Welcome to Paradise, Now Go to Hell: A True Story of Violence, Corruption and the Soul of Surfing by Chas Smith

Author:Chas Smith [Smith, Chas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Autobiography, Biography, Non-Fiction, Sports, Surfing
ISBN: 9781525231988
Google: Mc75MAAACAAJ
Amazon: B00BATIKLQ
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited
Published: 2016-10-05T23:00:00+00:00

13

Girls, We Run This Motherfucker.

Or, a Wander and an Explanation.

I drive past Ted’s into the Chevron. I need a pack of Parliament Lights to clear the fuzz even though Parliament Lights don’t work nearly as well as Camel Reds. I park and walk through the door, pushing past a strung-out moke with dirty white socks shoved through slippahs and wearing a fluorescent green T-shirt, into the bright gaze of transvestite love. I see twenty-year-old Oliver Kurtz, no relation to the good Colonel, in line buying a bar of Hershey’s white chocolate cookies ‘n’ cream. Ollie is a classically out-of-place feature on the North Shore. He is a stylish surfer from Florida with ridiculous blonde hair that points only up and out. He wears dingy grey pants cuffed mid calf and a loose tank top and pink girl’s slippahs three sizes too small even though he is tall and broad. He reads Vogue and Cosmopolitan. His brother is a DJ. But, still, his sponsors demand that he come here every winter. This is the place to see and be seen and get coverage in the magazines and those surfers who are too timid or weak to put their time in will quickly get dropped. Ollie is not rich. He makes, he claims, five figures a year and a small travel stipend. And he won’t get rich because he doesn’t compete regularly but who knows? Surfing is still oddly democratic or at least meritocratic. Ollie has a progressive air repertoire, which goes further today than any other kind of surfing.

The North Shore is most famous for heaving barrels but it also has a handful of sexy air waves. That is to say waves that provide the right sort of dynamic for aerial surfing. The most popular, on the North Shore, is Rocky Point along with its brother and sister Rocky Lefts and Rocky Rights. They each have nice ramping sections and good wind so the progressive youth, that is the kids who love to do airs on a surfboard above all else, can speed down the line and then fly and grab their board with their front hand near the front of the board on the toe side (a slob grab). With their front hand in the middle of the board on the toe side (an indy grab). With their front hand near the front of the board on the heel side (a lien grab). With their rear hand near the toe side of their back foot (a mute grab), etc. Aerial surfing is all the rage, borrowing both terminology and maneuvers from skateboarding. Aerial surfing is what makes up 70 percent of magazine photographs. And Ollie is progressively aerial, stylish, and out of place because of where he is from, how he looks, and how he acts.

I slide in line behind him and ask him for the news cruising along the coconut wireless. He tells me, “Pipeline is pumping right now. The contest is on and it’s firing. And Cheeseburger is snapping at everybody down at Rockies.

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