rub. The tour will feature only 16 surfers, and allegedly, those surfers will be comprised of the top 8 rated surfers in the world, and 8 hand-picked wild cards. . . Slater has been understandably critical of the way the sport has been governed for some time. His dissatisfaction stems from the fact that the ASP is a toothless body, which it is. It has no real assets. It acts merely a sanctioning body that’s controlled by the owners of its events: Quiksilver, Billabong, Rip Curl, Hurley, Vans and O’Neill.
For as much criticism as the “toothless” ASP gets, it’s difficult to imagine a scenario where adding ESPN to the team would make it better for surfers, surfing, or the audience.
It’s kind of hard for us to get too wound up about watching to old guys surf, but when those two old guys are Mark Occhilupo and Tom Curren it does change things a bit.
In a major coup for surf fans world wide, this year at the Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay spectators can watch a LIVE webcast of these two superstars as they re-ignite their intense rivalry in the world’s best right hand point wave, going head to head for the first time in over two decades. . . Each has won eight of their 16 previous encounters and the Clash of the Icons will provide yet another chapter in their 26 year rivalry.
And that all starts tonight at 10:15 PM PST. If The Billabong Pro in perfect J-Bay surf isn’t enough to keep you up, maybe Occy and Tom Curren can make it happen.
New York Times writer and former pro snowboarder Jesse Huffman drops in with a group of surfers in Montreal Canada who have a great little surf spot the Lawrence River.
Nearing the wave, I turned the board upstream and released the rope when I was inside the wave. A dense, solid but fluidly dynamic water surface rushed beneath my board. It was a moment of mild vertigo, depth and perspective hard to pinpoint in such an alien environment. I lasted a few fleeting seconds before washing out the back, long enough to feel the potential.
According to the 2008 SIMA Retail Distribution Study released yesterday by the Boulder, Colorado based research firm Leisure Trends Group 2008 saw a slight decrease in skate/surf retail sales (down 3.5 percent to $7.22 billion) and the “softness was most apparent in the fourth quarter of 2008.”
Apparently, December 08 was a bad month in retail. Who knew? Or how about this insight. Did you know that: “Passion and youth largely drive the surf industry. Surfers and skaters view the industry as a lifestyle, not a passing trend.”
But don’t worry, according to SIMA President Doug Palladini the “powerful brands” will see us through:
“While the surf/skate retail industry is not immune to the downward pressure on retail sales nationwide caused by the global recession, the resiliency of the surf/skate industry is very positive and promising,” says Doug Palladini, SIMA President and Vice President of Marketing for Vans. “Powerful brands with close connections to their consumers will see us through these challenging times and put us in a strong position as the overall economy rebounds.”
Thank god for the titans of industry. For more of this kind of in-depth analysis into last year’s retail disaster, follow the jump. [click to continue…]
South African surfer Paul Buckley, 37, was surfing near South Africa’s Mossel Bayon, when he got hit by a shark, according to the Daily Mail.
‘No doubt I was scared. I feared for my life so I just grabbed it. I thought if I held it by the tail, its mouth could not reach me again.’ . . . Mr Buckley, 37, was released after a few seconds and then frantically swam the 100m back to shore near Stilbaai, which is near the tourist resort of MosselBayon which faces the Indian Ocean. . . Witnesses bundled him into a car and rushed him to a doctor so the bite – which was nearly 37cm wide and 3cm – could be closed. . . The businessman was then taken to hospital where he received 150 stitches.
South Africa has an average of six shark attacks a year.
Looks like The Surfer’s Journal is joining the digital age with a couple Tyler Manson video clips on Vimeo. Apparently, someone under 40 works at TSJ now. This clip features a little quiver swap between one of the Malloys and Dane Reynolds.
Ride shotgun with Dan Malloy and Dane Reynolds as they cruise from their Ventura homes to Emma Wood State Beach for a quiver swap. This insider look at their modes of surfing comes to a head as they trade—and ride—everything from homemade hunks to foiled Fryes.
One of our favorite Tweeters in the past few months has been @whoisJOB. For a while we mistakenly thought it might have been some ploy by Postsurf.com’s Lewis Samuels to keep things even more interested for him on the North Shore, but today we find out that it is acutally LikeBitchin.com’s Charlie Smith. 
