If You’re Gonna Read One Thing About Surfing This Week, Let This Be It

Welcome to the first-ever second edition of The Forward, Stab’s weekly email for people who hate weekly emails. If you deleted it last week then, first of all, that was incredibly foolish of you, and secondly, I’d like to extend a warm and sincere welcome to our burgeoning cult. This is the surf internet—a complex and often irrational place—but, don’t worry, I’ll be your guide. 

I’ll be walking you through Stab’s most viewed articles over the past week along with a bunch of other shit you’ll like, including a prompt to write an acrostic poem about your favorite surfer from the 2007 ASP World Tour. 

Confused? Good. Let’s jump right into the hits. 

World’s Wealthiest Ex C-Grade Pro Surfer Gets Extravagantly Hitched In Bali 

You fell in love with Paul Fisher because he surfed well, made fun of everything, ran naked through the streets of France and often rode a phallic surfboard. Chloe Chapman fell in love with him for the same reasons. Then Fisher became a wildly successful DJ. Then the couple got married, surrounded by a mix of celebrities and Palm Beach bogans. This story caught fire because you wish you were a wealthy ex c-grade pro surfer getting hitched in Bali, too. 

Surfers Reign Supreme Over Big Oil As Equinor Pulls The Plug On Great Australian Bight Project

The title says it all but, I’ll say more. This was surfing’s largest act of civil discourse since the WSL tried switching to Facebook live. It was heartwarming and very kumbaya. Pornographic material for the soul, in a way. 

Albee Layer On Concussions In Surfing, His Own Recovery, And The Coverage Of Alex Botelho’s Wipeout

In the past, it was widely believed that there were only three potential medical consequences of surfing: Death, cuts and mangled knees. However, it appears that we can also get rather concussed. Albee Layer did, and he opened up about it. Real talk: If you’re gonna read one thing out of this newsletter, this should be it. 

Ok, and what are we yelling about? 

Not having anything to be mad at on the internet is the 2020 actualization of the inherent dark void humans have contemplated for millennia. It is pure, startling emptiness. Fortunately, Kelly Slater just announced plans to build the world’s largest wave pool in the California desert and so we can fill that void with environmental outrage while also being willing to axe an acre of woodlands for the opportunity to surf it. 

But whose cornrows should we discuss? 

Not Gabriel Medina’s. Alright, well kind of Gabriel Medina’s—but more so Dylan Graves’. He recently dropped an edit. It’s called Explosion Salad, which is also the name of a dish served at Chili’s, a popular restaurant at which sad individuals dine in order to abbreviate their lives. There are weird waves™ and creative airs. It will make you want to abandon a looming important task and go surfing, which is exactly what you should do. 

Where can we get some weird waves of our own next week? 

Ever wanted to surf Albania? Neither have I, to be honest (it’s technically the Alabama of Europe), but there’ll be a window to do so next week. East-facing coasts in the Meditteranean are about to light up. Other than strikingly average Albanian surf, you can hit Greece if you like feta or Italy if you want to be an early adopter of the Coronavirus while it’s still novel.  

Last thing: How can we watch Stab High for free? 

Easy. Send me an acrostic poem about any surfer on the 2007 CT. I’ll publish the best poem in this newsletter the week before the event, which is March 21st in Melbourne. I’ll also send the winner a link to watch the broadcast. This page is going to make it a lot easier for you. 

Alternatively, you can pay a small fee to watch it. We’re donating all the PPV money to Greening Australia, so it pretty much makes you a philanthropist. Send me a poem anyway, though. The email is [email protected].