Young ripper Cruz Dinofa shatters decades of conventional surf thinking

What other foundational myths are we wrong about?

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once opined, “The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently” and it must be assumed the great German’s various treatises and letters were read, daily, in the Dinofa house when Cruz was but a babe.

Though you are certainly aware of the New Jersey surf phenom, his flair and style, his passion and pop, but you might not know that he is also an iconoclast, recently shattering one of surfing’s longest-held assumptions.

Yes, ever since the very first days, when Hawaiian princesses and princes were sliding wooden slabs on gentle waves, folk would say, “You can’t surf when houses are falling.”

That wisdom was passed from father to son, mother to daughter, through Malibu in the 50s, Torquay in the 60s, Jeffreys Bay in the 70s, Hossegor in the 80s, Rio de Janeiro in the 90s and then, thanks to the internet, every place people are able to surf.

Generations of surfers around the world believing “you can’t surf when houses are falling” to be as true as “Hawaiian Airlines hates longboarders.“

Well, you can imagine the shock currently reverberating through the surf community after young Cruz Dinofa went surfing off the coast of North Carolina while houses were falling.

But you have, no doubt, read the stories, seen the videos of those charming stilt homes built upon the sand collapsing into the sea as it rises. The 12th since 2020 tumbled days ago, leaving a wide debris field and surfers frustrated on the beach, unable to participate in otherwise perfect conditions.

Well as Arthur Schopenhauer wrote, “The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.

Dinofa paddled out on those Outer Banks, got barreled, shattered prejudice and changed surf history.

Boom.

What other foundational myths have we held that might be wrong?