Ask Carroll

[andy2476]

a couple of tooheys news.

Sweet god almighty thats a depressing beer

Id probably rate VB over Tooheys new. At least the can is a nice green colour even if the contents are poison

[Cranked]

You'll get a good run on that one Ron.
Surreal irony to be defending surfing on a website (inappropriately and unintentionally comically) titled RealSurf. Such is the peculiar reality of the day when truth wears the garb of criminality and is called on to defend itself; to horrifically mangle a great Camus quote.*

Surfing isn't unique, as it's adherents would like to believe, in inflaming the passions of man and becoming something of a ruling idea: at worst a tyrant which demands the slavish devotion of an etc

Good god! Shearer goes all metaphysical on us. Way to go Steve... it'll take me the rest of the year (maybe my life) to comprehend that one from Rinpoche Shearer

[foamy]

Out of line? I'll give you out of line.

The day Nick stole your board. Photographic proof! That explains the tension between you two. Bloody Sydneysiders!

[andy2476]

big brother syndrome writ large. "you touch my shit, I'll kill you"

[alakaboo]

and if you reckon swiss balls are ghey let's see you try to stand on one.

There's a good video of Lindsay vonn doing a jumping Swiss ball workout

Steve I realised I can't be bothered

[Nick Carroll]

let half the air out it aint so hard

nick I did the first drill, but I'm not sure I did it right. my lower back muscles were doing most of the work.

yeah it's OK, that's just habit. Your classic slumped posture ends up relying on those muscles so they're pretty used to taking the strain. that's one reason why people with slumped postures end up with "bad backs" around 45 yo, when the muscles begin to weaken.

just keep doing the drill and the curls. I'm really just setting you up for harder stuff down the line.

[Nick Carroll]

oh yeah, fcuken Transcendentalists, in a weird way they're responsible for the appallingness of everything today

Transcendentalists - literary and philosophical justification for the glory of the individual (the male individual that is, btw) - adds to the Manifest Destiny shtick - Jack fcuken London - American ownership of surf culture/mythology - the surf industry - Laird Hamilton

steady on shearer, I am taking the piss

[steve shearer]

save your rocks for Ayn Rand.

[steve shearer]

Also, wrt to this Great Urban Reversal .......Carroll notes the demographic shifts as being the main cause but I believe the far greater cause is socio-economic.

Living by the beach is the great status symbol in Aus society. The Pomgolian imports or well to do upper middle classes would much rather their kids join the Surf Club with it's easily organised schedules and inbuilt social climbing opportunities than take their chances with something as potentially destabilising as surfing.
Thats one of the most noteworthy things about visiting the beaches in Sydney: so few kids surf.

Compare that to the almost Dickensian surf peasant gangs of Bondi or DeeWhy or Newport in the 60's and 70's when a wild, uncontrollable and unsupervised youth developed surf sub-cultures in almost scientific isolation.

The driving force behind the Golden Age of Aussie surfing was the harnessing of the energy of the australian working class, ironically enough catalysed by an American Blue Blood in Greenough.

[Trev]

Thats one of the most noteworthy things about visiting the beaches in Sydney: so few kids surf.

Musta changed in the last few years, Steve.
Question for those still living there.
Is this correct?

[el rancho]

let half the air out it aint so hard

nick I did the first drill, but I'm not sure I did it right. my lower back muscles were doing most of the work.

yeah it's OK, that's just habit. Your classic slumped posture ends up relying on those muscles so they're pretty used to taking the strain. that's one reason why people with slumped postures end up with "bad backs" around 45 yo, when the muscles begin to weaken.

just keep doing the drill and the curls. I'm really just setting you up for harder stuff down the line.

yeah thanks, its an easy drill for me to do. I have noticed my hamstrings have been beyond tight lately so I've been stretching them several times a day. I think this is making my lower back muscles sore, which never really happens to me normally.

[el rancho]

those back extensions are the shit. i used to do them ages ago.
how inflated is your ball?

#straightbackcrew

[Drailed]

let half the air out it aint so hard

nick I did the first drill, but I'm not sure I did it right. my lower back muscles were doing most of the work.

yeah it's OK, that's just habit. Your classic slumped posture ends up relying on those muscles so they're pretty used to taking the strain. that's one reason why people with slumped postures end up with "bad backs" around 45 yo, when the muscles begin to weaken.

just keep doing the drill and the curls. I'm really just setting you up for harder stuff down the line.

yeah thanks, its an easy drill for me to do. I have noticed my hamstrings have been beyond tight lately so I've been stretching them several times a day. I think this is making my lower back muscles sore, which never really happens to me normally.

Plenty of groms out at maroubra.

[Nick Carroll]

Also, wrt to this Great Urban Reversal .......Carroll notes the demographic shifts as being the main cause but I believe the far greater cause is socio-economic.

Living by the beach is the great status symbol in Aus society. The Pomgolian imports or well to do upper middle classes would much rather their kids join the Surf Club with it's easily organised schedules and inbuilt social climbing opportunities than take their chances with something as potentially destabilising as surfing.
Thats one of the most noteworthy things about visiting the beaches in Sydney: so few kids surf.

Compare that to the almost Dickensian surf peasant gangs of Bondi or DeeWhy or Newport in the 60's and 70's when a wild, uncontrollable and unsupervised youth developed surf sub-cultures in almost scientific isolation.

The driving force behind the Golden Age of Aussie surfing was the harnessing of the energy of the australian working class, ironically enough catalysed by an American Blue Blood in Greenough.

yeah well I reckon demographics drive those socio-economic changes

there's 10 million more warm bodies in the permanent population between now and the 1970s, and the biggest generation in Australian history has had a lifetime's earning capability loaded into the bank

that's what's driven coastal real estate escalation - increases in human numbers and associated earning power. That and the very romanticism that the 60s and 70s surf culture gave rise to. Ironic eh. Well, no, irony scarcely does it justice.

re kids, well there's quite a few kids, but they're not really free to run some wild race of their own, shit they're surrounded by their dads and uncles in the water. Not to mention a bunch of other old men who can barely surf. Surfing's not exactly a rebellious act these days; you might as well be a Nipper.

[Nick Carroll]

I had to spend a bit of time digging the plug out so I could inflate a little firmer, basically as hard as my lungs could push. Then there's that bit where you try and push the plug in, it went well as far as these things go, but still, if you imagine a footballer sitting on a milk stool you've got the gist.

I did it, and I did another round of the curls this morning after morning cardio, but I'm going to have to try and find another ball I reckon. Maybe if I balance the ball on top of a milk crate, what could possibly go wrong.

Just get a bigger ball. You're not seven feet tall.

It won't matter by next week anyway because we'll have moved past sitting.

[steve shearer]

Hipsterism fits neatly into the Urban Generalist paradigm....it's low commitment/high reward, compared to Carroll's Classical Performance Ecosystem.
You can live in Brisbane, or Sydney and avail yourself of all the human capital advantages of the Urban system and still surf. It's as much fashion and identity as anything; it doesn't take much to own the kit and glide in on a resin tinted mid length single fin. You get the thrill and tribal identification. Crowds don't matter, in fact they are preferred, part of the objective is to be seen, appreciated and group identified.

The performance trend is downwards in the Urban areas, probably terminally. High performance surfing as we understand it now will be either dynastic at certain centres most notably Coolangatta or else confined to small enclaves where there's enough of the scarce resources of time and surf as well as a lack of other urban options, for eg Lennox Head or Kalbarri or Ulladulla etc etc . Maybe the odd urban centre that has escaped gentrification like Maroubra or Narrabeen.

[Nick Carroll]

save your rocks for Ayn Rand.

OK. Fcuk you Ayn Rand, you fcuken lunatic! You do realise people take your shit SERIOUSLY, don't you? That it's given licence to every sociopath in the Western world to fcuk over everyone they can in the name of their own greater glory? That every piss poor right wing politician waves your farcical dialectic around as if it provides some sort of justification for their idiotic faux cruelty and lack of perceptiveness about the condition of the world? That instead of breeding some sort of super race of Howard Roarks, you have enabled some of the lamest, most propped-up cnuts ever to suckle on the teat of the over-rich to gain and squander immense power as if it were just a figment of their fcuken puerile imaginations? Yeah that's right, fcuk knuckle, your efforts have fostered nothing but the soft handed blank faced cowardly nastiness, the corruption of human possibility, that you thought you were railing against. Congratulations.

[Drailed]

Maybe the odd urban centre that has escaped gentrification like Maroubra.

You have no idea what you're talking about....