Fix up. Look sharp.
Have you set aside the 10 o’clock hour (9 o’clock Central) for tonight’s grand premier of the World Surf League’s The Ultimate Surfer? The program, starring Anastasia Ashley, Austin Clouse, Mason Barnes and Erin Coscarelli as “the world’s best surfers,” has been teased for months now and will also feature Kelly Slater teaching “up and coming surf stars” how to play spin the bottle etc.
Thrilled?
Overjoyed that surfing has a new image?
Well, quickened heartbeats are not universal. Surfing’s great polemicist Joel Tudor took to Instagram, minutes ago, to decry the cheapening of our favorite pastime.
Underneath a photo featuring surfing greats (Greg Noll, Pat Curren etc.) dressed nattily he wrote, “Back when surfers had style ….nowadays we speak insta emoji’s, everyone’s a YouTube comedian & nothing is sacred …all the rules of how we got here are now taboo – I swear we are headed downhill fast! Throw a wrench in the machine sos abort abort …ship is going down captain! Ok ok I kid , we’ll be fine ….just could use some old school cool in the era of instant gratification!”
https://www.instagram.com/p/CS7HxpHFOH-/
But what do you feel? An old man shouting at the clouds or does Mr. Tudor have a point?
I have long been a proponent of fixing up, looking sharp, and agree that the best surfer is a suit wearing surfer. I have also long known that age, a calcified brain, is marked by criticizing “nowadays” as “not as cool as it used to be.”
So where do you fall?
Has surfing become idiocracized or should we all go along and get along?