Are you an ironic hauler of your craft?
I can’t remember the exact moment, but I do remember roughly the year when a certain substrata of surfers started carrying their surfboards like children, tail down, nose up and gripped in the upper third.
It was 2005 and a small company called Insight had created, with its fashion-y trunks and tees and a team of surfers who were B-ish grade but photogenic, the first hipster surfers. Short trunks, sleeveless tee-wearing boys carrying surfboards with dramatic irony.
Oh, yes, we know how you’re supposed to carry a surfboard, wax out, nose down, gripped ever so slightly behind the wide point, but… we don’t care! We’re so confident in ourselves, and so contemptuous of the mainstream surfer, that we’ll do anything to separate ourselves from the jocks.
Previously, any sort of divergence from the standard manner of carrying a surfboard would’ve had you immediately, and accurately, pegged as a kook.
The insouciance caught on very quickly among what we call the freesurfers, Dane Reynolds, Craig Anderson, Creed McTaggart, Dion Agius and so on.
And for a very long time it was only the very best, and most confident, of cool surfers who carried their boards like this and so if you saw a board carried in this awkward, child-like manner, and particularly if they wore a sleeveless black tee and short trunks, you would think, oh he good.
But, then, quite recently, the last few years and so forth, even the novice has begun to carry their board like the child thereby nullifying the ability to rate a surfer by the way he lugs his surfboard.
So.
Carrying a board like a child.
Faux?
Or real?
Carry it however you like.. kooks are easy to spot any ways they hold em
Wrap the end of your leash around the nose of your board and carry it like a bag
Faux Realz.
About that time boards were starting to get wider. Unfortunately for Creed adolescent smoking stunted his growth and gave him T-Rex arms, hence the board grip. For all the hipsters they thought it was cool but had started smoking their American Spirits at 16 instead of 8. Too late to stunt growth,trying to do all things Creed, this led to the wide board revolution we have today. Billabong even tried to capitalize on it. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
what of the tail forwards and raised up on high approach for ye olde longboards? behold the wood layup da cat template fin and tremble
I spin mine around like this crazy motherfucker
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
One of the sorry consequences for a gentleman of mature years, declining paddling power and advancing waistline is that those fatman boards just cannot be carried in the proper fashion. I have one. 20.5 inches wide, I think, with uncomfortably bulbous rails. You know how I hold it? Fins forward, fins out. And for some reason, in place of that sexy, head down wiggle you end up striding along like a paedophile Scout master off to yodelayheehoo with some jailbait. Middle age has many indignities, but this is right at the top of the list
There is only one way to properly transport a surf craft…. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
No one carries their board more like a child than John John…. and he’s kinda good so maybe there is method to this madness?
On the back, hooked under the back pack with the 25 knot southerly blowing you north like a spinnaker once the sea breeze comes in. Don’t even need arms if it’s all balanced.
I carry mine like Reno, with wax that looks like it’s been on there since the 70’s.
In the summertime I have no nipples. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
One board one wax job.. occurs style
Be like old mate Joel and balance it on your head
While screaming fuck once out in the line up at cardiff
I usually just drag my board by the leggie
the “pro run” identifies character as good as any body language. A steady trot at speed straight back, chest out, bee-lining for the appropriate paddle out spot. Ingrained in anyone who had/has a contest career or wanted one. Fueled by pre-heat anxiety or simply a warm up these folks still run up and down the beach with an urgency that usually translates into the water.
That’s how I hit the water, usually cause I gotta pee.
I have staff to carry my boards. Work harder you fken slackers.
I wedge the nose of my board into the back of my trunks and then reach up behind my head to grab either rail. Super-duper fly. The chicks are all diggin’ it.
Carry your board any way you want as long as you’re walking home you f-ing kook. Smash your tail, was do I care?
I’ve got a shit wax job on my groveler and it’s hot and I’m lazy, so lately I’ve been carrying my board latitudinal – left rail on the right hip and right hand on the right rail, nose pointed down. Do whatever is comfortable for fucks sake.
I usually just tie my board to a rock or a fence with the leash and hope it’s still there in the morning. Sometimes I even just let it float out to sea at the end of a session and collect it from the beach the next day.
I like the cheerful insouciance. Yes vote!