Dear Rory: “Is surfing worth it?”

Rory Parker

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It's a hard sell when you're fighting for onshore scraps with self-centered assholes…

Dear Rory,

I have given the act of wave riding most of my best years. I’m heading towards 40 now and still manage to spend a lot of time in the water, but I can’t shake the feeling that I should be doing something else. Surfing has given me a decent level of fitness but there’s a thousand sports that will do the same without the time commitment or the frustration levels. I’ve given so much time and effort to becoming a slightly aging, average to competent surfer. Is surfing worth it?

Sliding that Midlife Crisis 

Dear Rory says: I really want to say, “Yes! It’s totally worth it. Only a surfer knows the feeling. You’ve become one with the aquatic mother Gaia. The rest of the world are sad, unhip, dry-land losers.”

But that’d be a lie.

Truth be told, surfing is pretty much a waste of time. It doesn’t improve anything. Doesn’t help anyone. We can try to pretend that it’ll help you find an emotional center, serve as a crutch as you struggle through your day to day. But that’s a hard sell when you’re fighting for onshore scraps with your hundred fellow self-centered assholes.

Surfing will never make you a better person. Judging by your average wave slider it might actually make you a worse one.

Truth be told, surfing is pretty much a waste of time. It doesn’t improve anything. Doesn’t help anyone. We can try to pretend that it’ll help you find an emotional center, serve as a crutch as you struggle through your day to day. But that’s a hard sell when you’re fighting for onshore scraps with your hundred fellow self-centered assholes.

But the nice thing about life… there’s no point. You’re just gonna put one foot in front of the other until you drop dead. Hopefully in some sort of awesome explosion, or a naked lady avalanche. The latter being my choice of demise.

The real problem with surfing is that we all treat it as part of our identity. I know I do. It’s in there with the other labels I apply to myself. Writer, lover, diver, really-big-penis-haver, surfer. In that order.

And that’s a bit of a curse. What do you do when you realize you don’t love your own identity? It’s a part of growing up, for sure, and we all go through it at some point or another. But getting hit with that realization hammer well into adulthood absolutely fucking sucks.

What to do?

Just quit for a bit. When surfing stops being fun, stop doing it. Maybe for a short period. Maybe for forever. It just doesn’t matter. Nothing does.

You’ll lose your tan, your shoulder muscles will wither, but odds are that one day you’ll wake up and feel like going for a surf. You’ll have fun. Rediscover the stoke. Yeah, your ability will suffer, but who cares? It’s not like any of us are that good to begin with.

Take up another hobby in the meantime. Feel free to keep it ocean related. Those big salty bodies of water hold a never ending source of fun and excitement.

Freediving is very fun. It dovetails well with ocean experience. It’s got an awesome, always lurking, potential for death. And there’s really no better way to feel alive than by dancing at the edge of the void.

Caught in a jam? Stuck in a pickle? Send your life questions to [email protected]. Due to volume Rory cannot respond to every letter. 

Official: WSL Fun yet mentally retarded!

Chas Smith

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Will the World Surf League use the phrasing in new marketing initiative?

We all know that Wikipedia is truth. It is where late night, drunken arguments are settled. Where college students cut and paste to finish overdue assignments. And if any college students are writing essays about your World Surf League right now they will cut and paste:

The World Surf League (WSL) is a band of fun loving, yet mentally retarded, water dancers who splash in the ocean for points handed down by a motley crew of potentially more mentally retarded Australian and Brazilian judges.[1] Alternately, it is the governing body for professional surfers and is dedicated to showcasing the world’s best talent in a variety of progressive formats.[2] It was known as the Association of Surfing Professionalsfrom 1983 to 2014.[3] The organization, originally founded in 1976, began with Hawaiian surfers Fred Hemmings and Randy Rarick [4]

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Thank you Mariano Landa. I have never chuckled so robustly in my entire life. Go and click on the WSL wiki page HERE before some cruel, humorless stagehand takes it all down.

Once again:

The World Surf League (WSL) is a band of fun loving, yet mentally retarded, water dancers who splash in the ocean for points handed down by a motley crew of potentially more mentally retarded Australian and Brazilian judges.[1] Alternately, it is the governing body for professional surfers and is dedicated to showcasing the world’s best talent in a variety of progressive formats.[2] It was known as the Association of Surfing Professionalsfrom 1983 to 2014.[3] The organization, originally founded in 1976, began with Hawaiian surfers Fred Hemmings and Randy Rarick [4]

Ha!

Build: An Ivy League wave pool!

Chas Smith

By

The smartest people in the world jump into the artificial wave game!

Kelly Slater is a very smart man with diverse opinions but is he Ivy League smart? For those amongst us who might confuse “Ivy League” with “World Surf League” allow me explain some differences.

The Ivy League is an eastern seaboard conference that includes some of the best colleges and universities in the United States. Schools like Harvard, Princeton, Brown and Yale. Only the brightest are allowed in and, there, work on curing cancer etc.

The World Surf League is a band of fun loving, yet mentally retarded, water dancers who splash in the ocean for points handed down by a motley crew of potentially more mentally retarded Australian and Brazilian judges.

But guess what? At Yale the students in the mechanical engineering and materials science department decided to take a break from serious matters in order to build the best wave pool ever!

Kelly Slater good? Let’s read about it on Yale’s website!

Although no surfer herself, Katherine Berry ’17, took on the challenge. She built a prototype with help from Schroers and Wilen with the goal of designing a ring-shaped surf park that would produce longer-running waves.

Her prototype is a 3-foot-by-3-foot-by-6-inch park base with a series of interchangeable underwater inserts, both made with polystyrene foam. A rotating arm made from PVC piping hangs overhead, pulling a small plow through the water to generate the waves. The base of the park is adjustable to produce a variety of wave sizes and shapes. 

This fall, Berry moves on to other things, though other students  may take up the project. A lot of progress was made in the spring, she said, but more work is needed on getting the waves to break. She’s hopeful that using a curved plow instead of the flat one of the current design would help correct this.

Berry said the project was a good way to demonstrate the far-reaching impacts engineering can have.

“It forced me to think about specialized needs for groups I am unfamiliar with inside a community, why those needs exist, and how to approach satisfying them without necessarily having a vested interest,” she said. “I think as an engineer it’s good to be exposed to unfamiliar projects, because throughout your career you’ll need to know how to ask the right questions to effectively and think through all kinds of diverse design problems that apply to groups beyond yourself.”

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What the hell is she talking about? That language thing is hard to read and the pichure is not so clear.

Gimme: Kelly Slater’s dazzling coke whites*!

Chas Smith

By

The shoes make the man, or so they say!

David Lee Scales wrote an insightful first-person tell all about Kelly Slater’s Venice art show Apolitical Process. You must read here but, if in a hurry, his summation was:

The people in attendance were so beautiful and such a diverse bunch. Everyone was very kind and happy. All in all, a great turn out and a great event. The exhibit on the other hand, unfocused and unless you happen to be in Venice, not too exciting.

Tucked one paragraph above, though, was the sentence that got me very hot.

Kelly arrived midway through the evening and was swarmed with fans trying to get iPhone photos. His silly shoes were the highlight of the evening for me, although I don’t think anyone else noticed…

Silly shoes? I raced directly to the dropbox of photos included with the story and feverishly scrolled until I found the image.

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There they were, so crisp, so white, with the undeniable green and red motif. Only a fool or asshole would not know they were Gucci**.

And I have been waiting for this moment ever since Kelly left Quiksilver for the pastures of Kering. The company that provides financing for his OuterKnown and also owns Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Bottega Veneta and… Gucci.

Now, the more savvy but not super savvy amongst you will throw hands up right now and cry, “Gucci is played out, foo!”

Aha! But that is why not super savvy! The brand is undergoing a design renaissance, turning to a Canadian street artist/snowboarder who creates under the handle Gucci Ghost for the most recent collection launch. You should read about him here.

And all very wonderful. So wonderful that I wandered into the flagship Gucci store in New York and wandered out with a glorious pair of loafers on my hoofs. Like Kelly I used to love designer sneakers but have realized that men belong in leather soles.

In any case, Kelly is famously and notoriously cheap so I can’t imagine he purchased but it made me wonder? Does he get the keys to the vault when he flies private (and depressed) to France?

What would you like to see the world’s greatest surfer sheathed in?

And if you want to look like Kelly Slater buy his shoes here!

*Sneakerhead slang for extremely white shoes.

**Read: Only a fool or asshole would know they were Gucci.

WSL Looses Binds on Big-Wave Tour Studs!

Rory Parker

By

Will BWT competitors be given free reign to earn a buck wherever they can?

If you’ve paid any attention to the upcoming Titans of Mavericks event you may have noticed a few surprising names.

No, not Dane Reynolds. Chas already covered that angle.

I’m talkin’ about Jamie Mitchell, Mark Healey, Greg Long, Albee Layer, Shane Dorian, John John Florence, Josh Kerr, Jamie Sterling… I’m sure I missed a few.

What do they all have in common? They’re WSL competitors! Which means they’ve all signed the “Surfers Agreement,” a document I have never seen.

But some minor deduction could lead one to believe it contains provisions related to competing in unsanctioned contests. Can’t allow that, no sir!

Which makes sense, in the context of ‘CT surfers. Those guys earn a fair living. But for the big-wave fellas it’s a little fucked. Damn hard to pay your bills as a hellman, unless you’ve got the world-class social media skills of everyone’s favorite diminutive shark rider, Mark Healey.

The sanctioning game came up during the Cape Fear event. BWT surfers weren’t allowed to enter. Albee Layer was very upset.

“People who surf on the WSL full time aren’t allowed to do any other events,” he told an online retailer, from whom I’ve lifted this, and the following, quote verbatim.

Which for the guys on the CT makes sense. They get paid much better than the big wave guys and all have good cash coming in from their sponsors; they can make a healthy living. On the Big Wave Tour we only get two or three events each year and not even a quarter of the prize money. If you won every event of the year, you’d still make less money than someone who places last every time on the CT. We should be able to try and surf wherever we can.”

More than half the guys on the BWWT aren’t sponsored. They can barely afford to do it. There’s not enough money in it for anyone to dictate what we do when the BWWT events aren’t on. It’s not really fair… for the guys on the CT it’s a good rule, but something needs to change for the Big Wave Tour. For us, they can go a whole year without running an event; that’s not a career. If that happens we’re making zero dollars. I’m lucky enough to have good sponsors, but most the guys on tour don’t. They don’t have anything coming in outside of the tour and aren’t making good money at the events. When opportunities like the Cape Fear event come up, it’s a chance to get good exposure and make some money. It seems like the WSL teaming up with events like this would be mutually beneficial to all parties.

To be sure, the Titans of Mavericks is a weird event. Lawsuits flying everywhere, a non-surf media company getting its mitts on the permit. Twiggy circulated a petition to include Peter Mel. The Party of Five handed him the axe for his troubles. The WSL tried to wrangle their own permit, but it was not to be.

So what the hell is going on?

Will the aforementioned big-wave slayers actually compete? Or is it little more than a marketing gimmick? I mean, you can invite anyone you want. Doesn’t mean their boss will allow them to surf in the event.

I reached out to Dave Prodan to find out more. He responded in his usual, delightfully terse, fashion.

It is not a sanctioned event.

However, the WSL respects Mavericks as a venue, and certainly the surrounding community, so WSL BWT surfers are permitted to compete in the event.

Hope that’s helpful.

It is helpful! Quite the policy flip. And it’s great! Only allowing BWT competitors in WSL events was a dick move. Total attempt to monopolize big-wave surfing. Great to know they’ve seen the error of their ways and decided to allow the boys a little more freedom.

One question remains. Is this indicative of long term WSL policy? Will BWT competitors be given free reign to earn a buck wherever they can?

Or is it a one-off, the result, maybe, of some backroom deal to which the likes of you and me will never be privy?

Photo: Steve Sherman/@tsherms
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