Critical analysis of the surf magazine industry:
http://www.theinertia.com/business-media/letter-to-surf-magazine-editors-of-the-world/
…or why Tim Baker is a foul mouthed, insolent person who bites the hand that has fed him.
Comment: toungue in cheek.
The surf magazine industry is responsible for MOST of what ails the culture. Some have no idea of what true surfing is. When I was a kid the only reason someone stared surfing was for the simple drive to have fun. Now it is promoted as a means to an end (income) so a lot of guys in the water are there to ape or mimic what they read. What do the mags promote? What any pimp would. An economic exchange. It’s all about wave count and shameless self promotion. These mags(rags) have poisoned the minds and outlook of those coming up. Anyone remember Ace Cool? Admittedly he could surf and ride big waves but the “real” guys at the time shunned him for his bravado and constant harping on himself. Now it is the order of the day. What happened to the concept of taking turns in the water? The hype of the mags to up your wave count, make a name for yourself, make some money, live off someone elses’ hard work, have others pay for your travel. All the BullSH@# that’s put out there is meaningless when you blew out your knee, back, shoulders, ect. In the end it still boils down to just wanting to have fun. NOTHING MORE!!! The blatant disregard for all others is the REAL poison in the water, that comes straight out of those damn publications. Not to mention the sophomoric subject matter and writing skills of a chimp. They have infected the youth of today. Sadly some folks never grow out of this mentality. For me, surfing is an escape! Escape from daily life, a chance to renew my outlook. How can that be accomplished with shouting, cuthroat competing and battling for a single wave? Am I the only one to see it as so? An Escape? Once you paddle out your perspective changes (or should). Leaved the crap behind and simply go have a good time. Thus endeth the sermon. Sorry for the rant.
chances are if you didn’t grow up on the beach and your father didn’t grow up on the beach you’ll never understand. i won’t travel anywhere unless there is a beach and i can take my surfboard just in case there are waves. devotion i think it’s called. people who write and read these magazines pull up in their brand new suv or these days even lexus’s and what not pull out the most expensive wetsuit you can get and their al merrick with a leash, when the waves are 3-4 and the waters 70 degrees. they don’t have a love for the ocean they do it because it’s cool. and your right the damn magazine promotes it. whats sad is every once i a while i’ll pick up a surfer mag and all it is is commercials, then you read the letter to the editors and some old timer takes the time to let them see the mag from their view (telling them what crap it is) and the editor tells him he’s a fogey and he needs to grow with the times or drown in it. i dont know about anyone else but these (fogeys) are the people i look up to and aquire my knowledge from. if they can’t figure out how to take the critisim and grow off of it they’re just going to keep going down the toilet they ended up in. they need to quit galmourizing surfing, it’s just surfing we do it to have fun and some of the most stylistic and influential surfers i know look like bums. before you know it it’ll be cool t look like a bum “it’s retro bro”.
Let’s promote all the surf photographers to start their own “Journal” and be self sufficient. After all, it IS the photos that float these P.O.S.'s. They could start a photog guild and pool their resources. What gets published or doesn’t will be up to them, not a manufacturer.
well besides all of the advertising crap, maybe the reason they are losing readers is because they ONLY feature contest rats, 5'3"-6'5" thrusters, and other b.s. like wetsuit guides, board short guides, and surfboard buyer guides. Is it just me or are there other kinds of people that ride other kinds of boards, and don't give a crap of how fashionable their wetsuit or boardshorts are? Those are the customers that they are losing. Oh, and how about the "green issues"? Editors and mag industry workers alike try to pass off all of these "fads" such as organic cotton teeshirts, and tuflites as being the way to save our planet. How bout wearing the tshirt you have on your back at the moment, and not buying a new one that had to be shipped hundreds of miles to get to your porch? or buying a board form a local shaper instead of a tuflite made in thailand with virtually no epa standards to run their factory by. Oh, but gee, i forgot, tuflite production results in low VOC's, and it's what all the cool kids are riding these days, or at least thats what transworld surf told me in their last issue(sarcasm intended). how about ordering a board with a durable enough glass job to last more that 6 months, and wont be thrown in a landfill any time soon? These magazines seem to scam people into all of kinds of stuff, and are marketed towards the contest kid from SoCal, who's dad is filthy rich, and buys him all of these new advertised products. Smart thing to do, cause thats where the money is, Right? Well sometimes its not about the money, and in my opinion, other boards need to be shown, as well as other people, cause not every one that surfs is 14 years old and too stubborn to ride a log when the waves are 2 ft.
The whole surf scene quite frankly, sucks. It has gone from a lifestyle that revolves around fun and concern with craftsmanship, to a blonde haired kid punching a hole through his 2 oz, 5'4, popout thruster because he didn't land an air. Surf shops are another issue in themselves in that it seems the number of boards are getting smaller, and the number of tshirts are growing exponentially. As far as i'm concerned, if you're gonna call your self a SURF shop or a SURF mag, then stick with the SURF side of things, and don't go where advertising and money leads you(ie. clothing and other useless crap). Well thats my two cents on the topic, and as for me, I'll just stick with the only two good things left in surfing: Quality hadcrafted boards, and searching for empty perfect surf every morning.
Asteve, I don’t even want to get started on surf shops and how they are manipulated by A$$HOLE sales reps that use bullying and coercion to control what a shop owner can sell or not. These guys are some of the most self inflated, self involved D@#KS in the industry.
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Asteve, I don't even want to get started on surf shops and how they are manipulated by A$$HOLE sales reps that use bullying and coercion to control what a shop owner can sell or not. These guys are some of the most self inflated, self involved D@#KS in the industry.
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You're among friends, why don't you loosen up, and tell us what you really think of them? : )
Mr T., I’ll try to stop minceing my words. Surely you’ve had experience with all the “R.F.ing” over the years.
ps. Too Much??? I’ll cut down on the Java.
pps. Thanks Pal!
I think everyone is overlooking the fact that magazines are basically platforms to promote the SPORT of surfing, not the culture of it. When everyone that gets a shot in the magazine is a competing professional and every article has something to do with a competition, or some company’s “team” trip, it seams to me that the editors are steering their ships towards the organized sport side of things. Sponsors are now paying for their surfers to train with coaches, doctors, and support staff to elevate the level of surfing and push competition to new levels. On one hand I think its pretty cool because people are doing things on waves never imaginable to most, but on the other the end is getting a cover shot or winning a competition. However, I don’t think we’re allowed to judge others on whether or not they are having fun or not. To a competitor in any sport the fun exists in the challenge of winning as well as the pleasure of the activity no matter what sport. I personally don’t identify with that, but for many, surfing has taken that on from other popular sports around the world. When contests are throwing 100,000 dollars to the first place winner, that tells me that the surfing industry as a whole is trying to popularize itself in the hopes of gaining credibility (after all nothing is credible unless there is money in it) so that a contest can make a two minute highlight real on ESPN (oh, and won’t that expose surfing to more people so the industry can make more money???). Also, the magazines wouldn’t sustain themselves without selling adspace in their pages and buying the rights to use photographs in their pages from companies who “own” the surfers in the pictures. At the end of the day, they are a for profit business and like any good capitalist enterprise, they look out for number 1 (oh and all their buddies in the surf industry).
I have never subscribed to a magazine and probably wont, because if I want to look at photos I look online. All the photographers have websites and in some cases photo books in stores. If I want to be violated by innumerable ads, i’ll just walk outside. The real problem is avarice and marketing in every imaginable public or private space!!! You can’t walk down a country road without seeing an ad for something! But I digress…It’s too bad good photographers have to put their artwork on display alongside ads and no matter their intentions, are taking photographs of stickered boards that become ads themselves. Even a photographers artwork can’t avoid branding in our beloved aquatic way of life!!..that’s why all my homebuilds are stickerless : )
Anyway, back to magazines: love the photos, have never read the words, and try my best to ignore my peripheral vision of ads in the margins…
I'm on the same page with you.
You guys read that drivel? … written by children for children … the real thing is here. The pictures are nice but look better on my screen than on a printed page anyway. Someday the advertisers will realize their throwing money away every month and that will be it. I almost can’t believe they still exist. The IPad is the 21st century magazine format.
agreed. newspapers will go first, then magazines. all hail the age of the blog!! (…i’m not sure how i feel about that, but c’est la vie)
I guess what I'm pissed about is that these mags use names like Surfer, surfing, ect. for their mags which implies a much broader catagory than they actually represent. Call yourself "competitive surf magazine" or something of the liking. Everyone is entitled to his/her own opinions, so for the guy who likes to surf 20 min in a neon green jersey with 3 other people, go ahead be my guest, whatever floats your boat and revs your engine. As for me, I would rather wake up at 5:30, and find good waves with no one in sight. And as for "mags not sustaining themselves", well, I guess they could maybe cut back on taking their entire staff on a boat trip to the Mentawais every month. I've never been, nor will be in charge of budget and management at a major surf magazine, but cutting back in this area could allow them to not "sell out" to major companies and put a full page spread every other page of some jerk in white sunglasses wearing the latest tennis shoe or wrist watch. If I wanted to see that then I'd subscribe. Instead, give the money to the photographers that freeze their nuts off to get a decent picture every now and then.
As i said, there are different opinions on this subject, but I believe that popularizing, and commercializing the sport any more will lead to its downfall. Maybe not from a financial viewpoint, but booming surf camps that breed kooks supporting the softtop/popout industry, and getting in my way every saturday is not my idea of success. Their greed and obsession with maximizing profit is why I dislike them so much. That, combined with articles like: how to surf like kelly slater, google search contests on who can find the best wave and expose it by a certain date, and endorsments of "high perforformance" blackball beater softtops, are the reasons why I no longer read the crap that they print every month
people are doing things on waves never imaginable to most
when your young everything is imaginable. as far as what people are doing these days on surfboards mostly is a product of over accessability if there is such a thing. if you give anyone with a reasonable amount of talent plenty of well shaped boards and perfect waves all over the world all year round they should be capable of doing anything anybody does. i know i’m dreaming of a perfect world. at the same time everything that is being done has already been done at some time. these days wiith a world of 6 billion people your rarely the first person to do anything.
in my view surfing was something i could do that didn’t involve competion, i was capable of enjoying a physical expression without judgment of anybody. it set me apart from the jocks and what not and allowed me to figuure ouut who i really was.
Greg Loehr - classic comment
Everyone else - keep it up. Threads like this are my bread and butter. More fun that "Reality TV" any day!
The REEF ads aren't bad though
Beerfan, you are absolutely right. The Reef ads are nice… PHOTOS of some great Apples.
i’ll second that
…I think nobody asked Otis why T Baker is a foul mouthed, etc?
-I want to add that the mags arent the problem, the problem are the major wear/wetsuits companies
that in middle 80s started in south California, Aussie Gold coast, and south Brazil to put thousands on contest but NUTHIN in surfboard design/materials evolution, and still do the same but bigger.
The Magazines are written and edited for the average, or more likely below average 13 to 17 year old male. There is nothing new here and nothing to get upset about. It is what it is and that's all it is.
If you want to find the soul of our odd little surfing life then stop looking at the Magazines! Build a board or two. Trade up swap boards and get your ultimate quiver Buy or Build a Boat, Or get a truck rigged for long road trips. Go someplace that is off the radar surf make friends Help out a local. Take a chance at a local greasy spoon. Sit outside by yourself wondering if this spot is sharky? Paddle into a wave so big and nasty your wetsuit gets a big brown stain. Watch a sunset drink a beer with some old friends and leave only foot prints in the sand!