"The surfer is mostly peaceful and loving and kind,
but is more than willing to throw down when needed to protect their
friends or their lineup."
Humanity is mostly made up of idiots and
followers.
I am an idiot most of the time and a follower more often than I
would like to admit.
We are short sighted, selfish, inconsiderate, and generally
clueless.
We believe in silly religions, sillier politics, and most of us
base our lives on ideas that were given to us, as opposed to
creating a life of our own.
To steal from an old dead drunk, for me surfing is the joy that
sometimes comes along out of nowhere, rising like a falcon moon
across the impossibility, like a perfect set wave coming in while
you are out the back totally alone.
Surfing is its own world, its own planet, its own society,
existing often outside of mainstream society. When a
kook/barney/noob paddles out into a surf lineup they are in nearly
immediate conflict with everyone out there, unless of course they
are willing to stay out of the way and show respect….this is not
usually the case.
And while these adult learners and lifelong kooks who refuse to
learn basic etiquette may not be assaulting other surfers with
their fists, they are responsible for nearly all of the violence,
injuries, and accidents that happen in surf lineups.
What can be done to combat this attack upon our beloved space?
The place that serves as respite from our toxic relationships, soul
crushing jobs, and a society that has no interest in our passions,
hopes and dreams (often just for a glassy day and a turn here or
there).
I will argue here that those of us armed with experience,
knowledge, and passion for surfing are the ones who must take a
stand and that it must be violent, or at the minimum have a threat
of violence of that is real and doesn’t fold like a young Filipe
Toledo at Chopes, or me at anything over ten foot.
Some people are awesome, unique, selfless, thoughtful,
and considerate.
Some people have built up their own ideas of what is right and
wrong even if capital “T” Truth doesn’t exist.
As Tom Robbins wrote in The Still Life of
Woodpecker,
If you’re honest, you sooner or later have to confront your
values. Then you’re forced to separate what is right from what is
merely legal. This puts you metaphysically on the run. America is
full of metaphysical outlaws.
It is my firmly held belief that the spirit of the surfer is the
outlaw spirit. Ever since I was a neophyte grom growing up in the
suburban racially striated suburbs of San Clemente, I imagined the
surfer as an adventurer, a fear conqueror, a unique and singular
spirit, a total fucking Badass.
The surfer refuses to be victimized or forced to conform by the
society they were born into. They quit their jobs, deal drugs,
hustle and scheme, sleep on couches or under coconut trees…they
live dangerously to carve out their own form of existence against a
society of 9-5’s and families.
I lived at Ocean Beach in San Francisco where there are plenty
of outlaws, but also plenty of weekend warrior tech
bros.
Depending on the spot there, you are going to get a very
different crowd.
Why is the dude on the brand new Hypto Krypto wearing the Isurus
wetsuit and getting up on one knee paddling for the same wave as
me?
Why is his equipment so much nicer and more expensive than
mine?
I wonder this to myself while looking down at the holes in my
board fixed with wax and the hole in the crotch of my wetsuit that
is just small enough at this point my only ball slips out,
sometimes.
But, I ask you this: has surfing etiquette gotten worse over the
years?
Before answering that I want to consider a Milan Kundera quote
on nostalgia:
The more vast the amount of time we’ve left behind us, the
more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to it. This
pronouncement seems to state the obvious and yet it is false. Men
grow old, the end grows near, each moment becomes more and more
valuable and there is no time to waste on recollection. It’s
important to understand the mathematical paradox in nostalgia, that
it is most powerful in early youth , when the volume of life that
has passed is quite small.
Kundera reminds us of the dangers of nostalgia, and I must
consider that when delving into tales from the past. With that
said, I do feel safe in saying that things are very very dierent
now than they were in my youth.
I live on Oahu now, in town (the south side), after a four-year
stint on the West Side of Santa Cruz.
From my own personal anecdotal evidence from being a generally
chatty ass motherfucker, I have found that nearly all surfers with
over fifteen years of experience miss the old days.
The only people who seem to be “OK” with the lack of violence
are people who are new to surfing (adult learners), maybe because
nobody has to pay their dues anymore.
When I first moved to Oahu at eighteen I knew I would never surf
Pipe (except maybe on four-foot days from April to June when
there’s no crowd, shh!) because the Wolfpak ran it and they are
scary as fuck.
Once me and a few friends from Kauai, all of us eighteen, were
hanging out in the Sunset Beach parking lot after a surf and a
wildly famous local and his crew were ragging on us.
My friend stupidly threatened them with a fin and then he drove
over two of our boards. We learned the valuable lesson of
respecting the locals at a lineup that day.
On the drive home we were angry at my friend, not the local.
And fuck, older surfers were just generally scary to me growing
up. The drugged-out surfers who were good enough to be on tour if
they weren’t such classic surf fuckups, the San Clemente locals in
their twenties and thirties that surfed my beach breaks, were
terrifying. They ran the spots with a punch here, a shove there, on
the rare occasion a broken board.
We knew not to fuck with them and on some level we wanted to be
them.
When I first got my license, me and two of my friends decided it
would be a good idea to speed around our suburban neighborhood in
our cars having a water balloon fight while driving.
Two of the local surfers chased us home and nearly killed us in
my driveway, and they were right to do it! We were being incredibly
fucking stupid and risky for no reason. Risky for no reason is the
main thing that should bring about violence. If not for these older
drugged out misfits scaring me and my friends senseless, who knows
how many kids we would have run over that day or week?
San Clemente isn’t known for its violence, but even surfing in
the nineties it was not uncommon to see violence. There are tons of
locals not famous enough to recognize who held spots
down.
Once a kid I went to high school with burned one of the
fifty-year-old ripper dads on my block and then flipped out the
dad. The dad paddled over to him, gave him one punch in the face
and paddled back out to the lineup.
If this happened today, the dad would probably be doing time in
the big house. The kid paddled over to me, and I told him it seemed
fair to me and that as long as he respected the etiquette he could
continue to surf there without a problem.
I also encouraged him to apologize.
Growing up was a string of these incidents. My high school had a
group of five kids that actually called themselves the Surf
Nazis.
Did I get into fights with all of them? Damn right I
did.
Did I hit one in the chest with my board and another by doing a
cutback into his ankle leaving a curtain of blood flowing from his
leg? Fuck yes.
Do I have any regret for doing that or giving the long speeches
I gave afterwards about racism and respect? Fuck no I
don’t.
Funny enough, the last time I got into with them was when one of
the Surf Nazi’s burned me at T-Street.
I followed him all the way until the wave was over. I was a
patient little monster. After getting o the wave, I chased him down
and threw him o his board, grabbed him with one hand around the
throat and reached back to punch him. Before I could land my
justified and moral blow, I was gripped in the shoulder. I turned
around to fight this stranger and realize it is Chris Fucking Ward,
who I have seen in fist fights at Riviera more times than I can
remember.
Chris looks me in the eyes and says, “It’s not worth it man,
he’s not worth it.” What a strange experience that was, and it was
one that has always made me think of when violence is and isn’t
appropriate.
All of these little tales bring up the issue of whether or not
violence is ever acceptable. The main thesis I stand behind is
this: In a surf lineup, violence and/or the threat of violence will
actually prevent more injuries than a lineup where violence is
nonexistent.
The violence has left surfing mostly because we live in a world
of lawsuits, camera phones and social media. The state of
surveillance makes it nearly impossible to do anything illegal and
get away with it.
This is the tricky part, because it technically isn’t illegal to
take off on a big set wave with three people in front of you when
you aren’t sure you can make the drop.
It isn’t illegal to steal someone’s wave or burn them, or paddle
out to a local spot with twelve of your friends on soft tops. I
don’t believe in laws, but I believe in etiquette.
I believe in a small group of people making communal agreements.
Funny enough I am an anarchist, but I don’t believe that the surf
lineup is a place for chaos, even if I believe that most of the
rest of the world is.
A good analogy here is war and the way that chimpanzees fight
compared to the way human beings fight. Chimpanzees mostly wage
small border skirmishes, with a few killings here and a few
killings here, but no recorded genocides.
I would say a surf lineup could function in a similar way.
Occasionally, when someone really fucks up and refuses to apologize
or change their behavior, there will be some amount of
violence.
This violence is reserved towards people who are being dangerous
for no good reason and are putting others in the lineup at risk. I
always want to clarify that before the conflict raises to the level
of laying hands, scrapping, etc. that there should be a
conversation, and a chance given for the dangerous/disrespectful
party to listen and apologize.
When I’m surfing and someone burns me or doesn’t paddle behind
me, or any of a thousand other surfing etiquette mistakes, if the
person apologizes to me I will just say “It’s all good” ninety-nine
percent of the time.
The other one percent is reserved for when someone did something
that could have put me in the hospital. In that one percent I don’t
resort to violence, I try to have a conversation with the
person.
In case you haven’t picked up on it yet, I am a confrontational
person and have come around to supporting the notion that a
constant low level of confrontation is actually the life way most
helpful towards preventing major confrontations.
The problem with this is most humans are fence-sitters. At my
local spot, a lefthand point near Diamond Head in Honolulu, there
is a mid-fifties guy who always surfs the sunset session on an
eight-and-a-half-foot board.
He sings, talks to himself, and generally tries to act
“crazy.”
He also thinks it’s fun to get as close as he can to people then
turn away at the last second while riding a wave.
I know of two other people besides myself that have confronted
him, but in all three cases we (the surfers confronting him) were
the only ones in the water to say something. Everyone else at the
spot constantly talks shit on him and acknowledges that he is
dangerous and he even prevents lots of people from surfing the
sunset session because of his outrageous behavior.
However, when someone has been bold enough to confront him, the
rest of the lineup stays quiet, not wanting to get involved. If
just one or two other surfers had chimed in to tell him to leave,
the problem would likely be over.
But, humans are weak and driven by fear, fear of being seen and
heard and the fear of confrontation. So…our monster stays a local
at the spot, causing problems several times a week. I believe to be
a surfer is to embrace that outlaw spirit, to not fear
confrontation, to turn towards the uncomfortable.
As a nihilist, technically I don’t believe in anything. I think
that there is no inherent meaning in the universe, which frees us
up to choose to put whatever meaning we want into
anything.
As a lifelong surfer, a lifelong surf fan, and just another kook
trying to surf like my heroes, I put a lot of meaning into what
being a surfer is.
I fervently believe that the spirit of the surfer is what
matters. The surfer yearns for an empty lineup, or a shared one
with one or two friends.
The surfer is mostly peaceful and loving and kind, but is more
than willing to throw down when needed to protect their friends or
their lineup.
The surfer isn’t a fence-sitter. The surfer doesn’t spend years
confronting their fears in the ocean with hold-downs, injuries,
reef scars and much more just to be afraid to tell someone that
they aren’t acting right.
I dream of a world where the surfer just fucking cares about
what it means to be a surfer.
In this world the surfer chooses their society, their lineup,
their ocean, their friends and surf friends that they know in their
local surf scenes over the rules and etiquette of “minding our own
business” that the shitty world of eight-billion has passed down
for us.
Fuck politicians, fuck rules we didn’t create for ourselves,
embrace the outlaw spirit.
Otherwise we might just end up having Kaipo and the wall of
positive noise tell us that two backside turns under the lip with
the pro surfer’s butt five feet behind their legs is the pinnacle
of surfing. We deserve more, and we must take it
ourselves.
