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THE MOP UP
Okay, the last of the professional surfers left today, so that means ... I win. I am the last surviving housemate to be voted out, or rather, to manage to get a flight out of here. The cleanup crews have moved in, dismantling the enormous grandstand of scaffolding, conducting a much needed beach cleanup and generally returning the Supertubes foreshore to its previous natural splendour.
The evening the event finished was huge - a rowdy, drunken, chaotic party at the beachfront home of former Billabong licensee in South Africa, Cheron Kraak - a magnificent house fashioned from stone and heavy timber beams, with expansive decks overlooking the J-Bay lineup. They handed out the local delicacy, biltong, a kind of dried beef jerky, in long strips and we all sat around munching on them like cigars, between tequila shooters and general merriment. It raged until the wee hours and saw at least one former world champion literally carried home, while contest winner and world champ elect Parko was in a strangely subdued mood, sipping red wine and receiving well-wishers regally from his position on a comfortable lounge suite. Though the following night (or was it later that night - who can recall?) he was seen climbing through the rafters of a nearby Mexican restaurant. And good on him. It’s a month ’til Trestles and if you can’t let your hair down after racking up a monstrous mid-season ratings lead, when can you?
The day after the night before was a lazy, fuzzy, lost day of long naps and watching The Ashes. It’s dead time, with no waves and three days to kill until the tour moves on to California. There’s almost a sense of melancholy in the air at such times, the buzz and excitement of the event quickly dissipating and not even any waves to replace it. We’re the chumps who couldn’t change our air tickets and are stuck here while the contest scaffolding, tents and judges’ tower are pulled down. So, a household of a dozen or so pro surfers and their significant others drift in to Mick’s beachfront rental during the course of the day and just, sort of, stay. Someone goes and buys some beer. Someone else suggests a BBQ, or a Braii, in the local vernacular. Soon, it is all on again. Bobby Martinez’s wife Cleo, a hairdresser by trade, gets her hot tongs out and begins alternately transforming those with straight hair to curls, and those with curls to straight. The effect is strangely hilarious. Together with the new hair-dos, a few of the boys are comprehensively and theatrically styled by the girls, with make up and extravagant fashion acoutrements. Hawaiian Roy Powers looks like a brooding emo with heavy black mascara and Hitler fringe. Bede Durbidge with straight hair attracts comparisons with everyone from Hawaiian big wave charger Mark Healy to Happy Days’ Richie Cunningham to pop artist Andy Warhol. Part-Mexican Bobby Martinez is dolled up in jewelry and scarves, a beret and skinny jeans, like some Parisian dandy or Bondi metrosexual. His ironic posing is straight from Zoolander or fellow pro surfer and style master Luke Stedman’s book of deliberate vanity, earning him the new nicknames Mexican Steds and Bondi Bob. The normally straight-haired, stocky Hawaiian Kekoa Bacalso, with a head of curls, suddenly metamorpheses into a little old Polynesian lady. It is suggested he could go on the women’s pro tour with that do and win the world title. For some unknown reason, the girls all decide to dress in Mick’s distinctive yellow and black wetsuits before they head out. It is turning into a strange evening. The drinks are flowing and witty banter’s flying and then they all head off into the night in search of karaoke. I’ve had enough, pull the pin and go to bed.
And then, a couple more wasted days later, they are gone, and I am here, having a final surf at two to three foot sideshore Supers, the only human in the water surrounded by hundreds of dolphins. The last of the pros split this morning, with impressive displays of generosity, buffing the staff out with fat tips, illiciting tears and hugs and professions of love all round. Most are heading to Cali and the lure of Hurley’s big bucks at Huntington. We surfed a miserable beachbreak a couple of days ago in preparation for the dreaded Huntington hop. Then it is on to Vegas for three days for someone’s birthday. Some lives these people lead.
What to take from this event?
1. Parko will be world champ.
2. Dane Reynolds has claimed the title of most exciting surfer in the world right now, if in fact there were any doubters. Every time he takes off no one dares take their eyes off him, for fear of missing some outlandish new trick.
3. The ASP need to find a way to leverage this interest and come up with creative formats where guys like Dane get to surf for more than 30 minutes at a time, and more than once if they lose.
4. When locals say, “there’s a guy at my local beach who surfs as good as the pros,” you are normally safe to scoff. But when it is said here, about Sean Holmes, it is true.
5. A bunch of contenders need to step it up and make at least a bit of a show of resistance in the next couple of events, or else the rest of the tour may become a farce.
6. There are too many surfers on tour, and almost everyone’s interests would be best served by culling numbers and lumping more prize money at the pointy end to increase interest in the tour.
7. Though Day Two at pumping Supers - with everyone going berserk - did seem to indicate the World Tour is still in reasonable health. The ASP needed that day like a shot of adrenalin.
8. There will be a meeting in California between the folks from ESPN and this proposed new tour and the surfers that may very well decide the future of pro surfing as we know it. Oh, to be a fly on the wall.