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Logjammer's "Surfing in Flower Land" May 26, 2005

Drifting~~~Drifting~~~Drifting~~~Drifting~~~Drifting~~~Drifting~~~

Surfing in Flower Land

Sometime in the early 70’s I was with some of my buds traveling home from a weekend surf jaunt to our Mecca, somewhere north of Sebastian Inlet, when we saw a strange sign on I-4 which said something like, “Disney World Planning Center – Visitors Welcome.”

There we were, surfed out from a solid day of surfing and half asleep...but we decided to pull off the road and take a look. I can’t remember now what exit it was, but the arrows on little black & white signs led us down a simple gravel and dirt road to end up at an ordinary white trailer with open doors at each end...with no one around at all.

We got out of our surf-mobile and stumbled into the trailer, where we observed a tiny scale model of this Thing that was coming. It was strangely like the Emerald City to our quite-possibly altered eyes, and we stood in disbelief as we intuited that everything in our world was about to accelerate into an unknown dimension. We looked at each other and commented that our Eden was going to go away.

From those days forward until today, I have seen Florida evolve. In the old days, as reflected nicely in Bruce Brown’s “Surfing Hollow Days,” Florida was made up of a combination of paved roads and sandy roads which made their way around small urban areas like Tampa and Orlando, with Miami to the south. Miami was the first to hit the big time and see international influence and change, but much of Florida remained lazy and hidden.

Even from the 1920’s, though, Florida had a reputation as a place to get ripped off. You know that old saying about waterfront property. It was all about land and the slash and burn development and real estate business. Certain areas were worse than others, but the move was on to take beautiful areas of natural wonder and figure out how to make a buck off it...or, better yet, BIG bucks.

Flash forward now to 2005. You’re at a light somewhere next to a Hummer, which gleams like a Death Star. The obnoxious sound of some punk’s overbearing bass from their sound system makes you want to go postal. You’re headed to the beach to check the waves, and you only have about another 15 lights to go through to get there. Sitting at these lights (you catch almost every one) you observe boys with backward hats and things on their lower bodies which sort of resemble pants, but you’re not really sure. They’re wearing the uniform of the times. Actually, everyone, in one way or another, is wearing a kind of uniform.

There’s the real estate uniform, there’s the banker’s uniform, there’s the Jimmy Buffet uniform, there’s the fishin’ uniform, and there are some kids wearing the surfer’s uniform: ugly baggy trunks, slaps, some kind of ugly T-shirt, a weird little ugly and cheap prefab tight-fitting necklace, and a baseball-style cap which advertises some company that makes these things in a slave labor market on the other side of the world.

They carry under their arms cheap and poorly made little tater chip boards that are made to be disposable and to slash off the tops of waves, hopefully so fast that you can’t see it happen. The faster you make that slash, the higher you will ascend in the hierarchy of important surf people in your teenage angst-ridden clique.

Strangely hidden amongst this market base are the older folks. Oh my gosh, what an assortment we have here today: retirees in their retiree uniforms, business people in their various business uniforms, scared guys approaching 40 and losing their hair in their “I’m still young” uniforms...and almost everyone fighting off obesity as they careen from one plastic food establishment to the next, daily consuming a boatload of MSG and other substances that insure their quick return...as they are addicted and don’t realize it...(part of the FDA food addiction scam)...

They get home from a hard day’s work, never really “getting ahead” (whatever that really means) and consume the product of the TV information givers, not realizing that they have evolved into “Homo Reporticus,” a strange type of hominid that believes everything they see on TV. Within this quagmire of confusing images, a large market is in place to provide us with ESCAPE, which consists usually of some manner of stupefaction through alcohol consumption or entertainment. We’re lost in a kaleidoscope of fractured images and can’t find our way out through any means within the prefabricated system, which we will happily defend as real and meaningful in our confusion and lack of a better vision.

[In the early 1500’s, Ponce DeLeon comes ashore somewhere along this coastline. (Juan Ponce de Leon: Explorer) Interesting people stare from thickets above the dune line. They are painted and greased, tattooed and wearing brightly colored feathers.

Butterflies flit about, dancing around and through huge areas of flowers which literally cover everything. Waves break on the nameless shores which will soon mark the sandy edges of “Terra Florida,” the “land of flowers.” Here, nature has provided a bountiful harvest known to inquisitive people since before the Ice Age, when horses, camels, mastodons, and all manner of amazing creatures lived here, and the coastline was considerably farther out than it is today.]

As surfers, we go to the edge of the sea with our vehicles of expression... our boards. We fight to find our way through a wall of exclusive condos to reach the shore. Some of us occasionally ask ourselves why we do it. Most of the time, we do what we do in a crowd. Everyone is trying to capture something that someone else is trying to take away for themselves through the power of money. Perhaps that thing called “getting ahead” is the artificial and prefabricated level of economic accomplishment that allows us to claim a little bit of the dwindling earth for ourselves and our family. Ah, yes, this is the life. Grab my little piece of the pie. The search for gold and the Fountain of Youth and Secure Retirement.

[Drift now, if you will, to 1930’s California, to a little piece of the pie known as San Onofre (Save San Onofre), a place that will feed the early Florida surfing experience in places like Daytona Beach. Here, surfers are clearly fringe wellers,

...beachcombers...

Surfers are bohemians who dwell at the edges of society, caring little for conformity and things related to “getting ahead.” For them “getting ahead” is perhaps stowing away on Matson cruiseliners and spending a season in a grass shack at Waikiki, living with fellow dropouts from society, and mingling with “rats as big as cats.” Success is defined as catching that seventh wave at Castles, making it through to the inside on your solid redwood plank, and stepping off onto the sand, followed by fires and friendships of the evening, all to the sound of ukuleles and bongos.]

Surfing in the Land of Flowers can continue be a liberating experience, if enough of us decide that’s how we want it to be. Contemporary Florida experience seems to push us further and further away from the things that we need as people. We are pushed further and further away from one another. Our surfing often seems to not take us beyond the urban reality of our workscape; it’s just a frantic timed release which ALMOST captures something we’re looking for. I don’t think it can capture what we’re looking for unless we can really live the life. Surfing should be how we define “getting ahead.” We aren’t important people once we have attained a certain beachfront property or established a certain income; that’s just baloney they’re feeding us on TV and other phony media designed to make money for someone else.

We’re important people BECAUSE WE ARE PEOPLE, and each and every one of us is a VIP. The bohemian vision of old San Onofre had to do with the wealth of EXPERIENCE, not the wealth acquired through sacrificing time for money.

Imagine a tribe of surfers in Florida who (if only existentially) say “no” to development, and who seek to create and maintain community gardens and community energy development to sustain a real lifestyle consisting of surfing and living and working... a domain transcending exclusivity and status seeking. Imagine a return to groups of family units who peer out of thickets above the dune line at those harboring strange notions of gold-seeking and conquest. Imagine living under
the sun the way it’s supposed to be, in the Land of Flowers.

Probably, the most common answer to such a notion would hark back to failed Utopian experiments of the past. Previous eras could afford failure, but the time is coming when failure will become unaffordable. We have to start thinking about breaking the cycle of selfishness, separation, and exclusivity. Consider, for example, looking into native plant varieties as sources of food through community farming.

Consider looking into ways right now that people might work together “off the grid” to preserve the environment and the waters that give it life.

We 21st century Florida surfers have a choice right now: do we act to fight the forces of destruction that threaten the quality of our lives, or do we just choose not to look, not to become a part of the solution for those who will follow? What elements make up the brand of psychology which chooses to simply look the other way? Is it really too late? Who says that people working together with a shared vision cannot change the future? Think about who is creating the vision of your future right now.

Surfers are people who, regardless of differences in age and the boards they ride, are interested in utilizing the same medium: the fluid expanse of waters that surround the state. Yes, tourists utilize these waters too, but they don’t live here and so can’t be eco-active here. Florida surfers are in the water all the time, and are profoundly subject to whatever inpurities are present therein.

Under present conditions, what will surfing be like in Florida by the year 2020, or say, 2050? Can you imagine how crowded Florida is going to be? Can you imagine what the water’s going to be like if the present socio-political climate remains intact? Can you imagine what beach access is going to be like even by... 2020?

7.2 million people by the year 2050

We in Florida have the ability, through group consensus, to ensure that beaches and waters are protected from mindless destruction and exclusivity. Powers are already in place, and have been for a long time now, that would like to develop more and more land to cater to an ever-expanding species of human beings who do not care about the things we hold dear.

Think about this the next time when, at mid-morning, you’re sitting out past the breakers at a spot you grew up surfing, looking back at the shore as it fills in with people you’ve never seen before, and whom you will never see again.

~logjammer

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