Fulfil the criteria of just three and, yes, you are, officially, a filthy kook!
I’ve been a kook for so long I can’t imagine being anything else. There have been a few moments when I thought I’d finally shucked kookdom, when I was teased with the prospect of delirious and unlimited delights.
The three straight airs landed. A couple of odd-looking, out-on-the-face, ass-in-the-air reverses. A lucky tube.
They were illusions, of course.
I started too late. Didn’t obsess enough about it to permanently burn the movements into my muscles, the processes into my brain.
I got thinking about it yesterday when I flew to the mountains for a one-day hit of snow. Epic season. Don’t wanna miss it. Took my kid. He’s ten. I’ve ridden fifty-ish days over twenty years, he’s had a week over three. He flies down the blacks hitting everything and spinning. I’m kicking the tail out, panicking at speed, catching edges and groping the piste on toeside turns.
Kook forever. But I accept it. It’s my state.
Are you a lifelong kook? Do you recognise yourself in the behaviours below? Three or more and, it’s official, you’re a kook!
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- You believe surfing is a democracy: As vibrant as our game is, it ain’t a tableau of fairness. Never was. It’s a meritocracy. The best surfers get the best waves, get any wave they want and if they want to drop in on your disorganised jabbing of the lip, if they want to paddle around you to takeoff on a wave from its most critical juncture, it’s their prerogative. If you sit out the back hissing at the unfairness of it all, then you are a kook.
- It’s your surfboard, not you: The kook is what keeps the surfboard industry alive. Your failures can’t be attributed to the misplacement of limbs, the panic as you hover in the lip, the razor-blade paddle technique. Gotta be the board. And so you buy and accumulate surfboards like a vain woman does shoes. Every night when surf shop employees go home they laugh at you and your stories of boards“not working” and your earnest selection of $200 carbon fins.
- You are a princess with a pea: You know the old fairy tale? About the gal so regal she could feel a pea in her bed even when it was buried under twenty mattresses? You actually believe you can feel that subtle concave washing between the fins.
- You think literage is everything: Once you get that magic number you’re obsessed by it. But what’s the literage? How many litres? Can you build it in a 27.5?
- You don’t get localism: The universal rights of man and so forth. You’re the guy who calls a Hawaiian off a wave at Rocky Point or an Indonesian at his home in Bali. You believe that whomever is on the inside, wherever it is, has the absolute right to that wave. It doesn’t if they’ve they’ve just arrived from Italy and piloting a Wavestorm or it’s a pro-level surfer who’s ridden the same hometown ledge, expertly, for the last ten years.
- You own at least one shark repellant: Leash, shield, band.
- You write screeds on Kelly Slater’s Instagram criticising his surfboards.
- You talk surf whenever you meet someone. Did I tell you about my last trip to Costa Rica? Nicaragua?
- Vacations are sought at surf camps: Games of pool, surf movies, other like-minded boys? It’s a YMCA with tan!
- You use a change poncho: What do you hide, little man?
You’ve made your girlfriend film you in one foot slop.
yes yes yes.. used to deal with these cunts every week working in the ments..
Ask yourself, do you have a Fantasy Surfer account? Go on. Look in the mirror while you do it.
I asked myself and the answer was yes. Then I asked myself in front of the mirror and it was still yes.
Am I using the mirror wrong? Is there a special mirror I can buy to help me do it better?
If you can look yourself in the eye and admit to being a Fantasy Surfer, god help you.
I think God’s busy renovating the Caribbean and convincing Catholics they don’t exist.
Of course it’s stupid and pointless, but I’d always thought the fantasy surfer was the least offensive of my crimes.
well let’s face it, everyone’s a kook!
Oh no Nick! I know there’s no saving me, but I thought you might be spared.
Nup. We’re all kooks.
The biggest problem I see with this article is that I do none of these things, yet I’m still a kook.
My thoughts exactly; we must be the advanced kooks.
You wax up your board the night before you go surfing in the morning.
11. you live in branded surf gear
12. updated your go pro to a drone
Telltale sign of a kook is someone who calls themselves a kook, and then declares that at least they’re not a barney.
Fuck! the change poncho got me, it’s just so convenient!
Those who think they aren’t kooks, pretty high chance they’re wrong
There’s a dad down our local whose 12 year old son is already better than. Best part is listening to dad ‘coach’ son on what he should have done on the wave he just caught.
Dunning-Krueger be damned!
Krikey! I think I’ve escaped this particular list, but I know I’m still a kook.
12. You think the “Bay Boys” are the only locals on the planet. In fact you’re a kook if you call them the Bay Boys.
You write lists about how other people are kooks.
Your Facebook/IG profile pic is you surfing (see doing a “turn” with zero speed and arms all over the place). You have surf stickers on your car. You refer to your hobby as “my surfing.” You have a wave tattooed somewhere on your body. You own a hat with an energy drink label. You have a lifted 2-wheel drive truck. You dye your hair. You wear Axe body spray.
You’d pay to watch any WSL event
you buy beer or towels from a company owned by a CT surfer
Or socks
to be fair Balter is pretty good. It’s also unusually high in its alcohol content – a big thumbs up from me.
Although now that I think about it, fuck off with the cans.
Mate cans are the best. You can fit about 20 slabs in the recycle bin.
wouldn’t have pegged you as a recycler wiggs – but good point.
yeah, i refuse to fuck with St Archer, the seppo version of Balter. we do have Four Loko though.
I’m sticking with pruno.
“You use a change poncho: What do you hide, little man?”
heheheheh……one of your best.
Although on the flipside I was once getting changed after surfing in Victoria with a mate of mine who is a former male model. Victorians love the nude up unlike your east coast of Australia surfer. So anyways we were getting changed and a dude rolls up on a bike and says “oh hey you might want to cover up – that dude in the car there is masturbating while watching you!” I turn around and sure enough some old guy is staring at us and appears to be going to town on himself. He notices us watching him in disbelief and takes off with a screech of tires. I’d be flattered but I’m a realist…….
Many West Coast Viccos are nodding their heads. That old bastard had a fleet of different cars at his disposal. He ended up with a bin tipped inside his car at Winki and another time was surrounded by nude blokes running laps around him in the Beacon carpark. Persistent old chap though. Sure loved shrivelled, salty cock.
It would have been nice to have it written on a few chicks I hooked up with in college
Shark repellents https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Gopro on the nose
bang!!!! thats an auto snake…. im salivating as i think of it…
Better not say that on IG https://youtu.be/Fdif_Wo7UPU
Building a wavepool does not undortunately get you off the hook for this one.
This is the happiest day of my life.