Quiksilver Pro 2012 The Outsider: Notes from the Underground

In: Quiksilver Pro 2012 by Steve Shearer 37 Comments Mon 27th Feb '12

Tags: the ousider , kolohe andino , julian wilson , Matt Wilkinson

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"Alright Bonetti, I've fronted the bread. I did everything you asked. Is this another one of your super heavy, super duper deals? Bonetti, when will you come through!"

Endle St. Cloud, Come Through.

I slept rough in the van last night, down by the old border in the backstreets of Tweed Heads. The night was filled with loud music coming from the old cinder block units, before long there was screaming and shouting. A youth with a V-shaped tattoo like a third reich eagle covering his upper torso was savagely beating another man while a woman screamed on the sidewalk. Before long there were sirens, then a moments quiet before more shouting and shrill screaming. A gang of youths shouted loudly and smashed bottles just outside the van.

In the early morning light broken glass littered pavements where grass grew obscenely out of cracks. The street was filled with shops catering to the seedy side of a tourist town; a porn shop, cheap lawyers advertising for business in drunk driving, divorce, assault; a bottle shop and pub where a man nonchalantly hosed debris from the footpath. Somewhere in these backstreets, the woman who invented Pro Surfing, Ms Westerly Windina plys her trade as a lawyer seeking justice for the downtrodden.

But there was no time to search for her now. Behind the wafer-thin epidermis of paradise that is the Superbank was the throbbing gristle of youth violence that had infected the area. I was keen to escape it's ugliness.

I felt a small pang of guilt over my cruelty to Brother Andino; a kid didn't deserve to be made to look like a dummy. But while he was waking in a penthouse suite dining on freshly squeezed orange juice with last night's paramour discreetly making her way from the secured building I was scrabbling under the seats amongst old beer bottles, coffee cups and cockroaches looking for loose change to get a morning cup of joe. I felt tired and dirty.

Cosmic justice had been served.

But Dane. Dane was surfing soon. I could picture him in his high-rise unit, with a freshly cashed cheque for 50K, the weekly retainer for his services, puffing on the very finest cuban cigar; a La Gloria Cubana Inmensos perhaps. Quaffing a cup of coffee, maybe the third for the morning, whilst scribbling in Posca pen on a surfboard. T-Rex is playing on the house stereo. Before leaving he calls on room service to deliver a perfect poached egg on the finest china in the house. Room service delivers the egg. Dane removes the coverplate and stubs the cigar out in the bright orange yolk which oozes onto the bright white china. "Perfect," he thinks, shooting an entire roll of Super 8 of the cigar slowly smoking in the egg. Such is the life of the modern artiste.

Did someone say Taj and Dane surfed the greatest loser round heat of all-time? Did they say it featured the best, most exuberant and unrestrained exhibition of hi-fi progressive surfing ever seen in a heat? That the crowd felt downhearted and disappointed on a sub-atomic level as the life force slowly dribbled out of Dane's efforts. Was it symbolic in any way that the heat ended not with a bang but a whimper as Dane went into a series of impotent in and outs?

All I could think of was Kelly Slater's Super Rivalry Tour and the spectacle of Dane and Taj going mental not just for 30 minutes but for hours, while fans groaned in ecstasy barely able to handle another glorious exchange and paramedics prepared IV drips as Dane paddled back to shore, collapsing on the sand as he uttered a hoarse croak, "That's all I got Baldy, I'm spent."

I caught up with the Messiah in the post-heat washdown. He seemed genuinely disappointed at the loss. I started by asking him what the coffee count was this morning.
"I had two coffees."
"Two. OK. Big ones?"
"Ha, not really. I've been enjoying the french press here."
"The what?"
"French Press. Usually it's drip coffee you know. I like the French Press."
"Yeah, French Press is better."
Who says you can't have a cultured conversation with a Pro Surfer?

"With all the crowds and sirens and whatnot, how was your mental state having to come back into the belly of the beast?"
"Well, I'm stayin' in the belly of the beast. I'm stayin' right here. I wasn't thinking about that too much. I was just hoping we were gunna get some fun surf in that heat and be able to cut loose a little bit. Which we did. I just made bad decisions. I fell on my first wave and lost all my confidence. Anyways, I didn't answer your question." (No, he didn't but didn't he sound scarily like a garden variety Pro Surfer)
"So there was no emotional hangover from having to come back into Pro Surfing?"
"No, it was excitement."
"Well it was damn fun to watch. Keep those clips coming, eh. Man's not a camel."

I was wondering if I missed something when Gabby Medina surfed the other day. Was is possible that this teenage hyper-sensation had somehow flown under the radar? No, it was not. He went unnoticed because he looked flimsy and lacking in depth and fundamentals. He lacked completely the sense of massive impact on overhead pointbreak generated by rampaging goofy-foots like Bobby Martinez. It would not have gone unnoticed by his peers.

Julian Wilson needs to learn to work a room if he wants to be world champ. Make a statement. Cut through the random noise and hype of your average surfing contest. He looked under-cooked somehow, tentative on the hi-fi repertoire and weirdly conservative. The squared off bottom turn was there, the best high speed cornering off in the game right now and one swooping, searing carve was a thing of beauty. But, but...there were more buts and maybes in the performance than world title definites.

Julian blamed poor wave selection but that seems a wishy washy excuse on a day of overhead short period Snapper. He called his performance 60%. I had a quiet word with Julian in the post press scrum.
"Julian, we saw Slater come out with shock and awe for his opening gambit, which is his typical ploy. How conscious are you of thinking, 'If he wins this, oh fuck, here we go again'. Is there a sense that you have to stop him now. Maybe force him into retirement?"
"I didn't even see his heat but I saw the heat score. He looks really relaxed and comfortable. If he keeps posting heat scores like that he's gunna be really hard to beat. But there's at least ten guys here who can really challenge him. He's got some work to do to win the event. We're all hungry to get him."
"In your heart of hearts is there a burning desire to take him down?"
"There's at least ten guys equally as good as Kelly and I can't spend too much time thinking of him. It's such a long year you can't even think about it now."
"With all the hype on the rookies it seems like you are a veteran now".
"Thats actually worked out really well for me. Those guys got all the pressure I got at the start of last year and I could sit back and just focus on what I was doing and surf the way I wanted to surf."

To be honest I was hoping JW would be a bit more of a spear carrier for some hard talking aggression. Get up in the champs grill and give him a taste of some youthful curry. See old man, this is how us kids dance. None of this old time boogie. Time for you to shuffle off stage gramps. Nobody beats Slater by waltzing him around the dance floor and letting him set the tempo.
Christ, haven't these kids learnt a thing? They're over-respecting the champ.

I watched the women's heats. I've been thinking a lot about women's surfing but that is a story for another blog. It deserves some attention and we'll give it to them.

A wiry Aborginal man with a shock of grey hair was pointing a boomerang at the ocean and playing a didgeridoo.
"Land, sea and spirit," he said to me.
"We don't own it, when you feel that spirit. It owns you. Right brother. We feel that one, Bimmi," he clenched his fist and gently tapped his heart. "Right here, brother. Yew!"
And he played his didge and did a strange little dance with his bare feet in the dirt in front of the Landrover screen.

I must have passed out with hunger and heat exhaustion sometime around noon. I would've scoffed that congealed poached egg with the Cuban cigar stubbed out on it and come back for sloppy seconds. Even with a couple of fat green blowflies sipping on it. No bull shipmates. With the budget cuts I couldn't even find a complimentary Red Bull so I made do with a couple of lightly fermented pandanus nuts collected from under a tree.

The afternoon passed in a steamy, sweaty blur. I saw Jordy do something wonderful and then Wilko was running past, with a very normal looking surfboard and looking a few pizzas and six packs lighter than the last time I saw him. Wilko without the spare tyre around the mid-riff looked muscular and wonderfully flair-escent off the top. Thats a made up word.
"Whats the deal Wilko?" I asked him.
"No beer, " he said. "Been a good boy".
I wanted to unpack that statement a bit so I asked him the following question: "You took California with a high octane rock and roll attack last year and had a little brush with the law. Was that a wake-up call for you?"
"Yeah, it definitely was a wake-up call. I was stupid. I just got too drunk one day and stopped off and had a little sleep. It was in the newspapers and I copped a bit of shit for it which was pretty deserved. I've settled down and take my career a bit more seriously now. I'm pretty blessed to be in this situation. I'm gunna make the most of it".

I'd like to know just who the hell the ASP intends to test for booze now that the tours loosest cannon has tightened up the program? Chris Davidson. Sorry he's gone. No-one left to carry the can for the old wild boy approach.

Snips and Dino were up in the stadium, drifting in the superbly catered stratosphere well above the human soup of tattooed Brazilian fighters and hungry bums which devoured countless g-strings. Their boy was out there and after a shaky start he turned on the fireworks. OK, he's never read a book, and maybe he and John John are a few bright lights away from being the full chandelier - well, what of it? We aren't expecting them to solve String Theory, or find a cure for the common cold. Just entertain the sweating lumpenproletariat is all. Make them feel their dull little lives are worth living for an instant as they wish they were young, rich and obscenely talented at riding a surfboard on a wave. It's not that freaking hard to understand is it?

In the crusty old back streets of the 'Gatta I walked past a tattooed man in a hat. He whistled. It was Davo. The Davo-stator. Doctor Damage. Unceremoniously retired without fanfare. No gold watch for service to the sport. No editorial from magazine hacks because he didn't have the big sponsors behind him. He looked clean and fit. Youthful. He offered a swig of a tallie of Tooheys and I accepted it graciously. Kindness begats kindness.
"Hey, don't you owe me money, cunt?" he said.
I did too. Davo had bestowed another act of kindness on me at Papeete airport when money trouble struck.
"I'll find you Davo. I'm good for it".
And I'll write that goddam Pro Surfing epitaph you deserve. If it's the last thing I do.

My van had been broken into and ransacked. The thought of some thug searching for valuables in my rusted out shitbox made me chuckle out loud. In fact I chuckled the whole way home to the Ox. A low slung sun sent heavenly rays onto the late summer grasses, with golden waving heads covering the rolling hills in a velvety fuzz that called to mind the ancient landscapes of biblical times. A shepherd herding his flock back to safety would have been perfect as a thin scimitar of moon drifted in the monsoonal sky. A great sense of peace washed over me like an incoming tide.
Surfing is a spiritual journey.

If you don't do it, please don't start.

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