To most this ain’t a pretty picture. But crowds mean interacting with strangers –something that’s happening less and less with the advent of technology. Photo: Mike Coots
Crowds are the bane of a surfing existence. The underlying logic of which being, the larger the horde of gremmies descending on your spot, the more the precious resource of wave action must be shared, thereby undermining your personal wave count, and as a result your enjoyment.
Makes sense. But could crowds be one of the final frontiers of raw, unfiltered human interaction?
Just the other day my wife, Kelly, and I were deciding on dinner. She was exhausted – her first week at a new job. I was tired too. We weren’t in the mood to cook. So, we settled on ordering something to be delivered. We’d just signed up for Amazon Prime and had heard about Amazon Restaurants, the company’s newest offering (think Seamless, Postmates, or Uber Eats). We ordered, and 30 minutes later a delivery guy was at the door. “Kelly?” he said. “That’s me,” said the wife. We took the bag of chow. Delivery guy departed. It was oh-so impersonal.
Delivery has been around for some time, don’t get me wrong. But this whole affair moved me. In the wrong way. Kelly and I could eat in the comfort of our own home – which we very well could have done cooking – but this particular app squeezed nearly every drop of interacting with strangers out of enjoying a meal from a restaurant. We didn’t even need to talk to a human being on the phone to place our order.
Some argue technology is sapping the human element from humanity. We cling to devices and screens over one another. It’s not an original thought in the slightest, but it appears that apps and services are also being designed (whether consciously or subconsciously) around the idea of limiting interaction specifically with strangers. Probably because, well, people can be irritating.
Finding a parking space in a crowded lot, waiting for a table, trying to hear what the person you’re with is saying while conversations around you coalesce into an ear-thumpingly dull roar – these are all experiences one might view as negative. Hence the convenience of delivery. It’s also irritating when you order take-out and the person on the other end gets your order wrong. Best remove all that junk from the experience, right?
Apply that logic to surfing, and you get to the bottom of the foundation of surf travel thinking. Fun waves with nobody out. That’s the dream that buttresses the $50 billion per year industry (according to one Oxford study).
But is there any redeeming quality to crowds? For one, would an uncrowded surf with incredible waves be all that dreamy if there weren’t those crowded, nearly unbearably frustrating sessions where you feel like you can’t move?
More and more, for the sake of convenience, human beings are increasingly developing technologies to remove the bad from the equation. And, fortunately (in my view), surfing has remained relatively insulated from the onslaught of technology out in the water. On land is another story. But surfing has benefitted from the fact that it’s a water sport, and most gadgets don’t do well in liquid. Think. Nobody’s answering emails or text messages in between sets. And when you make eye contact with a stranger, there’s no way to look busy by looking down at your phone. The options are one of two: smile or frown. Depends on how you want the rest of that session to go.
That’s not to say that if an app were designed to eliminate crowded lineups, we wouldn’t be all over it. And that, I guess, is my greatest fear. That it’s only a matter of time before all of the irritating moments in surf are completely stripped only to leave it feeling inauthentic and empty. Crowds suck sometimes. Indeed, most of the time. But at least there’s still no way to order a wave at Lowers to go via iPhone or tablet. Because when that happens, we might soon be nostalgic for the hassle.
