Guess What Noughties Bubble Gum “Punk” Band Is Headlining The Surf Ranch Pro

There’s a healthy meal on Stab’s plate at the moment.

Our Editor in Hat, Ashton Goggans, is on an elongated, questionably unhealthy trip due to The Electric Acid Surfboard Test showings. One more dose and his little brain may explode into forever thinking he’s a cup of lemonade perpetually tipping over.

Our Stab in the Dark trip with a new mystery surfer is in its final prep and planning. And, we have a very special announcement planned for a pool somewhere in middle America – the finer details are coming very soon. To be certain, we are fucking thrilled about it!

But in the midst of all this surf oriented chaos, a press release from the World Surf League PR Machine dropped in our inbox. The subject line reads: Surf Ranch Pro | Announcing blink-182!

I’m pious in my music beliefs. That belief is I likely have better music taste than you. But blink-182 headlining the Surf Ranch Pro particularly thrills the nine-year-old me. Back in 1999, I’d collected enough bottles and cans to cash out at Vons and make a whopping 12 dollars. I rode with my mother down to Wherehouse Music (RIP), and being a kid glued to MTV and VH1’s Top 20 countdowns that ran every morning between eight and ten am (if my memory serves), my tender impressionable mind thought blink-182 was the raddest thing since my Flameboy World Industries skate and screaming stupid, goddamn, dumbshit motherfucker to the song “Bad Habit” off of Offspring’s Smash with my six-year-old brother.

At Wherehouse Music, I pulled out the newly released Enema of the State (I had no idea what an enema was) it had a “parental advisory” label, it had a dirty girl pulling a blue glove over her hand and, at the time, I needed to own it.

The Surf Ranch event may seem to some like it got lamer with this blink-182 edition but, let’s be honest, if you’re there, you’ll be piss drunk shouting “what’s my age again” like it’s 1999 and hoping they don’t play anything new – no one wants to hear that trash.