As chaos threatens to carry-over into the new
decade the only surfer constant this past decade, as he was in the
previous and will be in the current: Mr Robert Kelly Slater.
Did we really just sleepwalk into a new Decade without
an epitaph for the old one? I believe we did.
Chas alluded to an avalanche of (upcoming) listicles, writer
Karl Von Fanningstadt
took a swing at the rankings of the various World
Titles but the greater task of writing the Epitaph for
the recently concluded twenty-tens remains undone.
With BG now recognised by mainstream media as the website of
record for surf, I think the important historical task belongs
here.
Warshaw, of course, has written beatifically on the subject but
dragged his analysis out to the start of the decade. Ours begins in
twenty ten.
Farewells twenty-tens, you was book-ended by death. Andy Irons
died November 2010, the surf industry, as we knew it, officially
kicked the bucket with the sales of Rip Curl and Hurley in
2019.
I can’t help feeling those two facts are connected. Andy’s death
and all the official and unofficial BS that went with it shattered
a fragile truce between the base and the industry. The surf
industry never again enjoyed “buy-in” from surfers. We saw it now
as something alien. Something malign. Pundits said that wouldn’t
matter, the kids in the malls were the main customers anyhow.
Billionaires, hedge fund traders, venture capitalists suits of
all flavours; visionaries who saw – what? – in pro surfing.
Presumably money, but more likely, charmed and seduced by a meeting
with Kelly, they saw a lifestyle and status upgrade. A present from
a billionaire to his wife. A plaything, in short. Picked up for a
song. It didn’t seem the same without Dane, even with Dirk Ziff
pumping millions into it.
Politics has taught us one thing: you lose the base and you lose
everything.
There was a Messiah waiting in the wings who could have
resurrected it. Dane blew up in the early twenty tens. There was no
quibbling, no debate. He was the best. And when he turned his back
on it, not just the industry but pro surfing was adrift in a very
big sea, with a lot of very hungry sharks.
Billionaires, hedge fund traders, venture capitalists suits of
all flavours; visionaries who saw – what? – in pro surfing.
Presumably money, but more likely, charmed and seduced by a meeting
with Kelly, they saw a lifestyle and status upgrade. A present from
a billionaire to his wife. A plaything, in short. Picked up for a
song. It didn’t seem the same without Dane, even with Dirk Ziff
pumping millions into it.
Despite the cash injection, with Dane gone, the Tour went back
to the conservative Aus power surfing tradition. Stale years
followed before the herald of the major transformation of pro
surfing took his first Title. Medina’s 2014 Title ushered in the
Brazilian storm. They owned the rest of the Decade. With the
retirement of the Australian stalwarts Taj, Mick and Parko, John
John Florence stands alone against the Brazilian onslaught.
Pro surfing was not a goldmine for the new owners. Paul Speaker
stood aside in January 2017, his chief achievements being the
acquisition of the ASP for nix and a purchase of a majority stake
in the Kelly Slater wave pool.
Matt Warshaw called the 2015 reveal of the Slater pool surfing’s
BC/AD moment. That maybe true. I prefer to think of it as our
version of splitting the atom, and like that event the
ramifications and future contingencies will be impossible to
predict. At the end of the Decade the number of commercial
wavepools globally can still be counted on two hands.
Australia became ground zero for our beloved shark apocalypse,
most likely as White shark numbers began to recover after two
decades of protected status. Western Australia suffered a horror
run before Ballina had a year of terror. The land of the free is
now in full catch-up mode as White sharks populations in the
Atlantic and Pacific continue to rise.
Skeleton Bay became the premium “free” surfing location on
Earth, with other mysto spots in West Africa sparking the allure of
the hunt for the perfect wave, an ideal which may come to seem
quaint for future generations raised on the reality of techno-surf
on demand.
Australia’s loss of prestige in competitive pro surfing, as far
as biological males go, was counter-balanced by it’s dominance in
freesurfing. Noa Deane, Chippa Wilson, Craig Anderson dropped
insurmountable edits. Torryn Martyn became a mid-length hero in the
age of the Vlog. Mick Fanning transitioned seamlessly into a
retirement as paid vagabond, ably assisted by Mason Ho.
A big-wave Tour came and went. Ireland blossomed as a big wave
venue. Mavericks faded and Jaws cemented it’s spot as the premium
big wave location on the Planet.
More people surfed, less people cared about pro surfing. It was
the decade of the VAL. Celebrity VAL’s owned surfing. Val kilmer,
Matt McConaghy, Elle McPherson, The Hemsworth bros, Mark
Zuckerberg. Murfers went mainstream, the dream of longboarding the
Pass with a million pals was about the most potent fantasy in
popular culture as the twenty-tens drew down to their dreadful
conclusion.
Sophie Goldschmidt, a tennis playing CEO, who had barely heard
of surfing five years ago, took up the reins at the WSL and went
full steam into wavepools and gender equality. Present history
judges the first action harshly while the second came to fruition
as sixteen-year-old Caroline Marks walked off the beach after
surfing two-foot onshore D-Bah with the same first place prizemoney
as Italo Ferreira, despite having to defeat only half the number of
fellow competitors. Womens sports remains in the ascendancy, with
surfing now at the front of the grid.
Chaos loomed as VAL numbers exploded and local lineups groaned.
Localism itself, or at least the violent assertion of it,
ended up in the dock with
the famous assault case of Mark “Carcass” Thomson on Jodie
Cooper.
Still, some elders, including former World Champ Nat Young
continued to assert that the more surfers the better and that, in
fact, the planet would be better off as a result of the increased
level of “surfer consciousness”.
It was as if Satan himself was offended by this suggestion.
He ended the decade raining hellfire on the surfer consciousness
dominated east coast of Australia. Fires claimed the properties of
Derek Hynd, then Nat Young himself, the factory of Darren Handley
and many, many more at hamlets up and down the east coast of
Aus.
As chaos threatens to carry-over into the new decade the only
surfer constant this past decade, as he was in the previous and
will be in the current: Mr Robert Kelly Slater.
Now, the paperwork is up to date, yes?
Did we miss anything?
