A Week Recap: Nike Looks To Sell Hurley, A Wavepool Tsunami Injures 44, And G-Land Potentially Returns To The Tour
Plus Coco Ho as Guest Ed, BTS at J-Bay, and river surfing on the Zambezi.
Oh what another busy week on the 9-5 grind. On the East Coast, particularly Sydney where I unfortunately call home, there was a steady pulse of swell and fuck-all in terms of worthy banks.
I didn’t surf once. I spent the majority of my weekend recovering from a soul-crushing hangover and a mid-week date rejection – the old “more of a friend vibe” – but now my favourite part of the week has arrived, that been recounting what’s happened in the marginally more interesting world of surf, or more specifically, what I read on the internet about it.
This week on stabmag dot com there’s been a number of things happening: Coco Ho booted globe tripping Goggans from the editor’s post for the week, we premiered our soon to be released river-surfing film starring Mike February, Harry Bryant, and Dylan Graves, and heard a wee rumour that Quiksilver is dropping Snapper in favour of Grajagan, more commonly known as G-Land.
So, in no particular order, here are some events worth recounting that occurred over the previous seven days.
Kelly’s pool and Waco got put to the sword by a Chinese wavepark ‘tsunami’
Yeah the KS Wave Co has two tube sections and a hot-tub, yeah Waco has the best artificial ramp we’ve seen thus far, but neither of them have the capacity to injure 44 helpless tourists in one oversized pulse.
We’re currently scoping the location for Stab High 3.0.
G-Land might be joining the CT in 2020
Stu over at Swellnet got the scoop that the WSL will be adding G-Land to the 2020 roster which will replace Keramas if the rumour is true.
G-Land was a wildcard on the tour for the years 1995 through 1997, and if you don’t know how good it can get, well simply Google ‘G-Land Kelly Slater’ or watch the embedded clip below.
The WSL hasn’t confirmed (nor denied) the reports by Swellnet, which means it’s probably true. And for the sake of getting big barrels back on the tour, we hope it is too. Although it might make Kelly’s supposed retirement at the season’s end a little more complicated.
Oh, and Quiksilver might be pulling their sponsorship of Snapper to back it…
Surfer gets bitten by shark, decides a schooner is the best medicine
As stupid as it fucking sounds. A man was bitten on the arm by a shark while surfing in Florida, paddled in, and went straight to the pub where he was shouted a couple of rounds for his troubles.
The shark was reported to have been a 3-4 foot blacktip or spinner, which is hardly life or limb threatening, but it makes for a good story nonetheless.
We sent Harry Bryant, Dylan Graves, and Mikey Feb to the Zambezi…
Where they surfed the world’s best river wave. And yes we stand by that statement, it was a tube for fuck sake. We premiered the film a few nights back at Huntington beach and will be dropping the film online shortly. In the meantime you can watch the trailer for the film shot over a handful of days in Zimbabwe and Zambia.
We’re not the first people to surf the wave, but unfortunately we could be the last. There’s currently a dam proposal threatening the existence of the standing wave that only ‘breaks’ twice a year as it is.
While we’re on Africa, No Contest J-Bay finally dropped
Do you like the No Contest series? I do.
And no, that’s no me just saying that cause I ‘work’ for Stab. It’s genuinely the only insight I have into the tour anymore since stepping back to uni, and as frustrating as Mr. Goggans shrunken beanies may be, it makes for delightful viewing after every tour stop.
The J-Bay episode dropped online over the week and it’s worth watching. Do so below. It’s only 20 minutes you’d spend scrolling anyway.
Mike wrote a long and very nice piece on the tumultuous affair between the WSL and ISA
It’s not often that a ‘surf journalist’ feels they can equate their job to the genuine investigative research that gets done in the world. Every so often we might cop a cease and desist, or hear a scoop about a brand or surfer that turns out to be true, but it’s not often these stories work their way into informative, and dare I say, well written long reads, especially since the print days have died.
Mike Ciaramella however churned out a good story on the issues the WSL and ISA’s torrid hate affair are causing surfers hoping to qualify for the Olympics next year.
This isn’t quasi-logical posturing either, the antics between the two have already led to two surfers you’ve never heard of making the Olympic cut.
Read here for the former and here for the latter.
Nike is reportedly selling Hurley
Remember when Nike was in surf? Well, it didn’t last long but a number of those contracts transitioned over to the Hurley team.
Nike has deep pockets and these deep pockets are able to fund some of the million dollar contracts at Hurley such as Mr. John Florences. Last week however, we reported that Nike is selling Hurley, and while this is no immediate concern for the surfers with double stripes on their suits, it is an indication that the surf industry still hasn’t and probably never will recover from the late 00’s slump.
That’s it for the week, come back next week for more information you could find by spending a couple minutes scrolling back through the website.
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