“It’s pretty amazing how stuff goes like this…I’ve become sort famous I guess.”
The Malibu surfer Andy Lyons, whom you’ll hear on a Dirty Water podcast in a couple of days, was the star, victim, whatever you want to call it, of a viral video shaming that cost him job, got him doxxed and his kid threatened.
To recap, Lyons and a retro-riding cowboy get entangled, Lyons’ board gets smashed; he retaliates by taking to the nostalgia craft with a rock before paddling it out beyond the Malibu pier.
A TikTok video and Instagram account @andylyonsisakook soon followed.
Standard sorta stuff and very good entertainment value.
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Lyons, who is fifty-nine, and who has been surfing the joint for fifty years, is upbeat when BeachGrit calls despite the death threats, having his address published and a warning his five-year-old kid is going to get beat up.
“You know, it’s a good ride right now,” he says. “Fucking dealing with all these little punks, keyboard warriors. It’s pretty amazing how stuff goes like this…I’ve become sorta famous I guess.”
The incident, and the response of both sides, marks the changing shift, I think, in modern surf culture. On one side you got on the original cats, good surfers, still riding short boards, who grew up with the unwritten code that if the locals don’t get their waves, hell gonna break loose.
It’s unpleasant but crowded lineups greased with the underlying threat of violence have at least a semblance of order.
The prevailing mindset, howevs, is that all surfers are equal, beginners, SUP riders, even celebs being pushed onto waves on giant foam surfboards by their sherpas, and that retaliation belongs in the distant ugly past.
As for being doxxed, supposedly cancelled and so on, Lyons says, “I’m embracing this. People say it ended his career but, it’s like, shit’s taking off. This is the beginning!”
Lyons does press to clear the record about the supposed kid traumatised by the ordeal.
“He was in his twenties and about a foot taller than me,” he says. “He was no fucking kid!”
Full story via the Dirty Water podcast, out in a couple of days.
