Surfing just has that “cool factor.” Photo: Kenny Morris//World Surf League
“Cool is spent. Cool is empty. Cool is ex post facto. When advertisers and pundits hoard a word, you know it’s time to retire from it…I want to suggest, therefore, that we begin to avoid cool now…Cool makes you functional, eager for routine distraction, passive, doped, stupid.” -Rick Moody
Lately, like 100 percent of surfers, I’ve been dreaming of picking up a new surfboard. I find myself dragging my fingers down the racks in shops, cruising the web for the next best thing. Pipe dreams aside, a recent listen to the Basis Surf podcast with Nettle Clement as a guest got me thinking about how our board choices are often wrapped up in what’s considered “cool” at the time. Clement, a surf coach in El Salvador, describes a moment of revelation early in her career when a fellow surfer tells her to size up from her 5’10″ shortboard. She goes from catching one wave a session to around 20, changing her entire grasp of riding waves.
I have no doubt that part of Clement’s draw to her first shortboard was about aesthetics. The age-old conundrum that hangs over our surfboard choices — and many of our life choices — is the idea of looking the part. As a kid who grew up idolizing the pros in surf, skate and snow mags and videos, it often felt as though the tradeoff for sacrificing your body to the snow, cement or waves was earning the right to a unique, albeit bruised, particle of coolness. To me, the riders on the cover of Thrasher or Transworld were to be revered and emulated. I wanted to ride what they rode.
I fondly remember my first “real” skateboard, one I’d dreamed of and scoured catalogs for: a Santa Cruz Rob Roskopp with Indies and Slimeball wheels. It was epic, and just carrying the board to the skatepark buoyed my confidence. Beforehand, I’d worked my way through a fluorescent Nash, a goofy Variflex, even some homemade boards. I’d paid my dues.
Surfing-wise, the rush towards cool came later for me, and though I’d schlepped around on a half-dead longboard, my dues were delinquent. I was in Australia, pretending I knew more about surfing than the zero I did, and I remember the surf shop guy asked, “Hey, Mate, do you want to get radical?” Of course I wanted to get radical. I was young and idealistic, invincible and unwise. I bought a used potato chip and proceeded to struggle until I shipped the flimsy board back to Rhode Island and rented a big, floaty egg in Byron Bay. There, I glided across a wave or two and felt far more accomplished than I should have.
Boardsports have a complex relationship with the idea of coolness. Part of that is clearly because over the decades, our once extreme pastimes have become victims of mainstream commodification. In “On the Culture and Uniqueness of Action Sports,” snowboarder Billy Morgan tells Looking Sideways podcaster Matthew Barr: “If you think back to the origins of boardsports it was about being a rebel renegade and doing whatever you want. Now it’s like ‘No, this is how you be cool. You need to do these things’…The fact that there’s no ‘right’ way of doing it is supposed to be the point.” We admire the savage and inherent originality of the Dogtown and Z-Boys, but we also know that these days no one is above following the trends.
In an essay for SURFER entitled “Culture of Cool,” Lewis Samuels blames the creeping lure of our Meta-programmed screens for the vacuum of repetition. He writes, “The internet allows once regional trends to go global within a matter of weeks. It’s easy to see what other cool surfers are doing, and it’s hard not to get caught up in it: Be earnest. Grow facial hair. Bodysurf. Or make a handplane…Train jiujitsu, or do yoga, and eat organic, and make sure you let other people know you’re doing these things via social media…Stop wearing booties. Stop using a leash. Drive a van…” Written 13 years ago, many of these tropes still hold up.
The debate about the uniqueness of the soul of action sports is a topic for another time, but one need only look at the similarity of boards in our lineups or the “new/old” allure of mid-lengths to see how the concept of cool relates to the surfboards we choose. As a kid, I longed for Mike McGill’s latest Powell Peralta deck, and I now pine for a shiny mid-length or fish that a small part of me still believes will impart some new magic on my surfing. However, while I now love the freedom and speed of riding a fish, I’ll admit that I first wanted the board because it looked badass and the surfers I admired ride twin-fins beautifully. Honestly, I had no business riding that board five years ago, and it wasn’t until a back injury forced me to switch to a mid-length that I was able to unlock some of its secrets.
We all take different paths through the tube to the exalted place where our surfing progresses because of our equipment, and not despite it. Like so many other things in surfing, it can take a long time to figure out the surfers, and people, we truly are. As we get older it becomes easier to avoid the trends because we don’t care as much about how we look to others. In short, we simply become more comfortable, and secure, with who we are. And the culture of cool matters much, much less. When I revisit the skinny jeans I wore when I was in an indie band, I cringe. When I rock up to the beach on a cold, jumbled morning in booties, holding my egg, I don’t care how I look; I just want to get some waves while I can.
I’ve only owned three brand-new surfboards, but I know surfers who have upwards of 20 or 30 boards. A surfer can dream, right, and maybe I’ll get there someday? Right now, my quest to ride as many different boards as I can conflicts with my current affliction as a writer and the brutal reality of my bank account. Plus, my back still isn’t ready for the demands of my shortboard, so each day my basic choice feels more appropriate for an all-night diner: would you like the egg or the fish?
I like to think that being confined to my old, now dented and patched-up fish, and the egg, limits my choices while expanding my sense of vision. In short, being forced to work with what I’ve got colors my surfing. Like Jack White’s old philosophy of using a cheap guitar, my thought is that limiting one’s quiver can perhaps make us work to find new lines in what is old and faded. These days, I work with what I’ve got, and I’m happy with what I’ve got. Hell, I’m just grateful I get to live near the beach and surf a lot. The trends will come and go, in the same way that the baggy pants I wore for 10 years of my fleeting youth are suddenly back in style. But this time, I’m not buying a pair. And yes, I swear, I’ve always had a mustache.
