Your consideration required.
David Lee Scales and I connected this morning for our weekly chat and dove straight in to the topic currently dominating the surf conversation. Is surfing easy or is it difficult? Two competing polls were released this week. One, from ESPN, declaring surfing to b decidedly not hard. Somewhere between squash and badminton. One, from Puberty, firmly stated the opposite, sliding surfing very near the “top of tough.”
Kelly Slater, of course, weighed in as he is wont to do. So did I on the increasingly popular YouTube program Chas Smith Hates Surfing.
Slater and my knee jerk early reactions may well stand the test of time but as Scales and I kicked the issue back and forth further nuance flowered.
We, each of us, have a different experience with the “Sport of Kings” depending on when and where we began. I first started sliding around in the middle 1980s but didn’t acquire my first custom handshaped board until the middle 1990s. A razor thin, rockered out potato chip. It was the only acceptable way to go and I thought nothing of it, paddling out in Huntington Beach’s soft slop and attempting radical progression.
Certainly not alone.
Those who came of real surfing age as Gen Xers all, likely, had a portion, if not entirety, of early-ish learning done on craft only fit for the likes of prime Kelly Slater.
A …Lost generation, no doubt.
Which made me wonder. Is Gen X the most hamstrung generation in surfing’s proud history? Leaving the early “carve your own board from a tree” years, the 50s offered long stable things, the 60s same but better, the 70s better still with lots of floaty foam, the 80s wide and fat and chill, the 90s a tiny little wafer, the 00s tiny wafers but a return to more foam everywhere, the 10s a smorgasbord of lengths, widths plus the discovery of “volume” and the 20s with its pure unadulterated user friendliness.
Gen X retarded by what was en vogue.
The only generation that may be more hamstrung is the Millennials who had a wide variety of craft but unformed spines and spongy wills.
Filipe Toledo-style.
So, what do you think? If you had come of surfing age today would you rip? David Lee Scales and I also discussed the importance of eating with flatware that fell on the floor.
Lily-livers need not apply.
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To speak to the difficulty of surfing compared to other sports. Surfing has a few very unique difficult aspects that most sports do not. It is impossible to practice the same thing twice as each ocean wave is a one off and knowledge of the ocean is in direct correlation to the speed of learning for a beginner. When asked about how hard it is to become a good surfer I always use one of these three examples. It’s like becoming a good back country ski/snowboarder without being able to use a chair lift. Or like hitting a baseball in a game without ever having practice. Or learning to play an instrument but never playing the same song twice. But to be able to surf like a kook is just a soft top and some whitewater away.
internal polling and emergency contact info…
https://scontent-sjc3-1.xx….
For Gen X in SoCal there was also a longboard revival in the early 90s led by Joel Tudor. And there was a lot of crowing in surf mags about how the potato chips boards didn’t work for regular people. Then the ride everything thing happened. So if you just kept swimming, er, kept surfing…
If I wanted to swim I would never have started surfing. 😁
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Were those boards as bad as we think?
https://youtu.be/0QhTFONJTC…
rob needs more length AND volume AND hair!
FWIW That’s Joe Quigg in the center.
Gen X was mostly hamstrung by our own culture of coolness.
I remember in high school, being told that any board over 5′ 11″ was a log. This included a 6′ 1″ that one guy had. He was over 6′ tall and a multigenerational surfer living on the beach. His father was the guy who came up with the riff for “Wipeout” back in 1962, and had a hit record with his band The Surfaris. But a board longer than 5′ 11″? That was uncool!
We rode the shit we did, because that’s what was cool. It’s embarrassing, but true.
Gen X was high in trait Disagreeableness towards other groups, but destructively conformist within our own tribes. And everything went tribal. Music, surfing, style, everything was an excuse for a tribe, and woe to those who didn’t go along with the tribe.
Every Gen X tribe had a primitive culture within itself. Even punk rock quickly degenerated into a self-destructive purity spiral. Greg Graffin of Bad Religion describes punk by the mid 80s as a violent, stupid sausage fest that was paranoid about “selling out” and fewer and fewer people wanted anything to do with.
Surfing was not immune.
For a while, nobody seemed to notice that the guys who had high personal Disagreeableness, were having more fun because they didn’t GAF about what anyone thought of their equipment or style.
On the extroverted side, there was Joel Tudor, who was having a lot more fun on most San Diego waves than the potato chip grovelers. He’s still around, still disagreeable, and still enjoying it. On the introverted side, there was Rob Machado, who was a lot more interested in creative experiments than the attention whoring that was the norm. He’s still smiling, quietly, and doing his own thing. They proved you didn’t HAVE to ride a board that you didn’t like.
Then, the girls paddled out and, ironically perhaps, were not the fashionista divas the guys had become. They just wanted to surf.
At some point, surfers decided to have fun, again. And the people who didn’t care if they fit in, seemed to be leading the way to more fun.
Maybe we just grew up. 🙂
who let the girls out?
Well the party was nice, the party was pumping (hey, Yippie-Yi-Yo)
And everybody having a ball (hah, ho, Yippie-Yi-Yo)
Until the fellas started name-calling (Yippie-Yi-Yo)
And the girls respond to the call, I heard a woman shout out
Quicksilver Mssgr Serv: “Who Do You Love?”
I didn’t know they’d done a version of that. Just heard it. Thanks for the tip!
That doubled the surfing population around here
There are ways to handle that, especially in the Summer.
After you first paddle out, take off your board shorts and wear them on your head.
There is a risk, though. Once, they came off my head at the end of a ride. I had walked to the beach from my place, down a long set of stairs, after passing through some condos, running across a highway, and climbing down a ravine to cross some railroad tracks. I was not sure how I would get home without being arrested.
Fortunately, my shorts re-emerged in the shore break.
I doubt there’s a god, but that day I thought so.
Who wears undies under their boardies?, fuck he was a weird cunt ,even back then.
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Aw yeah…he’s still a weird cunt
what is that, a monocle?
believe me…I need a diode. and a beer!
I’d go an ECT and a beer!
after electroconvulsive therapy? a sixer!
for close-ups…
what was left at my editor’s desk for giving me foul reviews. and he contacted the emergency people for my conditions and leaving a coaster where there once was a cold one. Coors, i think?
Uh no brainer, anyone who learnt to surf on a late 80s or especially early 90s board had their skillset stunted unless through damn luck they happened to be a really talented surfer. All I wanted was a cool gash surfboard like Greg Brown and dad was like “nope, go ride one of those single fins in the second hand section”. Those single fins looked fucking shit and no way was I going to embarrass myself. I was only 14 I guess. I ended up being given a 5’9″ quad Insight (shaped by Dahlberg) that my grandfather “found” in an abandoned car. Tried to learn on that with predictable results but I was a stoked grommet and all I wanted to do was surf.
In the late 80s, early 90s, there were no options. Longboarding was for over the hill kooks like Nat Young (Joel Tudor was not on the radar yet), anyone over 30 was pensioned out to a mini mal. Kids rode boogie boards and that was it. You had to surf a modern HP thruster. I remember a grommet mate of mine hanging shit on my old man saying “yeah but Thrusters let you do more turns” and dad said “No, Thrusters force you to to more turns”. Took me a long time to work out what he meant.
At least pre-slater, there was enough volume to float but by 91, everyone was starting to sink. You can get away with this on a high performance wave but you cannot get away with it in mushburgers unless you are really good and let’s face it at any surf spot except for the really famous ones, there will be only 10% of surfers (max) who are really good.
So yeah, about 90% of gen x vintage surfers were riding the wrong board unless they lived at the superbank.
You still see it now, guys riding like 5’2″ boards and either sinking or overpowering them and spazzing out. Anyone who saw that comp at Duranbah a few years ago would have seen Slater doing the same thing. But the difference is today, a beginner can pick up a midlength or a 9′ mal, not get laughed at and get their foundations right. I often say to my old man “you were right” but it only took me about 30 years to work it out. I actually reckon I am surfing better now than I was 20 years ago because I now surf the right kind of board.
(a repost) to further prove your point…early south bay gang and an example of the variety of boards we ride. a couple of customs, a couple of cut offs, longboards…
https://scontent-sjc3-1.xx….
Sure, technically 5 views increasing to 20 views is “increasingly popular”
Learning to surf on a knife railed old single fin or rockered out 90s blade only does good things for your surfing (except for mine). However I’m now informed this is both elitist and pretentious and we should all be surfing EZ rider foam mini mals.
Based on you inability to surpass a Val skillset with over 4o years I’d say it’s extremely difficult
I am gen x and started on a second hand single fin [they were piled up at the tip at that time since the thruster had just come out) , had good chunky 80,s style thrusters after that, never bought into the slater/ herring banana board era , and my shaper was known for shaping boards that “were too thick” for about 20 years until they became the norm. All this before accurate surf forcasting and social media crowds.
Milenials got fcs fins , instagram wankers, crowds and the Brazilian storm
Suckers
Gen Z gets Russians in Canggu
80s foam with 90s rails was a great combo if you could get someone to shape it!
I had that airbrush. Got teased for slurping Kelly and went back to the Hoy iron cross on the next board. For some reason no one ever made fun of me for coping Matt Hoy.
Hamstring cramps are the worst. Honorable mention though to that cramp you get on the inner side of your foot where your big toe decides it wants no business hanging out any longer with the other four toes.
frost-bitten toes and four hour hot showers to loose the club foot?
That little piggy just wants to go to the market
Mine seem more interested in ramming into the corners/legs of furniture.
Idk, judging by how many 60-plus year-olds can barely bottom turn before gunning for the shoulder I’d say boomers are the most retarded generation. All of that time without crowds, but they don’t seem to have taken advantage of it. There’s a pretty hard dividing line because I see plenty of guys in their 50s and late 40s who rip and probably still will in a decade.
The only things worse than 90s boards, were the mainstream 70s boards.
Some great ideas came out of the 1970s, but the typical front-heavy single fin that may have worked in Hawaii, was not the best choice for Huntington Pier.
OMG dots on quik board shorts. I can’t believe the nerve of Kelly. Ola Canvas invented the dot last year.
Shocking. Truly shocking.
And with BVD’s?
That was a sports illustrated photo that was picked apart for the bvds in the surf mags in the early 90s