Yeah, Torkos’ boards look a little long underfoot (and underarm in interviews). When did we last see that? Only in every section from Wave Warriors III (1988) to Campaign (2003)! Yeah, Torkos cuts a few bails in his clips. That’s not bad editing, that’s homage to Josh Pomer and the early Poor Specimen catalog when edits used VCRs and RCA cables. Sure, at a glance Torkos seems a bit provincial, maybe like he’s been cruising the same stretch of coast for a few too many decades. But that’s called commitment, not small-mindedness. And if Zoltan Torkos is committed to one thing, it’s consistency: he consistently tries skate tricks, consistently embodies nineties surf style and culture like Y2K never came and went, and consistently takes Volcom’s money in spite of a somewhat-limited surfing repertoire.
But for those of us who grew up with a copy of The Kill and grainy VHS surf videos (not “films”) shot from glorified Sony Handycams and HI8, Torkos doesn’t represent “regression”: he’s living, breathing nineties nostalgia, embodied by every pop shove-it, kickflip, or end-section 360. Torkos unashamedly delivers us back to an era when the only angle in a surf video was the beach angle, default soundtracks were pulled from the first decade of the Fat Wreck Chords catalog, and contest jerseys had a place in the latest videos. Still rocking a uniform of baggy carpenter pants, functional skate shoes, and short-sleeved button ups? I get the impression that Torkos doesn’t care about the newest fashions in surfing or much of anything else. And beyond commitment or consistency, that’s called sincerity.
The real problem, it seems, is that in 2013 surfing’s nineties “heritage” isn’t sufficiently historically distant to become completely “cool” yet (again). Surfing’s collective enterprises have rehashed, marketed, and sold contemporary surfers the styles and equipment of the fifties (the Greg Noll Billabong collection, anyone?), the sixties (retro boards and fashions galore, embraced today by guys who claim that below-average surfing is an ideology instead of an excuse), the seventies (see how Matt Wilkinson is marketed), and the eighties (see whatever Alex Knost is doing). Yet the long-decade of the nineties? It’s still eternally uncool while we’re being marketed the retro yesteryear of half-century past or the technologically advanced tomorrow of endless progress. Torkos is neither Dora nor Dane although he’s doing something novel, and collectively, surfing doesn’t quite know how to react.
Zoltan Torkos is a local guy from a very local place. Sure, he’s self-interested in his publicity campaigns, as most surf personalities are. Yet his kickflips, indicative of an adherence to a bygone decade currently shunned by surfing’s cool kids, are not what Joel Tudor has criticized as “scamming society.” Quite the contrary, I get the impression that he would be doing kickflips because that’s just what he does, regardless of his impact on you, me, the Top 34, or the larger surfing world.
As for the nineties, their day will come in retro surf marketing and when it does, we will look back to Volcom’s call-to-kickflip and Zoltan Torkos and laugh—maybe with them, maybe at them—recognizing the subtle genius of a man whose commitment and sincerity transcended that of transparently self-interested household names like Laird Hamilton or Garrett McNamara, all while winning $30k for twice-performing a single trick and, technically, being ahead of his time.
With regard to Torkos in the bigger picture, we must be honest, Mr. Currie: the “public perception of progressive surfing” is not Zoltan Torkos chop-hopping kickflips to Good Riddance songs. Mass public perception of progressive surfing is, unfortunately, limited to Anderson Cooper interviews with GMAC and Audi advertisements featuring Laird. And in that case, we need more guys like Zoltan Torkos.
