Passing an Amendment
Stuart Nettle January 5, 2010
I subscribe to The Surfers Journal, as I have done for many years. In a sea of mediocre magazines catering to the monthly gossip cycle and the fashion whims of fifteen year olds The Surfers Journal stands as a paragon to the combined arts of writing and photography. It's a publication for the discerning surfer. All photographs are of the highest quality and the layout and presentation are of equal grade. The written articles are usually essay length allowing the author to comprehensively analyse their subject. The combined effects of serious discussion, elegant design and limited advertising create an air of import and influence. If, in the past, I was to find fault with The Surfers Journal it would be due to their propensity to place Southern California at the centre of the surfing universe. To their credit they have, in recent years, begun to expand their horizons and turn their eyes further afield. The cynic in me thinks that after running features on every single SoCal surfer of note the journal has been forced to look elsewhere for content. Whatever the reason, the surfing world no longer begins at Point Conception and ends at San Diego. In their most recent issue they've run a story titled 'The Taking of Pohnpei' written by US surf journalist Michael Kew. The tagline to the story is: 'How a secret spot gets revealed'. The secret spot being P-Pass, or Palikir Pass, on Pohnpei, an island in the Federated States of Micronesia. It is a 10 000 word article which, even for The Surfers Journal, is an epic. In their own words it is the 'anchor feature' of this issue and, for Kew's part, it is well researched, constructed and written. However, by running the article The Surfers Journal are showing a large degree of inconsistency. Further, I believe the cause of this runs deep. The article is particularly damning of Brazilian, Allois Malfatani, the fellow who runs Pohnpei Surf Club. The main thrust of Kew's argument is that Allois used underhanded tactics to beat Mike Sipos, an expat American living on Pohnpei, to create a surf camp and expose Palikir Pass to the masses. But for those that don't read The Surfers Journal I should back up a bit and provide some context... In the Fall 2002 issue of The Surfers Journal (Volume Eleven, Number four) forty pages are devoted to the Indonesian resort of Nihiwatu and the American fellow who built it, Claude Graves. There are three seperate stories on the resort and the wave that breaks out the front. The final one even written by Graves himself. Nihiwatu is a luxury resort on the south-west coast of Sumba. The wave in front of the resort has, erroneously, been called Occy's Left. The correct name is simply Nihiwatu. Before Graves arrived Nihiwatu was known amongst the surf-travel underground and anyone was free to surf it. Graves however, came along and claimed exclusive rights to the wave and now only paying customers can get barrelled. Single-share occupancy starts at $420 per person per night. In the forty page spread terms such as 'realising a dream' are dropped regularly. The piece that Graves pens about himself is titled 'In Pursuit Of Dreams'. Many of the photos have captions pulled straight out of Gourmet Traveller: 'You wonder what's going on in the real world.' In three stories and forty pages a wholly uncritical picture is painted of a tough but canny entrepreneur making good on an unforgiving coastline. It's the American Dream triumphing on the Mosquito Coast with waves. Similar favourable sentiments are shown by The Surfers Journal toward Tavarua and it's owners. The resort has featured heavily in the journal over the years. Like Nihiwatu, it is American-owned and, like Nihiwatu, it is an exclusive resort; unless you are forking out wads of greenbacks you cannot surf there. This fawning over ventures in surf-rich but dirt-poor countries is in stark contrast to the latest offering in The Surfers Journal regarding Pohnpei. On the premise alone Kew's article sounds like a good read: how a secret spot gets exposed. I have an ongoing interest in the media and it's dynamic nature so consider it a worthy subject to investigate. I also have an interest in Pohnpei. And here a disclosure is in order. You can make of this what you will... In 2001 I was living on Oahu and, to earn a bit of coin, was helping Allois spruik his Brazilian BBQ at the North Shore Backpackers. I didn't know Allois very well but was invited to his house a few times. There I saw photos of a perfect righthander on his wall, though no amount of prodding would get Allois to disclose it's whereabouts. It wasn't till a few years later, after Rob Gilley, Ted Grambeau and a smattering of other photographers had travelled through Pohnpei that I found out a camp had been established there. Photos of a perfect right were increasing in frequency in the surf media so I did a bit of internet research to trace the location. Narrowing it down to Pohnpei I clicked on the camp's website and Allois' cheery head appeared on my monitor. He owned the camp - that wave on his wall was P-Pass. Last year I hooked up with Allois again. However, instead of handing out BBQ flyers to Norwegian backpackers my job was to surf the waves of Pohnpei and write about it on the website I edit. I paid my way there, he had me as a guest. So my impartiality in this matter might be called into question. But despite my bias, I contend that The Surfers Journal article would never have been published if Allois was American, and that it's inclusion is racially motivated, even if unintenionally so. I contacted the editor of the The Surfers Journal, Scott Hulet, to voice my protest and he regarded my claim as 'preposterous'. Besides the inconsistencies that I've already pointed out, Kew's article includes a chapter about Allois simply titled 'The Brazilian': no name, no title, no descriptor...just a nationality. It also splits the picture into a simplified good guy/bad guy dichotomy. The good guy being American Mike Sipos who went to Pohnpei two years before Allois. Kew's line of argument - not only expressed in the story but implied through a notable lack of questions or research on Sipos' character - is that Sipos had more of a claim to establishing a resort. Yet the simple facts are these: Allois stumbled across Pohnpei on his own; the wave is only five kilometres from an international airport; interest in the place was reaching a tipping-point, and there was no existing surf camp. The opportunity presented itself and Allois - a Brazilian! - jumped first. Considering the treatment he is receiving, perhaps Allois should've gone for exclusive rights in Pohnpei? That way the secret spot of Palikir Pass would only be exposed to those with money or industry sway. Or perhaps he should've been a silent partner and had an American front the operation? Because it appears to me that when an American builds a surf camp in a foreign land The Surfers Journal considers it an example of entrepreneurial spirit, yet when foreigners do the same thing they are ruining the surfing world.
Comments
stuart,
this was a great article. thanks. i couldn't agree more with you.
in regards to tavarua, have you by any chance ever heard of peter leslie? and how he was the one that actually found the island first?? could that be true? read it somewhere and
greetings everybody , so i trully appreciate the article above ,, im also a brazilian and in general brazilians are not seen as educated surfers for a number of reasons that go beyond simple explanations, but a few of us are very well trained in many spec
Exclusive rights to a surf break is a farce. Imagine if that were the case here in Australia. "Nah Sorry mate, cant surf here, Noosa Point is for *insert large hotel company name here* guests only". How can a person group claim rights to a wave, unless th
nice one Stu, keeping the bastards honest
Sorry shar, bernardo-clausi and taylor - your comments were inadvertently truncated.. we've fixed the problem but there's no way to retrieve the rest of your comments.. apologies.
//continue on!
A perceptive article. Having met Allios three times now, I know first hand the efforts he has made. It should be mentioned that he also caters for fishing, is extremely well known on the island and connected me with meeting the Australian Navy, Australian Embassy and Franz Hezel of MicSem. I also know that long before Allios opened up his 'camp', plenty of others have surfed P-Pass and it is a favourite destination for young SDA teachers for a year. He does much for the local community - which the Journal never mentioned - and is a friendly fella into the bargain. I'm of the understanding his business partner is actually American - maybe Allios was more motivated than the Spiros fella, who knows?
So true. How can they bag out Allios when he hasnt locked down the break for exclusive use anyways? It was surfed by others on the island whilst I was there (ie. non PSC visitors)
Well I read the article in the mag and I didn't see that they were getting stuck into the guy. It seemed more of an impartial description of the history. I'll have a look again and see but my first thought is that you're reading between the lines a bit much.
As for exclusive rights, I've got no problem with it if there are clear traditional owners and they are administering the exclusivity.
Mkay, despite how much TSJ pushes the 'funded by readers' wagon, the essence is that both Steve Pezman, (former Publisher, Surfer Magazine) and Debbee Pezman, (former Marketing Director, Surfer Magazine) have always been pro American surf venture. I spent a lot of time on Pohnpei in the earl nineties - no camps, no hurley ads, no hats being worn backwards etc etc. Palakir Pass (before some assshole form Texas decided they couldnt be fucked speaking the local dialect named it P-PAss) will always be one of my favourite waves but based on the camps / crowds today, I'd probably flick though Pohnpei on the way to the outer atolls these days.
Totally have to agree with Taylor on this one guys. Nobody should "own" any wave anywhere. It's natures, not ours
I wouldn't mind going there, it looks sick. I wonder if these people out there that claim exclusive rights to surf breaks are bothered by the tremendous ill feeling they generate.
Most people dont realise that Sippos and Mike Kew are good mates and kew stays with him. The peice was cleverly written (for sure with the help of Mike) to discredit Allois in a way that it looks like he is still given a fair go. At the end of the day Allois goes about his business in a profesional way, helping others and certainly not making shitloads of money like Tavaura or similar.... typical American bullshit if you ask me....
I read TSJ monthly for the same reasons Stu does, it's great once you look past the Sepponess (new word!).
I read the whole article and to be honest while I understood that there was an attack on Allois intended as a rational human being I decided not to simply accept the view of the author as fact.
Media is business, in business you can't annoy your customers. Non bias media can only exist if it requires no revenue to survive.
gold!!! keep it up!!
It's almost axiomatic that when something unique and beautiful becomes of interest to people from any modern culture, commercial interests are then quickly attracted. As a consequence the very thing people enjoy and admire becomes damaged or it's spirit corrupted. The culture of surfing is a case in point. Regardless of race or origin, in the modern world money and commerce dominate all aspects of human existence and it is the platform on which society based.
I wish you blokes would fix it so the ends of all the sentences on these pages are not sawn off. It would be a lot easier to read!
"I wish you blokes would fix it so the ends of all the sentences on these pages are not sawn off. It would be a lot easier to read!"
That bug got sorted after three comments Fergus.
I'm sorry to report the sawn off sentence thing still remains a problem from where I'm view this page. But it's a great web site and I hate to be the bearer of more IT problems. Perhaps it's at my end do you think?
TSJ has routinely lamented the loss of spots to exploitation or commercial exposure. Petacalco in Mexico to name one, the sad developments in the Mentawais spawned by American Martin Daly's colonialization as outlined by Tim Baker's piece citing Jess Ponting's work to cite another. Then there was the voluminous bit outlining Tony Hinde's discovery of the Maldives and his reaction to getting burned by Aussies prompting his decision to go commercial. Plus Allois is both caucasian and a U.S. citizen. Hard to figure how any racism fits in here.
After skippering a yacht for 4 years in west sumatra thru the late nineties you could say I've seen it all.From Martin Daly hitting the panic button exposing the place to the surfing media before someone else did, to the discusting behaviour of Rick Cameron who I should mention is still up to his old tricks trying to lay claim to everything from rights to the waves to credit for organising relief for the earthquake vitims. The best thing about the place is there's so much gold there that nobody can fit it all in thier pockets at once.
In the end the good guys will get thier piece of the action, the greedy ones will think they're getting some and don't forget the INDONESIAN's who actually OWN the joint, they are smart enough to eventually realise how to make the bucks for themselves!