The game is closer than you think…
Surfing is fucked! Doomed to become vanilla at
one end (read WSL and Samsung’s little adds), and doomed to become
far too abstract at the other (Globe/Los Angered). It’s an
increasingly fragmented scene that sees the collective at one
another’s throats across the internet’s many message boards.
In a most unfounded fashion, I blame both the internet and the
increasingly popular nature of the past time. Do I want it to go
back to a mongrelised, intolerant sub-culture on the fringes? Yeah,
nah. Plus, I’m more than wary of the dubious talk of a surf
culture. After all, like your nationality, it’s but an imagined
community that we’ve all valorised to be real.
But imagined communities aside, surfing has at least one
thing going for it – it presents itself better than
fly-fishing.
I like fly-fishing, both salt water and fresh. It’s rewarding,
it’s a challenge, it’s a game that is not too dissimilar to
surfing. But fuck me, it doesn’t present itself well.
If you’ve ever tried to watch a fly-fishing video you’re likely
to get bombarded by pretentious prattle about it being a ‘spiritual
art’, or some bloke yahooing. You watch it with a permanent
grimace, embarrassed that you let yourself be seen with a fly rod
in hand. As a result, I hide my collection behind my
surfboards.
Nor does fly-fishing lend itself to music. Most guys publishing
footage put it to lo-fi country sounding guitars or obnoxious dance
music. Tt doesn’t work. In fact, no music works. You’re better off
to watch it muted.
Actually, you’re better off not watching it so that you don’t
have to expose yourself to the fashion – it’s all fluoro
Quiksilver/Jet board shorts, Patagonia wading boots, button-up
shirts, patterned face buffs, hats, polaroid glasses and waders –
terrible in the least.
Surfing has an edge in this respect. Surfing suits music much
better, even if you hate that music. However, nothing suits lo-fi
country sounding guitar. Similarly, if you’re watching surfing
without music in it’s raw form, unless you’re watching some kook’s
GoPro footage, one particular former WSL commentator, or some
Mid-Western bible basher’s footage from their trip to Hawaii,
you’re not going to get the same cheese.
Surf fashion? Pretty simple, not always functional, and fuck
zinc! Wetsuits? Only in black please. Still, I’d rather be seen in
the latest Globe Dion signature series clothes/shoes than a pair of
waders, face buff and polaroids.
And all the prattle about the ‘spiritual art’? We left that in
the 70’s and over at The Inertia. In more than one sense,
surfing today is all about performance baby!
See, it’s not all doom and gloom, we still have an edge over
fly-fishing. Then again, I’ve noted a lot of
exceptions/contradictions. No, we’re not much better than
fly-fishing at all.
