photo: @iamtheswimreaper
It all started in late 2018 when Rieleigh Mullin woke up one morning and started scrolling his Instagram feed, just as he’d done to start every other day for the previous five years. Immediately, he knew something was different. When Mullin had laid his head down to rest the night before — his dark room lit only by the 4.5 inches of blue light beaming from his iPhone screen — his feed was filled with highlights of his favorite former Central-California-based regular foot pro filtered to look like he’d been recorded on 16mm film, daily affirmations from yoga influencers, and his friends gliding on reclaimed retro boards dug out of garage sales.
“I remember going to sleep that night and feeling like my feed was pretty core,” Mullin recalls.
But suddenly on this morning, his feed was overrun with clips from train-driven, plunger-originated, pool-confined waves the world over. There were advertisements for twin fins that, get this, had been “stamped out” in Chinese factories rather than local mom and pop surf shops. When he got to the beach, he couldn’t even recognize his friends because none of them were in their usual black wetsuits, now donning colored neoprene instead. Worst of all, Mullin learned all of his favorite surfers on IG had at one point or another received cash in exchange for goods and services related to their wave riding abilities.
“It was like the day I learned Santa Claus wasn’t real,” Mullin admits.
His world had changed overnight and needless to say, he couldn’t even stomach that morning’s almond milk ristretto. He couldn’t eat all day. It seemed nothing was seasoned with its usual dash of aloha.
For weeks, that feeling didn’t leave Mullin’s stomach. Surfing was no longer fun with the knowledge that humans were somewhere in the world riding waves created by man, not as Mother Nature had always intended. The notion that money changes hands in relation to surfing on top of and within waves did not sit well. And after multiple visits to the emergency room, countless comments section fights on social media, and several blood tests, doctors determined the source of Mullin’s problem: surfing had lost its soul and Mullin’s was missing along with it.
Rather than roll over and die, Mullin decided to fight. He knew he couldn’t be the only victim and somebody was going to pay for the fact that surfing — the thing he’d based his entire identity on since moving to California from Lansing, Michigan two years prior — had lost its soul and was therefore no longer enjoyable. He quit his job, launched a locals-only, surf-focused non-profit called CORE (Coalition on Rage Equality), and sought legal counsel. Led by Mullin, CORE surfers were going to take down perpetrators they identified as “Big Surf,” a collection of pros, bros, media outlets, and surf companies that had been sucking the teet of the beloved culture dry for decades.
Following 10 months of litigation, the class-action lawsuit ended last week when a judge ordered Big Surf to give surfers back their actual souls beginning January 2021.
“Anything deemed not core or considered to be stealing surfing’s soul is henceforth unlawful,” the ruling states. “Wavepools will be responsible for returning 100,000 souls alone, a retroactive payment for years of charging people to surf.
One anonymous corporation responsible for manufacturing and selling apparel designed for surfing as well as paying surfers to surf and wear their apparel while being photographed and recorded via video camera extensively will be responsible for repaying a sum of 75,000 souls, to be spread among their social media followers and regular readers. The ruling also granted CORE surfers ultimate power in determining what does and does not maintain surfing’s soul in the future. Consideration will also be given to how many unpleasant social media comments are made in reference to any actions by Big Surf in its future endeavors.
“I’m just happy to see justice served,” Mullin told me after the ruling. “As soon as my soul arrives in the mail I’m using it to buy a bunch of Native American blankets from the flea market and decorate my new sprinter van. Any soul I have left over after that, I’ll put toward a new twin fin.”
Editor’s Note: Johnny Utah is an “Eff-Bee-Eye” agent and an expert in works of satire. More of his investigative work can be found here.
