We must confess, the headline for this story comes not from our own brains, but that of Luke Cederman, the man behind one of the funniest surf parody accounts on YouTube: the Raglan Surf Report. On a regular basis, Cederman skewers idiosyncracies of our little subculture, and one of the latest examples of that is the trend to ride retro shapes without a leash, lest the surfer in question “look like a kook” and ruin the aesthetic he or she is going for.
Now, we’d be remiss if we didn’t come out and say a number of folks on our staff ride surfboards – especially in the nine-foot-plus range – without a leash. But, what good satire does is allow us to laugh at ourselves, and the video above accomplishes just that.
More to the point of whether surfers who choose not to wear a leash are the anti-vaxers of the ocean, the question is nothing if not provocative. In the same way parents who don’t vaccinate their kids are endangering other people’s children and the elderly and causing public health concerns around the world, is a surfer that endangers others because they’re not wearing a leash because it’ll impact their cross-step comparable? Maybe. We’ll refrain from making a determination on that and let you duke it out in the comments.
