Are Bali’s hardcore surf shops a vanishing species?

Amid all the commercial avarice, what is to become of the humble Bali surf shop?

(Editor’s note: Read this story with the author imagined in your head: a moustachioed, hard-loving American ex-pat, living in Bali a decade or so, Indonesian wife, a small cabin down a side street in Uluwatu, a man prone to romantic hyperbole about surf shops. A few weeks back, I rented boards from the joint I link in the story, White Monkey. I was presented with two brand-new sleds, tailpads already affixed, fins, leashes and a couple of blocks of Sex Wax in the package. Highly recommended ’cause ain’t nothing better than travelling without surfboards.)

With the pillage of Bali’s Bukit Peninsula by off-island villa and luxury resort developers hurtling into the future unchecked, concerns have been raised about the preservation of the authenticity of the Bukit’s original surfing scene and intent.

One pressing question is, amid all the commercial avarice, what is to become of the humble surf shop? Which in all proper surfing communities worldwide, serve as temples of sorts? A safe house for us believers, a place to, more than just buy a new board, celebrate our very faith in the sport?

Because with an authentic surf shop, it’s not the destination, it’s the belonging to it.

You know, the real surf shop. By surfers and for surfers. The one that smells like a surf shop. Like freshly applied surf wax as soon as walk in the doors. The smell of the curing fiberglass of new boards, the scent of waves to be ridden. It’s the smell of hot batch ding repair and of salt and the sea and the smell of anticipation and potential and a kind of love.

What the place can give you as a passionate surfer. That it reminds you and demands of you that you call yourself a surfer and that it feels delicious and fulfilling to do so. To hell with conventional society, surfing is a deep meaning in your life and that this place, this shop, is an understanding between you and it and it just feels so damn good.

And that you not so much as walk in the doors. Rather, you enter its realm. Your realm. Because it is. It’s yours. A real surf shop is like going inside that special part of your mind. The part of your mind that loves surfing and everything about it and you don’t need to explain it or ask permission to enjoy it and you do not need to hide it and you can shake your fist at anybody that does, man or woman.

And you don’t have to buy a thing, maybe a bar of wax, but that’s just to feel complete.

And it’s not a place where you call people who surf athletes. You call them by their real name. Surfers. Surfers who play in the biggest, most powerful thing on earth. Frolicking or surviving in the very powers that shape the continents. The powers of the restless sea. The biggest thing on the planet.

And it is ours. The surfers. Like artists swimming in their own paint. It’s the girls behind the counter with their flashing smiles and their movements as graceful as deer. It’s all those boards that are up on the ceiling. Boards given to the shop by the all the visiting pro’s. Boards that are still waxed and stickered and beat up from being under the feet of the best. It’s just imagining the places those boards have been, the accolades they have received, the hollows they’ve ridden, the podiums they have stood upon.

A real surf shop is too many boards in the racks and too many dreams and too many dimensions and too many designs and too many ideas and memories and stories and hopes. It’s the constant barrage of surf movies on the screens that provide a visual exclamation points to the whole trip. And it’s the soundtrack over the shop speakers. It doesn’t matter which songs, they all sound right.

And it’s the other members of the tribe speaking of the sacred words of stoke in a million different languages. Yet everyone understands each other. It’s holding brand new un-waxed boards in your bare hands and under your arms and flipping them over to check the specs and running your fingers over the sacred contours and knowing where these boards will fit on a waves. Your waves.

It’s a brotherhood and a sisterhood of the mankind you like. The mankind that makes sense to you. The mankind of the sea of joy. Your joy.

And man, if you think this all this is over the top, if you think all this is crazy, maybe you are not cut out to be a surfer. Maybe you are just an enthusiast. Maybe it’s just a hobby to you, a pastime. A curiosity. A recreation. And maybe that’s cool.

But it’s not right.

Right is being in a real surf shop and knowing that you are right where you belong.