As we overhead someone say last week, “Ol’ Naude has had a pretty good year.” And we would agree. According to a report in Australia’s The Age Billabong’s Paul Naude unloaded a few shares last week:
Last Monday he sold 250,000 shares at AUS$13.35 each. The AUS$3.3 million was the most he had raised from share sales for quite a while. . . . Last year he disposed of 100,000 at AUS$15.52 a share, while going right back into history — March 2006 — he raised AUS$2 million when he flogged 125,000 shares at AUS$16.06 a share.
Taking a little money off the table probably isn’t a bad idea right now.
Todd Murashige, 40, was surfing Crouching Lian near Oahu’s Kaaawa when he remembers seeing a shark head next to him. He started paddling for shore and the next thing he knew the shark had taken a large chunk out of his thigh, according to a story on KITV.com.
Murashige pried the shark off his leg with his hands and said he could not feel his foot when he got back on his surfboard. However, he did see most of the flesh on his right thigh ripped open, he told his family.. . . A fellow surfer helped him into shore and called 911. “When I was lying on shore and I thought I was going to black out, and I told myself if I blacked out I would die. That’s what I really felt. So, I called my wife and I called my mom. I guess you don’t really realize,” Murashige said.
Doctors at Queen’s Medical center say he is doing fine, but he is unsure whether he will ever surf again.
When anyone is surfing against Kelly Slater in a final we often find ourselves pulling for them because we’ve always loved the underdog. Today, we were on Taj Burrow’s team as he and eight-time world champion Kelly Slater traded waves (sometimes one right behind the other) at the Boost Mobile Pro presented by Hurley.
Coming out of the water at the end of the final Taj was visibly angry. It didn’t seem to be normal frustration with losing a heat. He was mad. And he had every reason to be.
Pierre Andre Senizergues, 45, is an interesting guy even for skateboarding. He is the sole owner of Sole Technology. That means when Sole Tech makes a dollor, it’s Pierre’s. He also owns most of the buildings that Sol Tech inhabits. He has an amazing yacht, what has been described as a “$25 million house in Malibu,” and a “waterfront” place in Newport Beach. Plus, he is single.
Now, Pierre has let the Los Angeles Times Home & Gardensection do a profile on the Newport Beach house so those of us who haven’t been over for drinks (ever) can see what the place looks like. It doesn’t look to shabby, actually. Not that we were surprised. He was also nice enough to pass on little nuggets like this in the captions:
“To do something new, that nobody else has, you can’t be afraid to fall,” says Senizergues, here in his meditation room.
It was Kelly Slater/Sunny Garcia showdown day at the Boost Mobile Pro. And while most everyone knew what the outcome would be, it was still exciting to watch; especially at the halfway point in the heat when Sunny Gracia was in the lead. There was a moment when we were wondering, “What if that was the last set of the heat?” But Sunny wasn’t that lucky and Slater marched on for the win.
Our favorite surfer of the day was Mick Fanning (below). He was surfing flawlessly and if he can keep his head together (which seems nearly impossible when he surfs against Slater) then he could take the event
More photos after the jump. . . (click to see them fullsize)
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Today, Vital Media Network President Brad McDonald announced that while their BMX and MX sites are doing well, they have decided to put their skateboarding site on ice saying:
We’re putting Vital Skate on indefinite hiatus. After two years, we just couldn’t get the traffic and advertising where it needed to be. To everyone who supported the site – thanks!
While McDonald and Todd Toth’s roots in BMX (along with the edit and photo skills of Mark Losey) helped take Vital BMX to the top in traffic, the group never did get traction in the skateboarding market. As we know, that industry is pretty tight about who it supports and does not support. Apparently, they were not backing Vital.
When we look back at our time at the fall ASR Show we think of all the great things we missed: the people we didn’t talk to (like Hurley’s Bar Rafaeli, the skateboarding we didn’t see, and the amazing product that we missed. But then we realize that at least we have these photos to remember the show a by.
It’s funny to go from hearing stories from Hawaii about how great Jack Johnson’s music is, to standing in line with him at Foodland at 10:30 at night, to seeing him \playing a couple songs for Steve Jobs at the September 9, 2008 Apple Let’s Rock event.
It’s even more impressive to find that Jack Johnson is the number one selling male artist of all time in the iTunes store (which now sells more music than any retailer in the world).
Here’s a little downhill skateboarding flim of Patrick Rizzo, Noah Sakamoto, and Colin Blackshear from Adam Kimmel and Ari Marcopoulis that perfectly captures the lunacy of going fast on a skateboard.
