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Surfing Down To Earth

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Surfing Down To Earth by logjammer

There’s something I’ve been striving to articulate. It’s a feeling, an awareness that comes over me from time to time out in the water - almost anytime, really - when I’m thinking about surfing.

I believe I’ll start out by mentioning one of my favorite surfing
videos, “The Innermost Limits Of Pure Fun.” George Greenough shot the
footage for this film back in 1967 and 1968.

It was a time of profound transition in the world of surfing, and big changes were being made overnight in terms of board design and surfing attitudes.

It was the beginning of the “cosmic” expression that was naturally
spewing out of turned-on minds that were bursting out of the past,
which was rapidly being seen as static, uninspired - a dead zone.

Even Mickey Dora referred to surfing’s “dead origins” and, though
sensing a forthcoming period of “cataclysm” (today), projected a sense
of surfing’s transformation into something magical and engaged.(Interesting Mickey Dora Site)

In “The Innermost Limits,” we see a cadre of mostly Australian surfers
in the act of taking Greenough’s design inspiration and busting loose
into a style of surfing that was characterized as smooth and flowing,
with the development of catlike crouches with S-turns, arcing
cutbacks, and “off-the-lips.” Surfers in this film were doing things
no one had ever done before, and they were providing a blueprint for a
breakaway style of surfing which became known widely in the media as
the “Shortboard Revolution.”

People took their Lance Carson Models and Weber Performers and just
hacked them down to fashion boards that would take them to new levels
of experience.

All of this took place at a time of heightening growth of the
population and ever-increasing suburban sprawl; new surfing
publications were being born, and the surfing “industry” started by
the late Dale Velzy was reaching huge proportions through the 70’s,
along with more and more films illustrating surfing’s global spread.

In short, society was getting wilder and wilder, and the population
was getting wider and wider.

Eventually, that very same Australian tenacity was responsible for
Simon Anderson’s development of the “Thruster,” a board design that
utilized the prerequisite attitude of “shredding” on waves, using the
strength and resolve of the rider to operate in a reduced medium and
create an aggressive form of surfing that still dominates today as the
norm.

At the present time, this aggressive approach to waveriding is
primarily the domain of young surfers - teenagers and people mostly in
their twenties and thirties, and those reluctant to give up their
youth and give in to the power of gravity, mass, and burnout known as
“aging.” The process of aging in our society is something that is
scorned by the youth; they are the ones who are cocky and superior in
today’s lineup - and it’s to be expected - as our society and all
advertising media are geared towards the attractiveness of youth and
the relative worthlessness of being older or just plain old.

Hence, the Thruster takes its place as the popular model of the
tuned-in young masses, while the older folks who actually participated
in surfing’s Golden Age and the Late 60’s Renaissance of inspired
beauty are seen as dinosaurs in the lineup. The fast, shredding
approach of the young is the established norm within the surfing
industry and popular competitive markets.

But, here’s my realization, and this realization has import in other
areas of life besides just within the realm of surfing: those days of
surfing in the late 1960’s and through the 1970’s were actually the
best time for surfing. Why? Because of the flow, the catlike crouches
and S-turns and arcing cutbacks which retained the sense of flow
which had been born in the first “longboard” era, but which was lost
with the development of the Thruster.

Premise: the most advanced surfers today are the ones who, besides
enjoying the stability and style of classic longboards, are activating
the “retro” element and getting back into midlength boards (say, 7 to
9 feet in length) and shorter “fish” designs, recreating the moves of
the great masters like Nuuhiwa, Lopez, Kanaiaupuni, Young... the list
goes on and on.

And who’s doing it best? Well for those who are still in shape from
the first go-round, it may very well be the old guys. After all, they
invented this stuff! Then, there are the perceptive members of
today’s youth who also embrace longboarding, are bored by the
circus-like atmosphere of repeated lip-smacks and “airs,” and have a
dazzling new array of shorter and refined retro tools to work with
from the start.

I would just like to say that words fail in expressing my stoke when I
see young people going against the establishment in surfing, going
counter to the cliques of purely aggressive surfing, and finding the
OBVIOUS MEDIAN RANGE of surfing excellence attained in decades past,
which was centered around an equilibrium of beauty, balance, and flow.
This is real down to earth surfing, and is truly a celebration of the
human spirit in balance with nature.

~logjammer

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