Portfolio

Surfers creating standing waves at Aliso Creek have ignited a heated standoff in Laguna Beach

December 8, 2023

There is a showdown brewing in Laguna Beach between boardriders, the city council, homeowners, and environmental groups over the right to manually breach the sand berm at Aliso Creek to create a standing river wave.

For decades, surfers, skimboarders, and bodyboarders have flocked to Aliso to ride its world-renowned shorebreak and, occasionally, a standing wave that forms when the creek flows into the ocean. The environmental groups, namely Laguna Bluebelt Coalition and Surfrider Foundation, say that manually breaching the berm alters the habitat and can unnecessarily introduce bacterial pollution and toxins to the ocean. The homeowners on Aliso Beach worry that the backed-up creek water threatens their properties. The city of Laguna Beach has yet to formalize a firm stance, but they do have plans to install a camera at the beach (at a cost of $35,000) to monitor, and possibly, thwart those who try to dig out the berm. Each side of the conflict is armed with differing opinions, documents, letters, and studies to support their cases.

Keep reading on The Inertia.

Tahitians fighting new Olympic judging tower at Teahupo’o hope to sway Paris 2024 organizers

October 25, 2023

As protests pick up steam in Tahiti opposing the proposed plans to build a new, aluminum judging tower on the reef at Teahupo’o, locals anxiously await news from Paris 2024. Their goal is to persuade the Olympic Games organizers to revert back to the wood tower that has historically been used.

Currently, a petition to stop the construction of the tower is circulating and has received 88,000 signatures. Among the most vocal opponents of the project has been Teahupo’o local Lorenzo Avvenenti. From participating in the protests to daily posts and updates on social media, Avvenenti fears what his home could become if proper measures aren’t taken.

Keep reading on The Inertia.

The three million dollar Chinese storm

August 1, 2022

Anyone happen to notice a group of 14 young Chinese surfers roaming about the lineups of Southern California lately?

If so, you witnessed a cog in China’s master plan to someday surf their way onto the Olympic podium. They’ve sent their top surfers to California to train for four months ahead of the 2022 ISA World Surfing Games in Huntington Beach — the first qualification event for the 2024 Games.

Keep reading on Stab Mag.

In Lebanon, despite war, financial crisis, and the big blast, a surfing renaissance persists

September 7, 2023

As bombs and bullets rained over Beirut, surfing was the least of anyone’s worries. Lebanon’s prolonged civil war in the ’70s and ’80s turned the country upside down and caused nearly a million Lebanese to look for refuge abroad.

Surfing, which is believed to have been introduced to the country in the ’60s, disappeared.

Keep reading on The Inertia.

A year after my father’s death, I’m still getting to know him; turns out his time with Pranksters wasn’t so merry

October 6, 2022

“The Pranksters are a bunch of a–holes.”

My late father wrote that after spending years hovering on the fringes of the Merry Pranksters — the 1960s band of hippies, social critics and acid-trippers who orbited around author Ken Kesey and spent time drifting about Santa Cruz County well before my birth.

But according to my dad, Dean Quarnstrom, who chronicled his time with the Pranksters in his journals, they were also pretentious, untrustworthy and noninclusive as they followed Kesey, their unquestioned leader.

Keep reading on Lookout Santa Cruz.

A surf park patent war could be coming to a wave pool near you

January 9, 2024

A poached engineer. Threatening letters. An ensuing legal battle. Bad blood is pulsing through the world of wave pools as two key industry players grapple over technology patents. The confrontation between American Wave Machines (AWM) and Endless Surf has gone largely under the radar, but it might soon create ripple effects felt by the end consumer – surfers.

Keep reading on The Inertia.