The Outsider

[channels]

Following on from Nicks "won't someone think of the kids" view.....

had a surf at the Point with my son this arvo after school and then we went to this NRL thing.

Freddie Fittler, James Tedesco, Boyd Cordner, Victor Radley ....all playing touch with the kids on the beach then giving out footballs, photos etc etc.
Hundreds of kids all on the beach stoked out of their minds.


It made me think that if Starkey hadn't been so arrogant, lazy or incompetent and tried to stick in dry up the arse of the Lennox rec surfing community and had actually tried a little star power on the kids then he might have got a different reception.



Instead of trying go go through the backdoor all secret squirrel.

What was your son and his mates opinion on the comp? Yay or Nay?

[Yuke Hunt]

Or conversely, if the power brokers and residents of the Lennox region had sat down with the WSL and discussed the proposition, rather than going down the road of group tantrum ... then maybe just maybe they could have had the best of both worlds.

Seems like there maybe a feeling of remorse seeping into the community now that the idea has been kiboshed.

[crabmeat thompson]

Following on from Nicks "won't someone think of the kids" view.....

had a surf at the Point with my son this arvo after school and then we went to this NRL thing.

Freddie Fittler, James Tedesco, Boyd Cordner, Victor Radley ....all playing touch with the kids on the beach then giving out footballs, photos etc etc.
Hundreds of kids all on the beach stoked out of their minds.


It made me think that if Starkey hadn't been so arrogant, lazy or incompetent and tried to stick in dry up the arse of the Lennox rec surfing community and had actually tried a little star power on the kids then he might have got a different reception.



Instead of trying go go through the backdoor all secret squirrel.

none of those guys -- stark, wsl and all of its asp predecessors etc have a compass, though. all ego driven experts at exactly nothing. nothing that ever matters, anyway.

[Nick Carroll]

Yeah I think they just had no time, knew they were on a hiding to nothing but like Stark told us, "We thought fcuk let's at least try".

they're working out of desperation, trying to save the world tour, it's fascinating to watch.

Also super interesting is the different ways in which the various affected surf communities and broader structures are reacting, like Lennox was completely hostile and kind of almost gleeful at the council's rejection of the event, Newcastle was stoked that they were going to have an event, and the Torquay/Bells crew kinda don't seem that spun out, Bells wasn't on at all last year either, they really missed it, a lot of people down there like the idea of it being an Important Surfing Place and enjoy seeing the whole show come to town, but they seem a bit resigned to it maybe not happening at all again.

[Nick Carroll]

I did think re star power, well who are the stars? All the stars are in other countries now.

I thought yeah steve is totally right about this, if JJF and Italo, and Medina and Filipe and all that gang, and Carissa and Lakey came along with Tyler and Steph, and hung out with the kids and surfed with 'em for a day, what community wouldn't be a little bit won over by that stuff?

They'd all be stoked to do it too.

But most of them are in other countries right now. They can't be here. They have to wait for that charter flight in March. This whole shit show is purely the result of the pandemic.

[Beanpole]

Newcastle already has the infrastructure and needs money to keep a lot of businesses afloat. Plus it's used to Surf Comps.

[Wubic Pig]

Out of interest I googled Dirk and found this acceptance speech for an industry Waterman of the Year Award in 2018 (Tracks)

https://www.tracksmag.com.au/news/the-w ... aks-499767

Excerpt...

have a message to the haters, and it is simple. Be tough. Call us out. Keep us honest. Tell us what we need to improve. But don’t pretend you don’t know that when you go beyond constructive criticism and cynically try to rally negative sentiment towards the WSL, when you try to take us down, you are not just going after us. You are going after Kelly Slater. You are trying to take down Lakey Peterson. You are going after the dreams of Caroline Marks and Griffin Colapinto. You are undermining the hopes of every kid who lives with salt in their hair, dreaming of being a world champion one day.

And I ask you: Why? It seems pretty obvious that if the WSL keeps growing in popularity, and surfing takes its rightful place among the great and elite competitive sports, everyone connected with our sport, and certainly all the members of SIMA, will prosper, except maybe a few grumpy locals who have to deal with some new faces in the lineup. So…why not work together?

And as Nick said above re different surfing community's take on it - and I have no skin the game as far as Lennox goes - but I did sit on the point last Friday morning around 10.30am probably a bit before Steve went out where he described it beautifully - waiting for wide blue water sets and uncrowded etc - I counted 52 btw which was uncrowded - anyway I'm sitting there looking around taking it all in and thought yeah - this is a really logistically dumb place to hold a WSL event. Though I've never been to Bells so is there a comparison there?

And Nick do you think the Ziffster might be interested in a spot of lawn bowls ?

[Nick Carroll]

well Pig Bells has a 60 year history of being the Spot for major surfing events, it's one of the Gathering Places. It's not really the best place for an epic event as per today's standards but that was never quite the point at Bells. From the start it was a place where everyone went in order to surf together, compete, have fun, compare boards and styles, get drunk, have fights, and go home stoked. Its original name -- the Bells Easter Rally -- says it all and despite everything, it held on to that notion for a loooong time. Even the WSL in its early stages, when it was really a bunch of annoying Seppos thinking they knew everything about the show and trying to cut away any historical backbone on tour, never really dented that vibe.

[Beanpole]

Plus it had a bit of surf wear industry backing. That Speil about living the dream and the future of the sport wouldn't really wash with your average local would it. It's basically the same argument as building lots of apartments and townhouses so everyone can enjoy the beauty of your suburb. The fact you are getting rolled is just a small side issue.

[steve shearer]

Or conversely, if the power brokers and residents of the Lennox region had sat down with the WSL and discussed the proposition, rather than going down the road of group tantrum ... then maybe just maybe they could have had the best of both worlds.

Seems like there maybe a feeling of remorse seeping into the community now that the idea has been kiboshed.

Jeezuz, you're such a miserable old obscurantist/company man.

Its supposed to work the other way: the WSL approaches the community in good faith and puts the proposal out there.

Which they did not.

They tried to deceive the community, deceive the elected councillors and go behind everybody's back.

A tantrum?

A committed, politically savvy rapid response by the community:\

a: Set the terms of the narrative and decisively won the argument in the public square and

b: Convinced councillors to hold an extraordinary meeting and defeat the proposal so resoundingly that any efforts by the state government to over-ride council were politically unfeasible.

I assure you there is jubilation, not remorse.

The only objective , numerical gauge we have of community sentiment are a pair of petitions formulated over the event.

The petition against got 617 signatures.
The petition for the comp got 29.

Thats about the size of it.

The only tantrums I've seen thrown have been by irrelevant baby boomers like you and Thud here on Real Surf.

[steve shearer]

well Pig Bells has a 60 year history of being the Spot for major surfing events, it's one of the Gathering Places.

History matters.

[PeepeelaPew]

...

[Beanpole]

Yep, rampant around here. The ongoing saga of Waverley Bowlo is enough to make you start waving pitchforks.

[channels]

Or conversely, if the power brokers and residents of the Lennox region had sat down with the WSL and discussed the proposition, rather than going down the road of group tantrum ... then maybe just maybe they could have had the best of both worlds.

Seems like there maybe a feeling of remorse seeping into the community now that the idea has been kiboshed.

Jeezuz, you're such a miserable old obscurantist/company man.

Its supposed to work the other way: the WSL approaches the community in good faith and puts the proposal out there.

Which they did not.

They tried to deceive the community, deceive the elected councillors and go behind everybody's back.

A tantrum?

A committed, politically savvy rapid response by the community:\

a: Set the terms of the narrative and decisively won the argument in the public square and

b: Convinced councillors to hold an extraordinary meeting and defeat the proposal so resoundingly that any efforts by the state government to over-ride council were politically unfeasible.

I assure you there is jubilation, not remorse.

The only objective , numerical gauge we have of community sentiment are a pair of petitions formulated over the event.

The petition against got 617 signatures.
The petition for the comp got 29.

Thats about the size of it.

The only tantrums I've seen thrown have been by irrelevant baby boomers like you and Thud here on Real Surf.

Between this comment and your earlier one about the NRL players with the kids, it implies there is a set of circumstances which meant a WSL comp would have been OK with the same people that said no.

What would they have had to offer for a comp to be acceptable?

[steve shearer]

No it doesn't.

It implies there may have been a different reception and a differing set of pressures put on policy makers, the media etc etc if the WSL had gone on the front foot and won the PR battle.

Operative word being may.

"What would they have had to offer for a comp to be acceptable?"

Not sure. Now that the Woz is so transparently beholden to political interests as a tourism vehicle, probably nothing.

There's no goodwill and a ton of mistrust.

Compare that now with the NRL, who for fukall, have gained a huge amount of goodwill.

Every kid in Lennox, especially the ones who showed up yesterday, are fans for life.

[Nick Carroll]

Plus it had a bit of surf wear industry backing. That Speil about living the dream and the future of the sport wouldn't really wash with your average local would it. It's basically the same argument as building lots of apartments and townhouses so everyone can enjoy the beauty of your suburb. The fact you are getting rolled is just a small side issue.

The Bells Easter event didn't have a sponsor for its first 12 years. It was then sponsored by Amco, Big M Milk and even Australian Crawl for the next 15. Almost every surfer who rode Bells consistently at the time were caught up in it as part of the Gathering Place thing. Nobody got rolled, like I said they loved it when all the surfers from round Australia and then from all over the world showed up to rip, share ideas, party and just generally make a hilarious mess of things. Wayne was pretty much the only guy who got the shits but he didn't do too badly out of it either overall.

Like I tried to point out above, all of Australia's surf communities react to things like this in different ways, they all have different stories playing out. It's not a cookie cutter Aussie surfing public thing at all.

[Nick Carroll]

channels I'm not steve on this one but if someone wanted to have a CT at a place like Lennox, a great surfing community but one with no history of admitting that level of competition in the door and indeed an explicit history of rejecting it, the way to go would be to spend years building bridges. Find out what everyone needed over time, and make sure you provided it and more. Under promise, over deliver. And actually, learn some lessons for yourselves in the process. It can be done.

[Nick Carroll]

Like these CTs do not have to be destructive things for surf communities at all.

But yeah I can't see the WSL doing that soon, right now they can't see beyond next Monday.