Rent, buy or queue up on Netflix a surfing movie. Find a movie that is modern and has a lot of interviews with surfers, maybe Step Into the Liquid, and listen to the way these guys speak. Listen to their tired act of speaking about being one with nature, the connection that only they feel and just how much soul these douche bags have, listen to them speak about themselves being some better type of creature who is more in tune with the planet because of what they do. Then pick up a surfing mag and look at the advertisements...a bunch of white kids who dress like they are from the ghetto trying to look hard out of the water while in the water hopping up and down, catching air and massacring a wave like some shitty corner artist tagging a mail box thinking they are going to be the next Basquiat. Then you can go down to the local break and on a flat day see over eighty people crammed into a lineup that is not even one hundred feet long. They will have all the gear, the new boards, the trunks, stickers on their cars, the racks and every other type of consumable product made to let the world know they surf. Ironically all this crap comes from some sweat shop in China, shipped here in large freighters that burn thousands of gallons of fuel a day to sell to these people who embrace a green way of living and The Surfrider Foundation. Then there are the older surfers who have sold out, whored their piece of the surfing world into cash so they can buy a massive homes at the Hollister Ranch all the while calling those who buy what they are selling kooks and walk amongst them with their noses in the air.
And the only problem I have with all of this is the hypocrisy and the incredible self love these people have in their cores.
Which is why even though I have been surfing since I can remember and literally grown up in the ocean I don't tell people I surf. It is also why the only times I ever make it out are when the conditions are either really big (there's nothing like a nasty, cold ten foot east coast day to drive away the masses) or when I can be assured that no one is in the lineup and there are no attitudes.
Admittedly I am not as good as I should be for someone who has surfed for thirty years, however there aren't too many great surfers who are six foot three and weight two hundred and fifty pounds. But I don't really care about that so much, maybe when I was twelve and I would watch Tommy Curren gracefully cutback I felt inadequate however at this point I remember one of the most classic lines from not only the greatest surf films ever but one of the best films ever "Been doing much surfing Matt?" "Nah (shakes his head), Nah, just when it's necessary"
So there are those days that come up a few times a year when the world is just the shitshow that it always is and I take the blinders off and realize it. On those days I don't need to put on my Arnette glasses, Billabong t-shirt, grab my sticker-ed up stick and hop in my car with Hawaiian print seat covers to throw on a leash and be seen and let the world know that I am a surfer. Rather I'll keep my khakis and button down on, grab a towel and throw my old ten foot Jacobs in the car with little fanfare. I'll collect some quarters from the ashtray (thankfully my car still has them) and buy a cake of wax, a cake because that is what I've always called them. And it will be Sex Wax in their old standby circle form, not some new brand that is made for water temperatures in three degree increments and one has to buy fifteen different bars. I'll change in a towel on the beach since my old home there is long gone and leave my khakis in the sand. No rash guard, wetsuit, not even surfing trunks but my PT shorts from the Navy and then I'll walk to the rocks and paddle out. Most of the times I'll take about three waves in an hour, walk up the beach and put the khakis back on, feel the sand trapped between my toes fall off as the pants come up to my waist, throw the button down on and not button any of the buttons, not rinse off or kick the sand off of my feet but let it scrape off on the floor of the car as I drive home with the salt crusted on my body.
And maybe in saying all this I sound like those soul-zen masters in some of the surfing films. But I don't think so because when I am back in the city I won't talk about the waves I caught that day to let the chicks know I surf or the guys enviously look in my direction. I'll go back to my apartment, one in which there is not one artifact of surf gear laying around and lay down in my bed to pass out quickly just as I did as a tan child in the back seat on the car ride home dreaming of surfing that inside bowl section and how it jacks up on the bar. There is not better feeling than falling asleep after that day in the surf, not after you sign a deal, not after you come, and I don't care what anyone says not better than the day you kids were born, there is just nothing better.
The movie The Endless Summer encompasses all of that and does so without arrogance or airs. This haunting theme as the sun sets over the water has always been ingrained in my mind and always will be and I'll indulge this one opportunity to speak of it and surfing in general because when it comes down to it, no one wants to hear you speak about the day your kids were born, that great orgasm you had the night prior or how you killed it on that deal you made...and they don't care about that drop knee turn you made through that fast section. No one really cares because no one really understands it the way you do, however this song is an insight.
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