Was it the Endless Summer? Maybe.
I’ll be the first to admit that before I really surfed, I wanted to be a surfer. To be fair, I grew up in Maine, where surfing is a very different activity than it is in California or Hawai’i. The allure of walking around town in a swimsuit, ready to drop your towel at any time and jump into welcoming waters was something out of a fantasy.
You could argue that my image of what a “real surfer” consisted of was largely inaccurate. Real surfers are just people: they have normal jobs, they paddle out when they can, and they live (largely) normal lives. But, like many kids who dream of leaving their hometown in search of something greater, the portrayal of surfing fed to me by surf magazines, films, books, and well-traveled surfers lent itself to many a fantasy of driving alone through Mexico, boarding planes to South Africa, shirking all responsibility to live a free and easy life by the ocean’s edge. The choice to pursue surfing was hardly even a choice at all. What other activities warrant world-wide explorations and an easy out from traditional career paths?
But now that I am attempting to live a surfing life (which, if I’m honest, is everything I imagined it would be) I wonder how much of my desire to pursue surfing came from its media-saturated vision. Surfing is intertwined with so many beautiful things, which easily lends itself to a glamorization it may or may not fully deserve. Surfing has always been synonymous with travel, art, culture, adventure, youth. These are things and experiences people yearn for with or without the surfing component.
Surfing also provides an excuse for the not-so romantic elements of its own creation: sleeping in cars, public intoxication, lives spent largely alone and unmarried, constant money problems (but somehow never accompanied by a lack of boards).
As I continued to chase waves and consume surf media, I began to wonder: who was behind this romanticization of the surfing lifestyle? Is it the general media, who stereotypes surfers into stoner-esque, carefree characters? Is it surf media, who asserts that surf culture stands on its own and deserves recognition? Or, is it surfers themselves, who truly love surfing and maybe also want to excuse their lack of greater contribution to society?
Worried that this could be a chicken-or-the-egg-dilemma, I looked to where I found surfing most romanticized. Starting, of course, with The Endless Summer. Besides its historical relevance to surfing, The Endless Summer is one of the most classic and well-known surf films, bridging the gap between general audience and surf-specific movies.
The 1966 Bruce Brown “documentary” of Mike Hynson and Robert August traveling the world in search of a perfect wave is beautifully accompanied by The Sandals. Perfect waves, plane rides, bikini-clad women, and crazy drives over all sorts of terrain are all on the menu. Mike Hynson’s later confession that parts of The Endless Summer were perhaps over-exaggerated hardly dull its sensational appeal. Even better, Bruce Brown’s narration explains many aspects of surfing to common folk, at times appearing ironic in nature, with lines like “Fred Hemmings only stands up on alternate Wednesdays, but when he does, he really wails!”
Which brings up another important aspect of surfing’s romanticization: the lingo. Who doesn’t want to exclaim things like “radical,” “bitchin’,” and “far out?” Or call people things like “hodad,” “kook,” “Barney,” and “snake?”
Another classic surf film, Five Summer Stories, also has a wonderful soundtrack expressing (and praising) the simplicity of the surfing life. Honk’s song, “High In The Middle,” with the chorus, “I’ve been stayin’ high in the middle with an honest to goodness hey diddle diddle,” speaks to living in the country, a classic surfing experience, singing: “Get up every morning at the crack of dawn, go jump in the water, roll around on the lawn, it’s really fine having only what I want goin’ on!”
This statement is followed by a call to action, where the singer asserts that after being “fenced by fear of what I’m told is wrong, I found a hole in the fence then I jumped right through… Now I’m prayin’ that you can too!” Is Will Brady telling us all to quit our jobs, move to the country, work on a farm, and surf whenever we can? Maybe.
Whatever the case, plenty of surfers have, in reality, lived out this ideal. Wayne Lynch, arguably one of the most influential surfers of all time, disappeared to avoid national service, going on a five-year hiatus to surf and travel with just a few people. In The Surfer’s Journal Biographies series featuring Lynch, he recalls that “discovery was my big thing in surfing. To discover waves, the places, different people, cultures. And things about yourself, human nature. Surfing is a very creative act, a very special act.”
This removed style of living, dedicated to nature and wave-riding, was hardly limited to Wayne Lynch. Matt Warshaw explains in the History of Surfing in a chapter titled “Country Soul” that the term “soul surfer” was fully embodied by many surfers. One being Nat Young, who “chopped wood for the stove, cleared brush, built a solar-heated shower, grew a magnificent beard, and decorated the inside of his minibus with a poster of Meher Baba, his favorite Indian mystic.” It doesn’t get more romantic than that!
Even today, surfers such as Joel Tudor post Instagram photos with poetic captions such as “surfers live the life they love.” The Surfer’s Journal publishes videos paralleling logging and flamenco dancing. Carefully maintained vintage automobiles are often paired with collectible boards, and highways such as the PCH have become symbols of youth and paths to pleasure.
And, since the dawn of time, surfing has been a spiritual pursuit as well as a physical one. With its Polynesian origins, harnessing cosmic energy to move across the water can hardly be condensed to be just a sport. Professor of Religion, Nature, and Environmental Ethics, and Rachel Carson Fellow at the University of Munich, Dr. Bron Taylor, explains that “as a religion scholar, I began to realize there was a religion-resembling dimension to the practice of surfing. People get up at bombastic hours of the morning to engage in this practice. There’s a meditative dimension to it.”
Bruce Brown and Robert August on location filming for what would eventually become The Endless Summer. Photo: Courtesy of the Brown Family
Perhaps my exploration started off by asking the wrong question. Through researching the roots of surfing’s romanticization, it becomes clear that surfing may very well be deserving of its own description. The Endless Summer may have exaggerated some of its own travel details, but the travel still occurred. And, arguably more importantly, it influenced future surfers, such as Jess Ponting, who grew up to become the founder of the Center for Surf Research in San Diego. “I lusted after going and surfing these perfect waves in amazing places,” he said of seeing The Endless Summer.
Furthermore, it seems the media alone cannot be blamed for surfing’s romantic image because of the sheer number of real-life surfers who have lived adventurous, romantic lives. Whether the media was present or not, people have thrown it all away to chase waves. Besides Wayne Lynch and Nat Young, the hit movie Gidget (which some blame for the commercialization and downfall of surfing) was also based on real-life Kathy Zuckerman/Kohner, and she says her life was indeed movie-like in actuality.
All in all, surfing is in many ways a romantic activity, and positioning one’s life around it is too. The origins of this romanticization stretch back as far as surfing itself, to the ancient Polynesians and Peruvians, and there is no blame to be appointed. Neither the surf or general media are creating an image that does not exist in reality. Though there may be some stretching of details and artistic freedom in the ways surfing is presented, spending one’s time in the ocean, harnessing the earth’s natural energy, and waking up every morning just to do it all again is a wonderful lifestyle. Who wouldn’t want to express that?
