Is this the future of surfing? Photo: iStock
World tour events in New York, Rio and San Francisco? Brilliant.
While initial web commentary decried the move back to city beachbreaks as a cynical, money-grabbing, death of the dream tour, the reality has been a revelation. Not just quality waves, huge crowds, moments of real drama (crazy airs, bumper t-shirt sales, world titles won, lost and won again!), but pro surfers who are becoming cultured as they wander these big city streets wide-eyed and awestruck like country cousins on vacation.
No sooner had the tour set down in NYC than the breathless tweets began. “This city is amazing,” the pros chorused. A lay day in San Francisco? “Clam chowder by the wharf. How romantic is this city?” tweeted Wilko, apparently unperturbed by his recent brush with the law. “At the farmer’s market in SF. Very cool,” chimed in Josh Kerr. “Just found a fabulous tailor for my ASP banquet suit. Pin stripes are the new black,” Kelly tweeted. Well, he didn’t actually, but he easily could have.
There is a lot being written these days by urban planners and demographers about the “suburbanisation of our coastline,” as city refugees flee the crowds and gridlock and settle in outlying beach towns. But there has been less written about the “urbanization of our surfers,” a kind of reverse Sea Change, as a new generation of wave riders fall under the thrall of the city. Once, back in the halcyon days of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the leading surfers of the day fled the big smoke to colonise old farm houses in the Byron hinterland, tending chooks, growing veges, wearing tea-cosies on their heads and gorging on empty pointbreaks with dreamy speed runs on their streamlined single fins.
These days, the discerning, canny, career surfer is moving to New York or Bondi, attending art galleries and shooting abstract black and white photos on vintage cameras, performing wildly creative airs in shitty beachbreaks on short stumpy boards. Oddly, the tea cosies are the one common denominator, or some other jaunty form of headwear. Once the logical companion career for the dedicated surfer was surfboard shaper. Now it seems to be DJing. It is a fascinating social trend.
And with this trend has come a new type of surfing commentator – astute, immaculately groomed, and well-educated men who cast a critical, discerning eye not over a surfer’s cutback, tube technique or quiver, but their wardrobe and hair styles and whether or not they are familiar with the oeuvre of Charles Bukowski. Surf magazines provide fashion tips, ruminating on the correct length for boardshorts this summer, or the desired tightness of one’s trouser leg, rather than the curve of one’s rocker or the most effective degree of concave. “Don’t pair bulk with bulk,” their fashion experts counsel wisely, recommending black to hide those unwanted pounds. These are strange times to those of us reared on the notion that the height of fashion was matching thongs or a stain-free t-shirt.
Hopefully this trend will spread and grow like a long period ground swell. Expect crowds to be down at G-land, Desert Point, Gnaraloo and Cactus as these refined, big city dandies avoid the horrors of life without cocktail bars, General Pants stores, wi-fi and the availability of a decent facial. Instead, they’ll opt for surf trips to the newest wave pool, a short stroll from their immaculately appointed hotel room and pool bar. In this way, surfing’s new cultural divide will prove a win-win for all. Less crowds at the remote wilderness surf outposts for the unkempt ferals. More crowds at the latest city hotspots for the urban groovies who like to pack it in tight.
Why can’t we all get along? We can! As long as the borders of this new cultural divide are clearly defined and everyone remains in their allotted places. That simply means arty air boy Dion Agius, for example, promises never to go to Gnaraloo and in return underground desert tube charger Camel never sets foot in New York or Bondi. Simple.
