Oh Slim, you are so cool on your CA coast. Gee, I used to be a Ni##er from FL. Now I'm a ni##er from AZ. In your eyes Burton is a ni##er from Vermont. What does where your from have ANYTHING to do with it??? Your prejudice is pathetic. How, in this day and age, you can be so PI. Believe it or not there is intellegent life east of PCH! With post such as this we're all wondering if the same can be said west.
What’s with the hostility and name calling? None of that is from “my eyes.” Yes, I meant you as living in AZ and taking surf trips (I assume you still surf, but once your’re so good that Pipeline is “boring”, maybe it’s lost its luster?) and therefore being unlikely to be heavily impacted by the crowded conditions the industry you wish to “dominate” (as you posted here previously) is producing. But dude, chill out. If being a surf mogul is what you want to be, then go all out. Admit that you hope the lineups become more crowded than ever, and just accept that people are going to bitch about that and any actions of yours that helped make surfing more crowded for current surfers.
After all, if you asked surfers which they’d rather have, the worlds best board that will never break to surf in a massively crowded lineup in which they’ll get one or two waves a session, or current status flow boards in less crowded lineups that would get them 6 or 10 waves, which do you think people would pick? The current popularity of fishes and longboards pretty much proves most people want a higher wave count, don’t you think?
The point was that people like you and Burton/Merrick and Randy French, while surfers, and certainly in your case way better than I’ll ever be, are also out to make a buck. Sure, so are backyard local shapers - but the scale we are talking about is quite different, isn’t it? The difference between just making enough boards to get by and live the life of a surfer, and seeking to grow a huge surf market which you can “dominate” and get rich. The big companies want more surfboards to be sold, for more people to take up surfing. They don’t care because with the money they make, they can fly around the world to find empty surf that they’ve helped eliminate from my backyard by hyping surfing. That has EVERYTHING to do WITH the difference of opinion here.
I suppose there would indeed be a big mental disconnect between someone like me, living on the coast, an simple joe working a gig that helps people have a safer, healthier life, and hoping to get some waves to myself now and then, and capitalists (regardless of where they live) hoping to make more money than they need by selling people stuff. Maybe the materialistic nature of a BUSINESS man won’t allow them to understand what I have against surf “marketing” and surf “commerce”.
But hey, it’s nothing to get all bent out of shape about. Now, Germany just losing to Italy in like the 118th minute, that’s something to get upset about it. Damn it!