"It's like a theatrical presentation of failure..."
Surfing’s social media was pitched into wild bitterness and rage, overnight, after a German river surfer called artistic surf legend Clay Marzo’s surfing “useless and ugly” plus “a theatrical presentation of failure… complete break of the flow and of a natural body and board movements.”
The whole business exploded after Quiksilver shared an Instagram clip of the aforementioned Maui screwfoot performing one of his signature moves, laying so far back after a snap as to be disconnected from board, magically reconnecting and riding away.
It was captioned, “Only @claymarz0 can make time slow down like this on a surfboard. Here’s the most mind-bending manuever we saw at last year’s @quiksilver_festival. More coming from Sep 20 – 28 this year.”
Praise, initially, universal as pros and laysurfers alike, applauding the “Clayback,” calling him the most unique surfer on the planet etc.
Enter the German river/flowrider enthusiast who had a very different take on the matter, as printed above.
Rage, for him, as universal as the Clay-preciation that preceded.
“I know we’re not supposed to say this anymore… but you’re gay,” one Marzo backer spat.
“You ride machine made waves in a pool bud can you get any less natural and zen like and flowy or whatever the f you are talking about. Lolllll. This is one of the best surfers the planet has ever seen. Show some respect,” another added.
“Hey you’re gay,” still a third opined.
Kick rocks kook. Clay has more talent and creativity surfing that you ever could.”
“Someone’s mad they can’t do a real turn.”
And on and on.
Not backing down, the brave Deutsch go-against-the-flowrider doubled down, stating, “Interesting how everyone is attacking my surfing instead of reading. It’s not a critic to his surfing skills its a critic to a trick that clearly looks like someone that from a normal surfing stance suddenly broke his back and tries to stand up again after it and that looks in my opinion very broken/ugly.”
Thoughts?
Important for us to circle this square.
I remember (centuries ago) when kid slater showed up at the con…..skated across the long wall to bust a fins out laybaclay back….the peanut gallery..”look, he fell!!! Oh he got up again” yup, styles change. (fins out on our old guns was certain failure)
As an aspiring sofa judge I would score Clay’s turn as complete but the rideout was sloppy and not clean. Furthermore, at last year’s Margies event JJF re-set the bar for that trick in overhead conditions at the main break end section.
After getting heckled by my skater friends for landing credit card air revs in the white water sideways and spinning around for it not being a clean landing I realized that surfers have a very loose view of a make compared to skaters. Falling down to get back up is hard to explain and or justify to a skater. When in doubt ask a skater if something is cool and go with that. I do not have any experience with river surfers so even though I think a skater would agree on this point I would hope the river surfer is incorrect out of principle.
Engagement is the real winner here
He’s not welcome in my pool
River surfer? Those brats are the wurst.
Went out quickly before work in slightly heavy clean east swell this morning and took a drubbing. All fine, good experience but no actually waves caught.
Whizzing back in on belly, I got a bit too close to shore when the little frother suddenly jacked up and I tried to pull back. Got smacked in the head by my board in the little washing machine, like… less than 10 metres from the sand. Got a big ole’ lump on my temple.
LOL What a stupid old kook.
I’ve only been hurt a couple other times when surfing and now have to add this to the very short list.
More annoyed about the fricken spiderwebbed dent in the board.
Onwards!
Takes more courage to suck than to not suck.
You got wet!
Very wet.
Just had a close surf mate severely damage his eye surfing small waves.. waiting game if they were able to save it. Child Pirate’s uncle immediately ordered five nose guards!
Urgh…
Hope he recovers. Best wishes to your mate.
A German flowrider/river criticizing Marzo’s style? His opinion already doesn’t matter for being a flowrider/river guy… and then it doesn’t matter again for being a German surfer. Double negative credibility.
Germans invented techno music.
Seppo Kids reinventing trip hop!!
https://youtu.be/q2kOgpYJ0EI?si=II2TwIbQ8cgSp4ZX
Boots and cats and boots and cats.
And boot boot a catty cat
And all the 90s trip hop groups reinventing 1973 Mystic Moods Orchestra.
https://youtu.be/P9AsZcbRa7w?si=4xzNV-oK-dkHvb-m
love this tune. used it in a surf flick that I shot in 1977.
wow great voice , feel for the guitarist…wasn’t his mum shooting the vid,LOL!
This ones good too
https://youtu.be/zCIdMOt9iV…
https://youtu.be/FGWTKRRjKN…
Soo much hate ..from a German !
jees
Surf Nazi dropping truth bombs.
Opinions are like… I mean…what an asshole.
Can we just ignore the german river surfer and discuss how insane the recovery on that turn was?
agree, and I just take it for granted anymore that he’ll make every one of those , which is kind of insane in itself
I don’t know… “a theatrical presentation of failure” is too good a line disregard.
Yeah but he’s just plain wrong.
He rode away.
Ergo; not failure.
That’s like saying a super tweaked-out layback slide on a vert ramp, flailing around but still eventually riding tall across the flatbottom is a failure. Quite the opposite.
It’s rad as fuck.
He’s arching his back to create lift all the while reaching with his back foot to re engage the fins. Marzo should be riding for Spectrum Surfboards..
He’d be a great house restumper
Oh thanks river guy. Clay clearly needs to adjust his game
PS Any word on that world championship thingy theyre having over there in the south pacific?
Tao and Zen duking it out in the toddler division, no word yet on whether Darwin will show up to defend his family’s GOAT grom title
Italo needs to name his kid Pete so we can have Pete Tao Zen.
It’s nice that Rielly and Chas can cough up these smelly hairballs but did anyone even notice that there was no Tahiti contest wrap? Seems that JP and Jen See have both permanently bailed stage right. SN has a Fiji forecast and apparently there’s no good blobs headed up the Tasman aiming for Fiji. Which is good for south shore Hawaii because storms going up the Tasman tend to get too west or blocked from reaching Hawaii. We like big systems east of Aotearoa or that get stronger moving east ESE of NZD arriving here about a week later.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c… https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Crickets on the write-up…you right as always braddah Huli!
Thanks Huli, looks like we’re in for an anticlimactic climax
Latest forey looking much better Huli.
we’ll get 6-8ft Cloudy bruz.
Not for another week though…
Weird to put other sports world championships against ours, where the ‘finalists’ are 10 days at a resort with no means to practice. They might be better placed to decide it with a fish-off, or skull-drag-off.
also – it shows how wasteful of a contest the “final five” is. The same personell, financial, time and media resources could fit in a top 16 contest easily- then we could watch Erin Brooks maybe win again and some of the guys below the top five give it a good crack too.
6-8ft East Coast or 6-8ft Cloudy? No animosity, the scale is fucked that’s all.
Xox
accurate comment
what’s that gigantic “no good” brown blob in the left (west) of the screen?
That’s where Longtom spilled his coffee
I thought it was on for around the 2. Sep with 1-2 days of 8 ft to 6 ft swell man!
Style nazi
Before I give the kraut a knuckle sandwich, I’m gonna have to hear his opinions on Button’s or 2010 era Dane’s style.
Kealoha or Gudauskas?
The fat, beer guzzling one that still destroys Emma wood. I forgot about the Hawaiian Dane. He’s the reason I had a big ass Town N Country sticker on my boogie board.
Kealoha was my idol growing up. I had the Warren Bolster photo of him shredding Three’s on my wall. His yellow board with the red and blue sash stripes is a religious icon to me. I think JOB owns it.
He and Buttons had proper Hawaiian afros.
Dane K and W Bolster. RIP. A real surfer and a real photographer. I remember that swell and Bolster was in the water for about 6 hours. He came into Kaiser’s parking lot at least 4 or 5 times to reload a new roll of 36 emulsion film. Then he would swim out by the Hilton boat ramp at least 1/4 mile out and keep shooting. Dane was riding T&C legendary shaper Glen Pang boards around that time.
With a headband!
every click a thoughtful one at 36 frames
Was that the big early South in 78?
Yeah pretty sure it was 78. All I remember was that particular south direction was hitting 3’s perfectly.
Warshaw wrote a piece on Bolster’s life here:
https://www.surfer.com/culture/warren-bolster
like a phoenix from the ashes T&C has re-emerged in France complete with Glen Pang designs :
https://tcsurf.eu/en/collections/shortboards
best twin Fins ever….Dane gave me a 5 10 x 20 1/4 x 3 1/4…..came 3rd in the nationals, made the aussie team to got France, used the same board at La Gravierre…..new port wedge then back door…..magic board and no-one better than Dane ever!
Well that’s definitely Sushi&SalsaSauza then, cos he’s the only one of the “Dane’s” who can see Emma Wood from his house…
Sushi and Salsa Sauza…
Here’s one for Sushiman. May he soon return …
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Tapatio?
*Salsa_Sauza
Sushi&Sauza… come on now!
no contest!
A lot of the old contest footage doesn’t do his surfing justice with all the wiggles to accrue points during the era’s stupid judging. Seeing the Backdoor and inside Sunset stuff is still truly epic. And Ian Cairns crushed his 83 title with his lame power play against Hawaiians. So fucked up. At the very least we were denied a T.C./Kealoha battle to the end. Can Ian even go to Hawaii ?
Buttons was one of the most innovative and best surfers, EVER!
Mike Kealaoha?
that’s a blast from the past. always thought Michael K was one of the best Pipe surfers ever.
really nice guy too.
Dane was the King!!!!!
Really unnecessary for him to be such a sauer kraut about Clay’s layback though.
just love that it’s a German dude defending zen flow against Clay’s blitzkrieg approach