"I do not, nor never will, support SUPs, Wavestorms, Ben Gravy-branded soft-tops or foils around people."
Polarized times, these are, but I don’t have to tell you. It’s hard to keep up what with America-first anti-forever war United States President Donald J. Trump considering bombing Iran under pretenses that makes George W. Bush’s Iraq escapades seem downright considered, hard liberal Columbia University instantly capitulating on what it claimed to be rock solid values when barely pressed and Kraft Heinz declaring it will remove all artificial dye from ketchup and Jell-O.
Polarized, yes, but polarization jumping all over the dang place quicker than brave coward Filipe Toledo can sit out the back while scary waves pump over scarier reef.
Former Instagram surf comedian John Wayne Freeman, in any case, took to his new trad-wife vacuum in recent days to excoriate the failed shoe brand Vans for releasing a collaboration classic with Queer Surf.
The message that “nobody cares” might have been more “punk” had he delivered it in the height of those wild cancellation years when every company on earth was actively engaged in performative allyship, those with any sort of discomfort branded as dangerously retrograde and deserving of guillotine.
Something quite different, today, when the LGBTQIA+ community is back in the crosshairs, bullied, marginalized, etc.
And so I bought a pair of the Vans Queer Surf shoe in hopes of wearing it on the recently wrapped North Florida/South Carolina podcast tour to show support. Paying much extra for quick shipping.
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Vans, being failed, did not get they/them to me in time.
Package was waiting when I arrived back home, though, and I opened the box to a horror realization. They were pink, as promised and a color I love, with a fine triangle motif, but on the whitewalls two statements were scrawled.
All bodies.
All boards.
All bodies is why I bought them, any and everyone should be comfortable in the lineup and especially these ultra-bully days, but the all boards business sent me reeling.
I do not, nor never will, support SUPs, Wavestorms, Ben Gravy-branded soft-tops or foils around people. I also loathe longboards outside specifically designated longboard waves, Surftechs, rentals, gliders, eggs and… I guess all longboards anywhere.
What then to do?
I crossed out the “all boards” junk in hopes of a brave new future where only high-performance shortboards, mid-lengths on the right day, and mini-simmons are the only boards in the water.
Join me.