Stab Magazine | Local Floridian Ripper Gets Bit By Shark And Heads Straight To Local Bar

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Local Floridian Ripper Gets Bit By Shark And Heads Straight To Local Bar

In Miami, they call that a Nip/Chug. 

news // Jul 31, 2019
Words by Stab
Reading Time: < 1 minute

Here’s the least surprising snip of information to come out of Florida this week: last weekend a surfer was attacked by a shark, and rather than going to the emergency room and getting the wound stitched up, he opted for the local bar because they boys were buying drinks. 

It went down like this, 23-year-old Frank O’Rourke was bunny hopping away at the Jacksonville Beach pier on Saturday afternoon when a small, three- to four-foot shark, believed to be either a spinner or blacktip, nipped his elbow.

“I felt something jump out of the water and latch onto my arm by my elbow. It just grabbed onto me and thrashed in the water and swam away,” O’Rorke told local news. 

“I’m very lucky that I still have an arm,” he continued. “You can see the jawline, like where the jawline is of the shark…There’s still blood on my surfboard.”

O’Rorke called it the “craziest thing to have happened to me in my life.”

But was it really that crazy? How lucky is he to still have an arm?

Apparently, it could have been worse. Rather than have doctors check him out, in true Florida fashion, O’Rorke headed up to the Jax pier to throw back some coldies.

“He immediately went to a bar ‘cause he was like, ‘I got bit by a shark,’ and people were like, ‘I’ll buy you drinks.’ So he went and hung out at the pier,” explained RJ Berger, one of O’Rorke’s pals.

As the old Floridian proverb goes, “There ain’t nothin’ a pitcher of Coors Original can’t cure.”

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