Logjammer's Drifting article for August 25th 2005
Surfing in the Past (Present)
by logjammer
Hydrodynamica. This is the
name of a film project being instigated by
a man named Richard Kenvin, from San Diego, California. I find this
project very interesting, as it is fundamentally a history of 20th
century surfing hydrodynamics based mainly around the developments of
one of surfing’s greatest design pioneers, Bob Simmons.
Key to Richard Kenvin’s take on contemporary surfing
is his love and
admiration for the Steve Lis Fish design, which Hydrodynamica
will be
tracing through a number of intertwining lineages back to Bob Simmons
himself.
Readers of The Surfer’s Journal saw a
brief and
unheralded article appear in Vol. 13, No. 5, Winter 2004, entitled,
Keel Hauling, by SJ editor Scott Hulet.
Says Kenvin in the SJ article, “On a fish, surfers
are linked not
only to the past but also to the future, as the board’s performance
capabilities have not yet been realized, which makes them very fun to
ride.”
In the article, Hulet remarks that “sometimes backwards
can be a
pretty cool hand.” He makes this remark in the context of what he
perceives as the “bland” and largely “stagnant”
nature of the
contemporary surfing experience.
In my own inquiry into such matters, I discovered a website
called
AllAboutSurf.com.
In January of 2005, they ran a piece called,
Richard Kenvin’s Hydrodynamica, in which Kenvin is interviewed
at
length by Fish shaper Rich Pavel. What a fascinating read! This is
what truly whetted my appetite for Hydrodynamica. Here, comparisons
are made between Simmons and such figures as Jack Kerouac and Woody
Guthrie, in terms of Simmons’ true influence in the post-WW2 era.
Apparently, though, Simmons’ influence was largely passed over by
many
of his contemporaries because Simmons was way ahead of his time, and
was initiating a style of surfing that wouldn’t be understood for
a
long time; it wouldn’t be understood until the “Shortboard
Revolution”
of the late 1960’s, through the efforts of Greenough and McTavish.
The initial “Longboard Era,” the golden age
of 50’s and 60’s surfing,
was not really related too much to where Simmons had been going with
hydrodynamic design.
In short, our situation in surfing today is somewhat
like the common
paleoanthropological models of Neanderthals living alongside modern
humans. We love the timeless quality and cross-stepping style of
longboarding, but in our midst we also have a design that springs from
a different source, one that is more sophisticated, and which has its
origins in the late 1940’s!
The classic Steve Lis Fish is at once a design breakthrough
of the
past, as well as a contemporary celebration of something very basic
and functional by today’s standards. Is it really “retro?”
I submit that current “pixie stick” thrusters
are quite possibly an
overspecialized devolution from what Lis achieved back in about 1969
or so, when his psychedelic forays into eternal values in surfing,
built upon the design foundations established by Bob Simmons, exploded
him forward into a design continuum that remains unequaled to this day.
Witness the Lis Fish: once and forever an ultimate design
which
delivers all the goods...a design which, today, in this eternal
moment, is embraced by a far-seeing and inspired generation.
~logjammer
