"Your people, sir, - your people is a great beast!"
Late last week I became very extremely frustrated with the World Surf League and its President of Content, Media, Studios and Crispy Boys Erik “ELo” Logan for delivering a slate of shoulder programing so ill-conceived, so bland, so tepid, so utterly divorced from anything I have ever loved about surfing plus Oprah Winfrey Network-approved that I lost my motherfucking mind then delivered a barely coherent, way too long, rambling call to arms.
A vaguely decipherable screed.
You might have thought I was kidding.
I was not.
Santa Monica’s vision of surfing, what they want from it, what they want for it, is shit. Utter complete shit replete with every shitty modern trope under the sun. Surfing as healthy. Surfing as unifying. Surfing as evolved. Surfing as environmentally considerate. Surfing as easy to understand, easier to do, easiest to sell broadly with absolutely no barrier to entry.
The best surfer in the water is the one having the most fun, etc.
And seriously, fuck that. But equally seriously, how many times in surfing’s history has the power shifted from the corporate overlords back to The People™? Maybe it was that way when Drew Kampion was alive in the 1960s mists but it has never been that way in my lifetime. Surfing, as an idea, has always been held by monied interests too cloistered to even imagine reaching.
Until now.
And I’m not kidding.
The Biggest Little Website in Surfing will likely pass Santa Monica’s own worldsurfleague.com in traffic by the end of this month. Almost for sure and obviously I know that the WSL has robust social media channels, apps, etc. but those are all manipulatable and largely fake.
We actually have real power and to ignore that feels like an enormous waste.
But what to do?
Unfortunately I am purely destructive. I love blowing holes in the Wall of Positive Noise but once the cursed thing comes tumbling down what should it be replaced with?
I only know that I want Luke Cederman and his band of merry men to be allowed free access, with camera, to all World Surf League events plus the disappearing of any bloodless rounds but besides that I don’t know.
You do.
We’re The People™ and one of my favorite quotes of all time, attributed to Alexander Hamilton, hero of a fabulous musical, is “Your people, sir, – your people is a great beast!”
Alexander Hamilton was an elitist bastard but tell me, what would really turn you on? How do you feel surfing should be represented outside of the current contest structure which we can easily mold?
What do you want to watch?
It’s time to pound our ninety-five theses onto Santa Monica’s door.
Nbbb
A wider variety of wave riding equipment for a wider variety of surfing. If the insidious thruster chip era continues we will all get pink eye from over exposure to strong, muscular, bent-in-half athletes pink-eyeing the lip for WSL Capital aka performo points.
@disqus_nEmZsdyY0S:disqus excellent to see your usage of the word insidious via DM to the recipients of Ms. Betty Crocker.
I don’t want more content. All I want from the WSL is a faultless format to decide the best surfer in the world in the biggest and best conditions in the world. Let the surfers develop their own content outside of competition. They do it better than the WSL could anyway.
Breachgrit nomination for best mock ups!!! Keep up the good work!!
yup. well said. so true.
I think the problem is that its in santa monica, mericcaaa… you want entertainment, bring that management center back to Australia(fuck even hawaii would be better than santa monica, way more fitting than australia too).
Give the Elo’s job to Nick Carrol, or a smivvy & deadly partnership. Get a bit of mongrel into it. nothing could be more surfing than to buck the fatcats and give the direction back to the core. instead of corners or transformed, give us underdogs packing deeeeeeeep corn in mysto area’s(secrets kept and landmarks blurred, we dont care) A LA the search…
take the wozzle to torquay. and have fast eddie freezing his balls off next to a beach fire in surf breaks.
take the wozzle to mundaka and have kepa acero teaching yoga on the dock.
fuck anything but oprahhhhhh in anti harmoica. GIVE SURFING BACK TO REAL SURFERS.
we can’t bring back rabbit and the dream tour. but we can learn from our recent mistakes and improve on rabbit and co.’s vision!
Fuck heats, I want month long waiting periods and everyone dumps a 5 min edit of their absolute best at the end. I want people talking shit to other competitors like Nascar in the 80s when they release “throw away” clips each week. Then we get a full length film for each stop on tour compiled at the end
sun bear, you got some serious photo tricks going! on !! Awesome! Hobby or employment?
The Long format is fine, it gives a pathway for the QSer’s, what they need to do is just keep working on the production, to tailor it better for tv just sell From the round of 16 on to tv (1 days surfing) you never see the back courts at Wimbledon on tv only the center court then work on continuous quality story’s to fill the gaps between sets, be aggressive with the content, in youR face stuff, piss off the pissed off athletes, follow gab and Charlie in to the judges area, git gritty.
If his 9 was a 9 than the tube was a 13 or 15 ? Hope the wind doesn’t ruin what has been a great event ….
yes yes and yes!!! authenticity is key. everyone can tell when it’s ingenuine and forced as fuck. let’s just be unapologetically fun-loving surfers, if it’s not relatable it’s painful.
tired of these straight-edge jocks Jen see, sick and tired! being so out of the box is what makes surfing marketable, we can’t “make it marketable” by changing what makes it so great
694 views and counting on the video manifesto! Fuck me, even a Jadson v Adriano opening round racks up more views than that.
A+++++
We are celebrating reformation day tomorrow in Northern Germany and when my son asked what we should do , I said jokingly that we should walk around town with hammer , paper and nail and post our complaints on doors . 5 minutes later, on the way to the car to check out our Viking Past in nearby Schleswig , walked passed the local branch of the Lutheran Church and there is the Pastor, out the front with a band of local school kids with a HAMMER , over his shoulder ….. looked at my family and gave them the I TOLD YOU SO LOOK ( and then giggled ) .
Something like the 2019 Teahupoo contest with half the surfers and real commentators, oh also no mention of coral or plastic or anything like that, if they want to do something for ocean plastics they should build landfills in 3rd world countries.
Reduce the number of men on the tour. Maybe the same as the women.
Revise the format to reduce non consequential rounds. Less fluff and better utilisation of event/swell windows. Allow surfers to speak their minds in interviews – no fines for telling it like it is. Bring out the passion that they’ve suppressed through the wall of positive noise (WOPN). I’ve personally seen interviews canned because they were controversial and might put the WSL in a bad light. Somehow give the broadcast to an outside agency – like we see in the mainstream – still professional and polished, but raw and open enough to be able to point a finger, present an alternate point of view and keep things real. Stirders on the right track and tries to push the envelope a little. Then, story telling – (I know you love that phrase Nick) but there are stories to be told… but lets dig beneath the surface of the heros/villians we have on tour… lets get a tour of Medina’s mansion MTV crib style… lets go visit the favela’s that Adriano grew up in, lets follow the positive vibe warriors as the hand out boards to young south africans as Jordy gives his experience of growing up in the years after apartheid… it’s not hard.
Maybe it needs to be more of a story – I am thinking an Afro Samurai style of story line spread over years – the villain over time we can come to love as the villain they are and not be upset and call them horrible names like “dick”
If the get rid of Turpel things will improve 1000%
Nothing that hasn’t been said but I want to see top 16 battle it out in barrels, walls, peaks, points, slabs and maybe a big wave. Just the Cream. Invite specialists at each place to shake it up, plus a peoples choice surfer. Give me some production with some edge, more art and harder tunes, build the tension before a heat, and like everyone has said try get behind scenes drama.
Also think someone should be supporting/covering the club surfing scene in Australia a tad More and hold a state of origin competition!