Surfer/Writer/Director
You've Got to See This Guy's Rocket-Propelled Skateboard

Hot Take: A rocket-propelled surf tour is coming to a highway near you. Photo: Screenshot//YouTube


The Inertia

An unknown, on-duty lifeguard wins the Eddie, a spectacular wave pool opens in the Arabian Desert, Kevin Costner gets a Hollywood movie green-lit in which he plays a crusty ex-pat surfer named Lazer who runs afoul of cannibalistic head-hunters on a remote Indonesian island; so many wildly improbable things kept us clicking our various surfing news feeds in 2024, one could be forgiven for thinking that making an accurate prediction for 2025 would be as unlikely as getting a wave to yourself at Snapper Rocks.

I disagree. In fact, when it comes to covering the surfing stories that mattered, the crazier this past year appeared to be, the easier it is to predict more of the same in the year to come. Because if surfers learned one thing in 2024, it was that no headline was too outrageous. So, take a look at my top predictions for 2025 (tomorrow’s headlines, today) — and don’t be afraid to add your own in the comments.

PRO SURFER SWALLOWS GOPRO

With an increasing number of sponsored pro surfers riding gnarly barrels and scary slabs with GoPros clenched in their teeth — one in particular even filming while duck-diving a massive Second-Reef Pipe cleanup set, gasping for breath between each wall of whitewater as one does during a typical dental x-ray ordeal — it’s only a matter of time before their outraged glossopharyngeal, vagus, and hypoglossal nerves have had enough, and reflex deglutition occurs. The upside? Once a powerful emetic is prescribed and the tiny camera is recovered, the resulting clip is sure to go viral.

AVERAGE SURFER GETS WAVE AT SNAPPER ROCKS

The odds of correctly picking all five numbers, plus the Mega Ball, and thus winning the big jackpot in the U.S.A.’s Mega Millions Lottery, stand at approximately one in 302,575,000 — roughly the same odds of an average surfer getting a wave to his or herself at Snapper Rocks. But hey, I said unlikely, not impossible.

The Way Home, surfing in Iceland

Maybe a wave pool would work here. Photo: The Way Home

ICELAND GETS ITS FIRST WAVE POOL

Built adjacent to Grindavik’s famous “Blue Lagoon” thermal hot spring resort, the new Mikarfrostbylgjiur Wave Pool will open for business in February, giving affluent surf tourists the opportunity to surf in 103° water, not so many miles south of the Arctic Circle. Of note: the Outerknown Pro Shop will begin selling boardshorts and bikinis for the first time in Iceland’s history. Unfortunately for aerial aspirants, however, Mikarfrostbylgjiur (translation: “big, freezing wave”) is a “tube-ride-only” wave — riding anywhere but in the toasty confines of the barrel sans-wetsuit is to risk frostbite, while to don six-mil rubber is to risk heat stroke, both major liability problems for the pool’s owners.

MID-LENGTHS DOMINATE SALES WORLDWIDE

With formerly “hi-performance shapes only” labels like Channel Islands, …Lost, Haydenshapes, Tomo, JS, Slater, Machado, Arakawa, Patterson and Chilli (just to name a few) all offering full-figured, fully-functional models of their own — catering to an aging, yet still-active global surf demographic more interested in a basic, “get me quickly, smoothly down the line, with a good roundhouse cutback or two” performance paradigm than blowing tail — the “mid-length” will become the most popular surfboard design on Earth. 

BRITT MERRICK GOES ON HUNGER STRIKE

With headline number seven in mind, Channel Islands Surfboards owner and head shaper-designer Britt Merrick, who vehemently loathes the mid-length design (and almost wishes that Devon Howard had never dropped by his shaping room that one fateful day), will eventually go on a hunger strike, refusing all nourishment until every surfer under age 50 is again riding a three-fin thruster that’s less that 2 5/8 inches thick, under 18 6/8 inches wide, and several inches shorter than their own height. He’s a big man, so his strike could go on for some time.

IVANKA TRUMP OPENS SURF CAMP/YOGA RETREAT

Following her viral Surf Ranch session, Ivanka Trump will ditch husband/executive mannequin Jared Kushner, take custody of the kids and move to Santa Theresa, Costa Rica, where, after taking up with a much-younger, three-month in-country surf instructor named Storm (late of Long Branch, New Jersey), braid-and-beading her hair and getting matching dolphin tattoos on each ankle, will open her Rico Tico Surf Camp and Yoga Retreat. “A completely authentic, fully-inclusive Central American surfing experience for only $57,000 dollars a day, double occupancy,” reads her promo material. “Let’s see the Surf Ranch beat that.” 

SURF HISTORIAN MATT WARSHAW MEETS HIS MATCH

Twenty-two years after the publication of his exhaustively-researched Encyclopedia of Surfing, which was followed by the definitive tome History of Surfing, the evolving and eminently informative EOS website and his relentlessly entertaining weekly “Sunday Joint” newsletter, Matt Warshaw will finally come up against a historical surf-related topic that not even he can make seem fascinating. While the renowned historian will choose not to discuss the setback, it’s rumored that the career-threatening footnote was either a detailed examination of pro tour surfers’ Walkman playlists, circa 1981, or the hundredth (or thousandth) take on Greg “Da Bull” Noll’s career-ending ride at giant Makaha Point Surf in 1969. 

Caity Simmers Is Not Surfing’s Youngest-Ever World Champion

Simmers and Brooks up against the men? Yes please. Photo: Pat Nolan//World Surf League

CAITY SIMMERS AND ERIN BROOKS COMPETE IN SELECT MEN’S WCT EVENTS

Finally accurately “reading the room,” the World Surf League, no doubt wishing to capitalize on the heat generated by today’s young professional women competitors, will give wildcard slots in the men’s division of the Lexus Pipe Pro and the J-Bay Open to Erin Brooks and Caity Simmers, respectively. Caity will eventually lose her quarter-final heat with Ethan Ewing, in six-to-eight-foot Supertubes, while Erin will be pipped in the Pipe semis by local wild card Makana Pang. In light of these finishes, all of the sub-top-seven competitors on the WCT, and half the Top 10 from the Challenger Series, will quit those tours, and instead try their luck at the less-competitive “free surfer” game. 

NEW “CALIFORNIA SCALE” WAVE HEIGHT STANDARD ESTABLISHED

Following a monstrous December day at Maverick’s, where a young Santa Cruz charger caught what, having later been accurately measured at 108 feet, must be considered the biggest wave ever ridden — pre-eminent surf forecasting site Surfline will begin using a new “California Scale” to establish wave height, utilizing incremental 12-inch measurements to accurately estimate wave height from trough to crest. Devotees of the now-defunct “Hawaiian Scale” respond predictably, and immediately begin assigning negative wave heights to their surf assessments, eventually leading organizers of the prestigious “Eddie” contest at Waimea Bay to declare that the annual event will not be held until wave heights reach at least three feet or bigger. 

FLORENCE BROS FORCED TO SHAVE

After having apparently been channeling the Malloy Brothers, that trio of New Millennium heart-throbs who, at the height of their popularity, inexplicably decided to trade their healthy, handsome surfer look for one that had them resembling furry-faced, 19th century Kansas homesteaders, the now-equally hairy Florence Brothers will bow to pressure and shave their scraggly chin curtains. As said pressure can’t possibly originate from their main sponsor, it can only be guessed that the edict came from the sibling’s partners, having obviously tired of having the adorable surfer boy they fell in love with now look more like that guy working in the oil pit at the Haleiwa Jiffy Lube. 

 
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