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There was a time when Gold Coast surfing icon Grunter Macnamara was king.
Depending on who you talk to at the surf club, that time is now.
But if you are a Brazilian migrant worker who was born in 1996, you probably wouldn’t agree. Or have any idea who Grunter is.
This generational divide was on full display for everyone at Burleigh Beach this afternoon, as the retired advertising guru locked eyes with the hottest chick on the beach, and didn’t even get as much as a double take, as he lay on the same patch of sand that has held his weight since before MP Peterson first won the Bells Classic.
While the stunning foreign labour-hire traffic controller, Adriana De Silva, does admit to staring at Grunter’s deeply sunbaked rig for a bit too long – the 25-year-old says that was mostly out of sheer anthropological interest.
“His skin. It’s made out of tanned cow hide” she says.
“His mullet looks like steel wool”
“But no. I do not recognise that man”
This comment, as innocent as it is, could be considered sacrilege to any of the hundreds of thousands of Leatherman and Leatherwomen between Southport and Lennox.
But Grunter accepts that this is just how it is.
“Yeah. I’m not surprised really” says the fading legend of the Goldie ska music scene.
“These kids have got enough on their plate with their iPhones and Netflix”
“They don’t know I used to work with Singo on the Tooheys and Qantas campaigns”
“They definitely don’t know that I rooted Elle MacPherson’s assistant when she was working for the tourism commission”
“This place has changed, man”
However, despite the fact that Adriana wouldn’t be able to pick Grunter in a line-up of the 60-somethings at the front bar of the Pav, this doesn’t mean that she isn’t attracted to semi-employed corporate creative surfies who reek like hydroponic cannabis.
She’s just not keen on the ones who have been living that life for 45 years.
“I have new boyfriend from Gold Coast. He is a surfie” says Adriana, in her thick South American accent.
“He works at a craft brewery and makes NFTs”
“He also has mullet and panel van”
