An 8.9 earthquake that devastated Japan at 2:46 PM local time Friday (March 11, 2011) has triggered Tsunami warnings across the Pacific according to the the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. Already there have been more than 300 deaths reported in Japan.
Waves have begun hitting the Hawaiian Islands and beaches are closed. As of 4:30 AM (HST) there has been no real damage, however, no “all clear” sent yet in the Islands.
Reports from the action community are rolling in via Twitter and Facebook. Here are just a few:
Earlier in the night Surfer Clay Marzo said via Twitter: “So im SUPPOSE to be getting off this plane at 2am’ish hawaii time…. this gives me so much time…… Hope my house is high enough :(”
Les ettes owner Carmela Fleury, who lives in Japan with her husband Ivar, reported this morning via facebook: “All good. Thanks for the messages. Ivar is okay. His office and our home are not, but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed.”
Camp of Champions‘ Ken Achenbach reported via facebook that he left Japan only a couple hours before the quake hit: “Stoked that we left Tokyo a couple hours before the earthquake. Super stoked our friends in Japan are OK.”
Follow the jump for video footage of the Tsunami hitting Japan.
Four teams. Four weeks. Four videos. Part flimer challenge, part editing challenge, part team challenge. . . This week — this final week — it’s Birdhouse’s team-video absurdities at Woodward West that we’re blessed with.
Blessed indeed. For your Thursday afternoon skate viewing pleasure make sure to watch it to the end. Jaws Homoki has a big surprise in store.
Snowboarders are set to gather today (March 10, 2011) for a meeting at the US Open Snowboarding Championships to discuss forming a union to help snowboarders deal with event scheduling issues International Olympic Committee’splans to add slopestyle to the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, according to a Matt Higgins story in the New York Times.
Such a union would be unusual: X Games competitors’ efforts to create a union have fizzled out, and riders say this is the first attempt to create a union in snowboarding. . . “We have no time to train, no time to recover from injuries,” said Chas Guldemond, 23, of Reno, who during the past three weeks has won slopestyle competitions in Europe, Asia and North America. After the United States Open, Guldemond will fly to France for Winter X Games Europe next week.
While the idea of athletes organizing to protect their best interests is a great one (and we hope they are successful for once), this entire issue seems more related to the owners of established snowboarding events (the TTR series for example) hoping to be included in the Olympic qualification process even though they have never been big fans the FIS.
Apparently, event owners like Terje Haakonsen have finally figured out that being a little more involved with the Olympic process just might be good for business.
When snowboard site Yobeat.com embeded a couple Youtube.com versions of Transworld Snowboarding’s Mark McMorris‘ 1440 Triple Cork clip they thought it was pretty funny. They said:
The nice thing about “exclusive” Internet content is after a day, it usually turns into an ad. So if you missed Mark McMorris’s acrobatics on some other site, now you can watch it on them all! Feel the excitement!
Interestingly enough the clips were pulled from Youtube a day later due to a “copyright claim” by Transworld’s parent company Bonnier Corp. Guess they didn’t want that clip going viral with all their branding on it. The same clip, however, is available for embedding on Transworld’s Vimeo account.
The pressure from the world surfing community appears to have paid off. Volcom has now announced that they have flip-flopped on their original ruling and will pay Santa Cruz’s Zoltan Torkos the $10,000 for his kickflip. Not only that, they are now upping the award on the first high performance, above-the-lip kickflip to $20,000.
After further review Volcom has decided to reward Zoltan the $10K for his groundbreaking maneuver, and at the same time redefine the rules and double the prize money on the elusive “above and off the lip kickflip” now worth $20,000. . . “We really want to celebrate Zoltan’s successful kickflip, and continue to push the concept of futuristic surfing. Zoltan was the first and we feel shouldn’t be the last,” said Volcom’s Director of Surfing, Mike Guarino.
Nice. We kind of figured they’d come around. Volcom will release a video later this week that outlines the new kickflip competition more clearly defined rules. Looks like Zoltan has the chance to double down as he’s obviously already the closest surfer to the next $20,000.
The woman, who speaks English as a second language, thought she was downloading from Base II, or mid-station, on Blackcomb to Whistler Village between 5:30 and 6 p.m. last Tuesday (March 1), said Doug Forseth, Whistler Blackcomb’s (WB) senior VP of operations. . . But she loaded the Excalibur heading up to the top of Blackcomb and got stuck overnight when the lift stopped operating.
The woman did not have a cellphone, according to the story. A lift host apparently loaded the woman on the up side of the gondola by mistake and no one noticed until 7:15 AM when they started the lift up for the day. “There was a mistake made… just pure and simple human error,” said Forseth is quoted saying. Well, at least they know that much.
Abercrombie (NYSE:ANF), which declined to comment on the lawsuit, is seeking monetary relief and undisclosed damages and asking that Surf Style be barred from using the gull. . . This isn’t the first run-in between the two businesses over the gull design. Abercrombie said in the lawsuit it sent a cease-and-desist letter to Surf Style last May and that the chain agreed to quit selling the allegedly offending merchandise by September – but didn’t.
From now on designers will have to think twice before they put a bird on it.
In their Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast final match up Kelly Slater and Taj Burrow surfed a total of 23 waves. Seven of those waves scored a 3.0 or above. Five of those that did were Kelly’s, and two were Taj’s. Kelly’s high score was a 5.93 and Taj’s was a 7.17. That’s the kind of heat it was. To look at all the scores more closely click here.
With unsurpassed skill and style on the skateboard, Lucas Puig was the natural consideration as the latest addition to the adidas squad.
Hailing from Toulouse, France and establishing a name for himself as…oh who are we kidding!? It’s Lucas Puig! His reputation is solid,
the guy rips, has amazing style, and is one of the best skateboarders out there.
After the battles that went down in the Round 5 heats of the Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast, the final between Kelly Slater and defending Champ Taj Burrow was a bit of a fizzler. It wasn’t the fault of either surfer, but more the junky, ripped up Snapper surf.
Slater jumped in first with optimism on a smaller wave, threw a little frontside air, and then stalled into a perfect, though tiny snapper barrel. It was a classic example of how Kelly seems to bend waves to his will. He didn’t have the same power over the judges, however, and they gave him a 5.0 in what could turn out to be one of the best 5 point waves in ASP finals history.
With 14 minutes to go the heat basically blew up in both surfer’s faces. Slater and Burrow fell on wave after wave. It almost became comical. Kelly railed out on a drop. Then Taj would get caught up in the white water or fall off on a simple bottom turn.
