Can you guess four things surfers have screwed up? Wait, only four?
I know a lot of you are reading this stuff from outside my own country, and I’m never really sure how much US news makes it across borders. Not much, I assume, since I know little to nothing about what’s going on in Australia, or New Zealand.
Which is where I think a large majority of our readers reside.
Anyway, in case you weren’t aware we’ve got a lovely bunch of right wing racist Christian terrorists occupying a federal building and rattling their sabers. A true blue bunch of nutjobs, one of their number, a PTSD addled vet, even posted a jihad-style martyr video.
Entertaining stuff, I figure they’re either going to get killed or locked up for a very long time. It’d be scary if I still lived on the mainland, place is infested with this type of lunatic. But I’m thousands of miles away, safe in the Pacific, resident of the state with the lowest gun ownership rate in the USA.
The only real effect it has on my life, outside of entertainment value, is that it finally changed my opinion on guns. I’ve always liked guns. They’re cool, make a lot of noise, kill things. Don’t own any, myself, because like Jim Jeffries said, “From time to time, we all get sad…”
So, yeah, for whatever reason, this is the straw that broke the camel’s back, and I’m in the no-more-guns camp. It sucks, group of idiots ruined it for everyone, but them’s the breaks.
I’ll happily sacrifice my theoretical right to own a firearm if it keeps them out of the hands of people like those dumb fucks in Oregon.
Which got me thinking about aspects of surfing that aren’t bad, in and of themselves, but are used in such a way that the world would be a better place without them.
Don’t we surfers love to fuck stuff up? A delusional horde of hedonistic narcissists who play at spirituality descend on a locale and kill in inside a decade. Pollution, poverty, addiction, carpet bagging cocksuckers joining the gold rush to buy up land and privatize access. We’re a nightmare, and we know it
Here are four…
Volume: Arguably, the most useless number you can assign a surfboard. Sure, coupled with length, width, rocker, a tiny bit of knowledge about bottom contour, and rail foil, it can help make a decision regarding board design. But on its own it only relates to buoyancy, and means nothing worth knowing. But it’s a single number, very easy to explain, great for selling boards. Perfect when slapping together a bullshit calculator that peddles boards to uninformed consumers.
Travel: Jeez, don’t we surfers love to fuck stuff up? A delusional horde of hedonistic narcissists who play at spirituality descend on a locale and kill in inside a decade. Pollution, poverty, addiction, carpet bagging cocksuckers joining the gold rush to buy up land and privatize access. We’re a nightmare, and we know it. Read about surfers screwing Bali here.
Religion: I’m not religious, made no secret of that. But I don’t really have a problem with people who are, as long as they keep it to themselves. Which most do. The average person is pretty decent, trying to foist your ethos on another person is fucked enough an act beyond the pale.
But religious surf organizations, almost exclusively Christian, never cease to get me riled.
Bunch of chicken hawk charlatans trying to recruit the weak and dumb, turn my favorite activity into a means of indoctrination. It’s not something of which I’ll ever be accepting, or even approaching polite.
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This website, despite its attempts to be decadent, is quite politically conservative & unaware. Sure, guns are pretty bad. But worse is the police state being created in the USA by the Zionist controlled government. The social freedoms we once had is something the ‘surfers’ from this website will ruin, as they grovel to US-Zionism, in their ‘Brave New World’ stupification. When other people do things that appear to be stupid, try looking below the surface a little.
But what if looking below the surface a little just reveals that those people are stupid? Or worse yet, paranoid, stupid, and armed?
fucking glass em
An Australian comedian just made more sense of America’s gun problem than politicians, the mainstream media, and the NRA combined.
Writing every day is hard, lists are great when you don’t have any good ideas.
Shapers should do away with volume and return to the Laird Hamilton maxim, describing what your riding by length and girth.
I think bar rules should apply to the grit as well. No talk of religion or politics, it tends to get pretty much everyone pissed off in one way or another. Just a suggestion, but it works at the local watering hole.
fuck sterling spencer. a buddy of mine in pensacola got in an argument with that twat when he was like 15 (spencer was well over 18), sterling sucker punched him and my friend fucked him up. a 15 year old….
what a pussy.
Panhandle locals, brah
to be clear, spencer get his ass kicked by a 15 year old***
I am sorry, but the addition of volume measurements has been the single GREATEST thing for board design in recent years. Surfers are finally starting to ride boards that are appropriate for their relative size and skill level.
No way. It’s useful for fine tuning your boards, but it should be the last thing you think about. Everyone is all stoked because they’re on these thick hunks of foam that catch a million waves, but they never stop and realize that they’re surfing like shit.
You should figure out your dims, then play with the volume. Not the other way ’round.
Agreed, it’s just one measurement. If I want to surf big waves I’ll ride a board with heaps of volume, likewise tiny waves. If I’m riding perfect waves I want a board with as little volume as I can get away with.
This idea that there is an ideal volume for every surfer is just dogs balls.
it’s not the volume, it’s where the volume is that matters. Shapers I know readily admit that they laugh inside when people tell them the volume they want on their next board.
but some of us don’t care if we surf like shit. we’re happy with catching plenty of waves and “flying away on a wing and a prayer. who could it be? believe it or not it’s just meeeeeeeeee”
I didn’t say that volume is the last thing to think about, I said that has been the single greatest change in recent years board design.
I think of volume as a measurement for boards similar to waist size for clothing. Sure, I may want to get John’s latest phantoms (hypothetical) but I am not going to buy his size of shorts because there is no way that my fat ass is going to fit in them. Silly I know, however, there has always been this disconnect in purchasing appropriate-sized boards.
Yes, of course. However, for the average weekend warrior, dims come secondary to the ability to catch waves. I have never heard someone complain that there surfing sucks because they catch too many waves.
I’ve had this issue as I’ve grown a bit older. I like a bit more volume up front to catch waves now, but I’m not quite strong enough to put that much volume on rail properly anymore and can feel that I have too much foam when the waves are good. It’s always something in surfing…
yup. that same volume sucks once you’re hauling ass. i’d rather eat a few late drops and have a board that works when you finally get it up on plane
Not to sound like a junior taco enthusiast, but why not have both?
trial and error, unfortunately. How much to add and where isn’t necessarily easy to peg.
throw away the body board stacked under your chest once you stand up? would be better if i just didn’t let myself get fat in the first place. you’ll kill yourself duckdiving a cork all day too. for some people its about quantity so, whatever
helped the fucken kooks, why they helpen out those cunts? let em struggle on the shoulder where they belong.
If paddle-volume does anything, it’s keep kooks on the shoulder. Shit squirts outta the pocket faster than an eighth grader at cheerleading practice.
You’re my new favourite poster Uncle Chop Chop.
i learned to surf on a muslim surf camp, those guys were all right. Allāhu Akbar!
And yeah guns are cool, join your local gun club people
I read three, but don’t worry US news makes it across oceans and borders all the time, it’s like penis envy and the USA has the biggest of all.
We think/act like we do, at least. Maybe it’s like a Ferrari – overcompensation?
And counting to four. We fucked up counting to four.
Too funny. This one’s on Derek.
what was number 4? Don’t say sex. I’d say joy. Surfers as a whole are so grumpy in the water that you almost wonder if life would be better without surfing.
There were never four, he added that sentence, which is delightfully confusing.
If I had to pick a fourth it’d be a toss up between the words “local” and “respect.”
Wish you could upvote more than once… would require multiple accounts but Im far to lazy to bother with that.
I’ll upvote me for you.