I’m too busy just catching a wave and trying not to fall off. If I’m lucky, I might even make the wave.
I don’t care one twit if anybody thinks my style is ugly or sucks or whatever. If my board isn’t in the “perfect” spot at all times, I’m not sweating that either. I can glide over flat spots and eventually stall or cutback and maybe the wave will catch up(?) If not, there’ll be another one.
I’m not gonna try to focus on my knees being knocked instead of bowed, my feet together or apart, my left hand up and my right hand down (or is it the other way around?), whether I shuffle or cross step, my pinkie extended thusly or whatever it is the posers worry about in front of their friends or the judges.
I’m too busy just catching a wave and trying not to fall off. If I’m lucky, I might even make the wave.
I don’t care one twit if anybody thinks my style is ugly or sucks or whatever. If my board isn’t in the “perfect” spot at all times, I’m not sweating that either. I can glide over flat spots and eventually stall or cutback and maybe the wave will catch up(?) If not, there’ll be another one.
I’m not gonna try to focus on my knees being knocked instead of bowed, my feet together or apart, my left hand up and my right hand down (or is it the other way around?), whether I shuffle or cross step, my pinkie extended thusly or whatever it is the posers worry about in front of their friends or the judges.
when did things such as tankers become longboards?
and when did the need for style become more important than just having fun and making a fool out of yourself along with all the rest of your friends in the lineup. Has Duke, Rabbit or Buffalo ever worried more about style than just having a good time?
Style was the predecessor to everything else that begat what’s called bad about surfing today.
The minute your cared what you looked like to the rest of the world while you were surfing you lost the essence of why you were doing it in the first place.
It’s never really about us
it’s about the waves and what they can teach us about life if you watch, feel and listen to them in passing.
How you interface with the medium is of no matter as long as you understand your role and place in the process.
Otherwise your just a short term blemish soon to be forgotton over time…
Personally I’d rather read about how a design someone made rode than how some guy has a problem with the way other people surf. I think that’s the difference between a design forum and a bitch forum.
I usually just wish other longboarders would cut back and find the power in the wave. See so many riding a board length ahead of where the fun is.
Edit: Changing the fin or stepping back can make a board so much more turnable that people would get more out of their surfing if they experimented with the pieces a bit.
Quote:
I usually just wish shortboarders would stop bouncing. It ain't a freaking pogo stick.
Edit: Just because 150# pros ride them, doesn’t mean the average 170# surfer needs one - just a bit more foam would give a great many shortboarders a better time on the wave because they wouldn’t have to keep pumping for speed.
hey…in a perfect world, surfing would probably be isolated and solitary…and everybody would have a wave to themselves, whenever they wanted. But it’s not. So we have to be able to share, and tolerate, and interact…and so surfing is part of a much larger matrix that includes observing, admiring, and yes, sometimes imitating. Not because we want to be like someone else, but we want to know what it feels like to do it another way…and not in a way we think looks ugly or spastic or stupid, but in a way that looks like it feels good.
So surfing is much more dynamic than just going out and having fun. That’s a given. If it wasn’t fun, nobody’d do it, let alone let it take over our entire lives…even our entire being. It’s become, maybe by default, a social thing, like art, or music, or cooking, or writing… People who create love to create, and do it because it’s fun, no doubt. But they also do it to share it with other people, and get and extra bonus out of what they do when somebody else says, “hey man, that’s really good.” Otherwise, painters would just slap paint on canvas, then throw it away. But they want other people to dig it because it means something to them and they want other people to dial into what they were feeling when they did it.
So sure, there are posers…lots of them. But a descerning eye can tell the difference… right?
Is this thread some kind of a joke? My feeling is that you have probably never been on a surfbooard , Long or Short. What’s creative about wiggilin’ you ass and doin’ the “Hunnington Hop” on a 5’9? Mcding
It’s all good. Choose your sport. There is the sport of skiing with skiis and there is the sport of snowboarding with a snowboard…two sports sharing the same snowy hill. There’s baseball with a small ball thrown overhand and there’s softball with a big ball thrown under…two sports sharing the same field. There’s rugby and football, poker and old-maid, chess and checkers, hockey and skating, volleyball and badmitten… Different sports, often different rules, different maneauvers, different equipment, though they might share a similar net, table, field, ice, etc.
Same with riding waves: There’s the sport of surfing with a “surfboard” and there is shortboarding with a “shortboard”. They share the same ocean, though often different types of waves for each sport is sometimes preferred, but radically different designed equipment with different science in the design concepts to achieve radically different results in the water. There was no such thing as a “longboard” until the sport of shortboarding decided to tell us we were no longer surfing on a surfboard, but rather a “longboard” while they were riding the new concept “shortboards” Ironically this all occurred about the same year the Duke died in 68. The sport of surfing on a surfboard began to decline while a whole new sport evolved (shortboarding). Now surfing is back and the ocean is being shared with the new “shortboarders”.
Spose those who don’t get longboarding are those who don’t get “surfing”. Guess you had to be there…(60s). Choose your sport and enjoy the ride!
every classic pose no matter how stupid it may look like today was either a mistake or the result of the pure essence of expressive surfing at some moment in time. Some of it is functional some of it is the dance. There’s actually a book written about this called “Dancing the Wave” I recommend it along with some other’s I’ve sent along as gifts to folks here.
When I look at film of all the greats, past and present on their “surfboards”/“tankers” at Sunset, Waimea, Makaha, Alii, Pipe or Bowls on a big day all I see is survival stance not art. But when I see a Slater, BK, Fritzgerald, or Curren on a “shortboard” I see pure art in the same sized waves in the same same “treacherous” conditions.
In it’s own way and own conditions, the shortboard is drawing much more artistic lines in the hands of such youngsters as AI, Parko, Rasta, Fletcher, Daniel Thomson and a host of others. Occy, Fritgerald and Curren at Jefferies, Rasta in Indo and the Maldives. Taylor Knox in South Cal.
There’s more to surfing than doing the twinkle toes dance in 2-3 foot glass or mush. And I bet if you really look at your “longboard” icons like Nat, Joel, Bonga, and anyone else, you’ll find they can tear it up when needed with a shortie just as good as those who spend their whole life on one. Versatility is the key and the lines you draw as an artist isn’t limited to the medium you have to work with. You and the wave are dancing partners and whether it’s disco, rock, the samba, o r the waltz you choose the style that most fits the occasion.
This weekend my friends and I watched Uncle Grant Kauhane execute his classic paddle then hop up and take the drop on one knee hands out to the side for balance and slowly rise up after hitting the bottom technique and wished that we had the balance and coordination to do the same as this 70-80 year old classic surfer. At the same time we all sat mesmerized watching another friend go straight down and up on his little 5’10" Griffin 5 fin fish shredding apart the lip 25 -50 yards at a time iin the same conditions and also admired his version of the dance as much as what we saw with uncle Grant and his big board. It didn’t matter short or long, young or old cause in our eyes as observers it was all good.
You want’a quarrel go for it. I’ll paddle off to another peak.
I’ll be takin’ the board that suits the surf conditions. Sometimes it’s a short one sometimes it’s a mid-length and sometimes it’s a long one. Anywhere from 6’8" to 12’. As long as we’re sharing I could care less what the others are riding.
I usually just wish shortboarders would stop bouncing. It ain’t a freaking pogo stick…
The “Huntington Hop” (“OOOOH! The judges are going to give LOTS of points for that maneuver!!!” - announcer during a televised OP pro event trying to make it sound exciting) was always hard for me to understand but several shortboarders have assured me that it’s functional.
And hey, Benny… whaddaya have against pogo sticks anyway???
In the right conditions (which really just means waves within an individual’s ability level given the chosen equipment), a longboard is really, really fun. I have two longboards - a 9’4" single fin and a 9’4" twinzer/middle fin oddity with low rocker and mega glide. They each surf very differently.
And sometimes a thruster is fun, or maybe a quad fish, or a twin keel fish (I just imgaine it would be fun as I don’t have one of those), or a bonzer pod (5’8") or a bonzer 6’10" rounded pin . . . or sometimes body boarding or body surfing is the call (w/ or w/out a kick board) . . . or . . . you get the idea. I could not imagine being as fulfilled by surfing if I refused to ride waves with a wide range of equipment or I could not think about riding waves with a wide range of equipment.
If you’re worried about being “forced” to watch less skilled surfers do as best as they can on a longboard at your local break, do yourself a favor and spend a summer (USA summer) surfing heavy beachbreak in mainland Mexico - you will be humbled and perhaps not so quick to judge. If that type of wave isn’t heavy enough for you, go down into Chile for the summer - whatever - no matter how good we might like to think we are there is always something to put us in our place . . . and compared to the real heavies we are the so-called “kooks” bobbing about in the line-up.
Equipment that weighs about 16 ounces wet. Said by their cult-like disciples to perform and feel like no other. Greg Deets, Jimy Newit and George Greenough surfing on air and water at the same time:
