Aloha EastPac
What a beautiful fin!
Exposing unknown surf spots has always been a huge dilemma for surfers.
You want to share your good experiences with others, but in so doing, it will ruin the very experience that you held so dear.
Some exposure it inevitable. But too many need to tell of the secrets for their own reasons of self esteem and need to “BE” somebody who knows something that others don’t. Others, happily keep the secrets and reap uncrowded rewards. We live in a fast food world, where few surfers want to do the exploring anymore. They want a map with GPS coordinates and detailed descriptions of when the spot breaks. Have you ever noticed that the farther someone is removed from the spot they are exposing, the more details they are willing to hand over about someone else’s backyard break!?!
How exposure really gets accelerated is by those who find a way to reap commercial benefit from exposing it (surfing paparazzi) instead of just enjoying what they had discovered with a few select friends.
Each new group of “discoverers” usually come from more crowded places that have left them more acclimatized to larger crowds. Because of this, they feel like the new discovery is super UNcrowded. No matter how crowded the new spot is, they don’t realize it only seems uncrowded because their old spot was more crowded.
So when the waves of newcomers are in their 3rd pulse, the original first pulse guys, consider it so crowded that they don’t care anymore as it is now ruined by their “uncrowded standard”, so they feel it is ok to jump in and write an article for the magazines. And if they don’t do it, the newcomers will because at least one of them wants to become “somebody” by getting their name in the magazine and impressing their sponsors.
This quickly pushes the crowding to the 8th pulse level and the guys from the 3rd pulse now feel it is so crowded that they don’t care anymore and decide it is a now a really good idea to make some bucks putting on a surf contest that gets huge coverage in the magazines and TV.
This easily pushes the crowding to the 15th pulse and the guys from the 8th pulse now don’t care anymore cause it is way to crowded for them and so they buy up all the property on the beach, subdivide it and sell houses and lots to surfers in the 15th pulse.
The 15th pulse newcomers don’t think it is all that crowed compared to where they came from and they don’t want to leave, but don’t have the incomes to live there and pay for their new houses, so they illegally turn their garages and carports into vacation rentals, etc so that they can rent to the 20th pulse guys and not have to go get real jobs.
Soon the 15th pulse guys are so overwhelmed by the 20th pulse newcomers, that they are renting to, they don’t care anymore. So they allow the 20th pulse newcomers to do whatever they want in the rentals and the emerging town. Before long the new community is taken over by all the newcomers and their irresponsible culture which has little resemblance to the small, safe community of surfers that made up the first couple of pulses.
Now there are droves of new people daily, wild parties, backyard activities, a booming underground economy of graft, corruption, thefts, drugs, violence and even murders.
Surfers still exist, as do the waves now breaking in polluted waters from thousands of flushing toilets. But few come for the waves anymore anyway. They come because the place has a world wide reputation for being a cool scene. Even Brook Burke is there with “Wild On”. The place now attracts those who want be cool, to escape, to party out and do whatever they feel like doing… and they angrily presume a right to do it, should anyone dare tell them different.
No one knows how to bring the town under control and those old timers that now can see the need to, have so many skeletons in their own closets that they can’t stand up publicly and suggest solutions for fear of being exposed. There seems no escape… except for the Mayflower bobbing in the harbor.
Did you see the movie … The Village. Same problem, unique solution!
