THE GIZZY HERALD
the gizzy herald
Someone once shared a saying with me, "Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and they all stink." As funny as it sounds, it is also funnily true. Along with these opinions that get so easily thrown around with the luxury of social media these days, Kiwi society also has another annoying little habit, we love to whinge and are quick to jump the gun as to what others are doing wrong, when usually those little moans have bugger all substance to them. My god even Richie McCaw has come under fire this week with calls for him to hang up his boots, "He's past it." they say. Next week you'll all be licking his ass! In NZ Surf Mag land, apart from the usual gripes about exposing secret spots that sit 50 metres off State Highway 1 in full view of 20,000 passing motorists each day for example, we do get a lot of flak that the mag is constantly full of Gisborne, some even call it the Gizzy Herald. Well good people those insinuations have some substance and I'll tell you why, "GIZZY IS THE SHIZZY". Now this isn't a promotional piece and I'm not on commission from Gisborne Tourism, but hands down G-Town offers up the most consistent quality surf, combined with a healthy population of more than capable surfers than anywhere else in this great land. The only surf zone that comes close to the surf factor is Dunedin, but when you consider that the surf population down there is tiny and it's also damn freezing through winter, Gizzy gets the nod from a surf publication point of view. Now I've got nothing against other areas of NZ, except Palmerston North, but that does have some great trout fishing so I might retire there! I love Raglan, the Far North more. I was born and raised in Dunedin, until my schooling years were spent in South Auckland. I also loved those South Auckland West Coast beaches. I then lived in Mount Maunganui for 11 years and I enjoyed those years up and down the coast. Then came our time to buy a house and without a million bucks overflowing from my Kashin the elephant ASB money box, we had to look elsewhere and Gizzy got the nod. But hey we didn't have to live there, we entertained renting that property out and staying in the more central zone of the Bay of Plenty, but then I had a good mate, twist my arm into doing a pro's and cons list, to which I stubbornly ignored. Come decision time I sat down one day and worked out what was best for my job and wrote a little list of locations I had visited in the last two years, my case study period. These trips were always only to chase quality surf, not simply joy ride. I was in complete shock when I completed my list to find that in that period I had been to, (I'll only name the front runners) the Coromandel 7 times, Raglan 5, Taranaki 4, Shipwreck 3, Dunedin and beyond 3, and Gisborne a staggering 32 times. I was completely shocked by this pattern and the pro's and cons list decided my fate and we moved to Gizzy to be nearer to not only the best surfers in the country but the best and most consistent surf year round. Yes those trips to Shipwreck and Taranaki just became much longer but I wouldn't have the 64
trips through the gorge to contend with, so the scales tipped well in Gisborne's favour. Obviously as was brought to my attention very smartly by these opinion throwers, I had to watch and manage the overload of Gizzy content, yet meanwhile nowhere else on the North Island had offered up any sort of waves. Then there came comments from several issues such as "May as well call it Gizzy Surf" or "The Gizzy Herald" and when I, feeling somewhat confused, analysed these issues there in fact were no shots from the Gisborne region published, yet some dude that had lived in Gisborne ten years ago had been photographed at a West Coast break, and so the finger pointing began. It's right here that I'd like to point out that if some guy that left Gisborne many moons ago, on a heavy barrelling day is the only one to not only make the drop, but to pull in and make the pit, then I couldn't care less of where he or she came from, I don't care if they come from Ekatahuna or Mars, if someone pulls into a big pit or performs a styly move whether they are young, old, black, white or of the opposite sex, then I'll shoot that shit and more than likely it will end up in these pages, purely on its merit, hell I'd even publish a SUP if the shot was mean enough! Yes I can hear my inbox filling in already with complaints about that last line. So with tensions surrounding the ratio or quota of Gizzy material, you could imagine my stress when it was announced that hundreds of the best surfers would be converging on the region for the 51st National Champs, could I even publish that without fear of retribution? Add to that, in an eight week period over the height of summer, the East Coast ( BOP up) had been flat and the West Coast hit with constant onshores. During this time, the usual summer flatness that Gizzy traditionally faces was reversed and there were days on end of pumping waves. So I look at it like this, we either had a mag called "No Surf" or "Gizzy Surf" so get over yourselves, enjoy a healthy dose of Gizzy Gold in the NZ Surf 'Gizzy Herald' Edition, and I'll see you all at a surf break, nowhere near Gisborne sometime soon. Yours in Surfing,