Poll: What Country’s Surfers Are The Worst To Share A Lineup With?

Morning, you mongrels.

Any worldly surfer has their list of Least Favorite Country’s Surfers To Share A Lineup With.

They will regale a gathered post-surf crew with tales of Israeli storm troopers overtaking Anchor Point dawn patrols, boatloads of Brazilians tailing them through the Mentawais, mobs of millennial Australian expats in Bali, etc…

But if I’m being honest, from Pavones to Pipe, Telescopes to Tea Tree, the most cringeworthy moments I’ve ever had in international waters have involved fellow fuckin’ Yanks. Setting aside Californian’s upper-middle class obliviousness, South Floridian’s sketchy, shifty-eyed operating, New Yorker’s irritating impatience, one Australian summed up his experience surfing with Americans abroad perfectly: the only nationality that takes seven minutes to describe a seven-second wave…

Speaking of Nationalist Fervor, will you be flying your flag at the Founder’s Cup?

For fuck’s sake! If you’re a surfer in California, chances are, if you’ve heard the question once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: are you going to Lemoore?

“No real surprises,” Kelly told us when we pressed him on any tricks he had up his Ambassador Blazer’s sleeve for the Founder’s Cup. “Just tidying it up. The outreach and response [to Founder’s Cup] seems pretty crazy from what I have heard and seen. Tuning in the wave now to make sure it’s all working properly.”

While Californians and international visitors alike scramble to find accommodation in the three-horse-and-a-Casino town*, Kelly was snuggled up lakeside in his Lemoore Airstream, posting a clip from the pool last night that caused Michael Ciaramella to flip his fucking wig, the little guy certain Kelly’s best and brightest had somehow managed to spoil paradise…

“Haha. Dorks,” Kelly said of Michael’s “sensationalist headline,” explaining that the wave was simply on a “slower setting and 15-20mph onshore. A lot more fun than anything you surfed today, I guarantee you that! Haha.”

And he wasn’t wrong, with westerly windswell stirred up into a frenzy not unlike the snarling, stiff, frustrated, overfed and wave-starved packs of fussy grown goddamned children here in Los Angeles, a trash heap of bad attitudes, and everyone doing their best to recall how to pop to their feet and angrily hump their pudgy epoxies down the line, wheezing with each cold, shaky duck dive, seething at each other’s very presence, howling each other off waves, blatantly backpaddling, panic-strickenly bailing boards, more than a few actual physical encounters over two-foot closeouts…

Yeesh.

As we look into the next week, we’re heading to West Oz, hard at work** on our next episode of our series with Red Bull, “No Contest”, hopping in the shark spotting chopper to see just what exactly those sirens really mean, and to take a proper look at what makes the West The Best. 

As I write this, the drama at Margaret River’s already underway, and it’s looking like another hell of a week in surfing. 

Keep it cutty, with a little class, Stab.

Ashes O’Groggles

Editor in Chief

*Rumor has it tickets are selling fast, that the Tatchi is fully booked the entire weekend, and that Harris Ranch Airbnb’s are disappearing before you can get the app to load.

**It ain’t easy trimming 60-minutes of Maurice Cole’s mad, occasionally brilliant yammering into 45 lean seconds