The Rip Curl Pro Search announced its 2011 location: Ocean Beach, San Francisco. The thirteenth most populated city in America? Not exactly a difficult find. Photo: Mila Zinkova
There’s a surf contest coming to San Francisco.
The general mood is skeptical – curious at best, outright hostile at its worst. “What about the crowds?” “What about the currents? It probably won’t be very fun to watch.” “What will Kelly Slater do on this wave?”
The unexpected arrival of a professional surf contest at an otherwise neglected surf spot begs an important question: why here? Who made the decision? And to make the question even more abstract, who runs surfing in the first place? Is it the ASP? The locals? The media? Who?
To consider it another way—what political philosophy is best represented in the surfing world?
The case of Ocean Beach in San Francisco is a bit unique. It is technically in the National Parks, as part of the Golden Gate National Recreational Area, and so the governing body, the GGNRA is a federal organization that is based in Washington, DC. The GGNRA granted the permits for the contest, and so it is happening. In that way, Ocean Beach is almost like a colony.
But let’s look at the surfing world collectively, because despite the uniqueness of each of our spots, there are several similar features that hint at the rules that govern our wave-riding.
The easiest characteristic of surf behavior to start with is that of localism. Every surf spot in the world has to deal with this issue. Some places are more aggressively protected than others, but the mentality is consistent and simple: I was born here, so I get priority over you. In that respect, surfing seems to adhere to the very traditional, conservative principles of an aristocracy. The landed gentry call the shots. The mere coincidence of birthright entitles you to obnoxious, selfish behavior, and there is not much that can be done. In the Surfline article that broke the story of the San Francisco surf contest, writer Marcus Sanders referenced that contest organizers met with “a dozen hardcore locals to voice any concerns they may have about the event.” Boom. Case in point.
There also is the equally important question of meritocracy within surfing. The better the surfer, the more waves he or she will likely get. You don’t want to drop in on a really good surfer, but that really good surfer might not have any hesitation in dropping in on you. Why? Because (s)he’s better than you are. So there! Now, to piggyback on the perspective of the landed gentry, the really good surfers are often locals, but not exclusively so. And while I respect the point raised recently by Tetsuhiko Endo that surfing allows mere mortals to practice their sport alongside their heroes, it doesn’t mean that the heroes will treat us mere mortals with equality and respect. Look at the beating that Sunny Garcia laid into that kid in Australia. It’s an extreme, but indicative, example of a better surfer thinking that he can treat a worse surfer poorly, just because.
There are many political ideologies that might explain surf behavior. We could also call it a corporate oligarchy. Again, we are bleeding into the other ideologies a bit, but this upcoming surf contest is sponsored by a very large corporation, and without that corporation, the event would never take place. Likewise, association with local surf shops, the merchants of the trade, entitles certain privileges in the water. Sponsorships, sales reps, surf writers…all the people caught up in “the circus,” as everyone loves to call the ASP World Tour, package and sell a culture that we have to at least acknowledge, if not buy. So maybe surfing is run by companies.
In the last decade, the emergence of the Social Internet has posited forth a new set of rules for the governance of surfing. Those that have been long protected, like the locals and the rippers, are none too thrilled by this evolution. The Internet seems to indicate surfing as a democracy. We can all go online and check surf forecasts, and no longer need to rely on our own knowledge. We can anonymously post comments and trash other surfers or breaks in online forums. Everyone has a platform, whether you like it or not.
But of course, it’s not a real democracy. There are no votes. This contest certainly was not voted on. People don’t get together in large assemblies to determine whether or not live surf reporting should happen. It just happens. In a democracy, we would vote on whether locals should get wave priority or not, and once the rules were voted in, we would all have to follow them.
As such, no political ideology seems to adequately sum up surfing. There’s a little bit of everything, but not everything of one concept. Except for one: anarchy.
I’m not talking about the angsty anarchy of punk bands who spray paint walls. I’m talking about anarchy as the hopelessly optimistic philosophy that it genuinely is. At its core, anarchy believes that people are so inherently good that they don’t need rules. Rules mess everything up. Without rules, we would be able to express all of our inherent goodness. To quote Lucy Parsons, the American labor organizer, anarchy offers “freedom to develop, to live naturally and fully.” Isn’t that kind of the draw we all have towards surfing in the first place? We surf for the freedom of it and the connection with nature. We surf because it helps us find ourselves.
And so surfing kind of resembles anarchy. There are no posted rules. There are differences in opinion, and we can actually act in ways that emphatically advocate our beliefs. We can host surf contests, or ignore them and go surf somewhere else. We can post surf reports, or beat up people for exposing secret spots. We can aspire to the style of the pros, or invent our own style. All of it is feasible, because there aren’t really any rules. It’s anarchy. And I’d like to think that it relies on the goodness of people. We act the ways that we do because we are trying to do what we think is best for surfing. There are no real checks and balances.
So there’s a surf contest coming to San Francisco. And many people aren’t happy about it. But that’s part of the game we’re playing here. There are no rules prohibiting contests, and so there will be a contest. Because some people think that a contest in San Francisco will be what is best for surfing, and in the anarchy that is surfing, they can act upon that assumption.
Boom. Case in point.
Before I wrap up, I must acknowledge the real boss behind all of this. Who runs surfing? Mother Nature, of course. Without her, we wouldn’t have the waves we ride in the first place. Us mere mortals are left paddling around in anarchy.
