Old School/New School/No School

General Discussion
1

Did anyone see the ASP contest at “Superbank” on OLN? Quite a display of modern “progressive” surfing in excellent-mediocre, waist to overhead point break waves. I gotta say that all of the pros were great, pulling off moves that I could only pull in my dreams. That said, they all looked the same. Yeah, Irons and Slater seemed to be moving a little faster and connecting things a little smoother but if you swapped jerseys I defy anyone to tell the difference except backsiders from frontsiders.

The whole ASP thing (with the exception of Tahiti and Pipline) has fallen into a rut so deep no one can see over the top anymore. Reminds me of 1960-1966…(thank god for Nat Young).

Anyway…I was absolutely jolted out of my seat by a two second clip before a commercial; a guy riding a short wide eggy squaretail in almost identical waves, weaving out of the barrel into a BOTTOM TURN (you know, the kind you do in the trough!) roaring up into a high line drive out onto the wall into a full wrap cutty, back into the barrel. I’m not sure, but I’m guessing it was Michael Peterson on a single back in the '70s. The same freaking waves as the ASP guys are riding but he is covering twice the area in the same amount of time. It caused me to wonder, “What is high performance surfing?”

Is it flicking at the lip regardless of what the rest of the wave is doing? Is it doing tail slides (a decelerating maneuver intended to throw spray for judges)? Is it riding a board that cannot achieve a modicum of trim or planing without jumping and pumping? Is it sacrificing board speed for gymnastic body contortsions? Is it ignoring 70 percent of the ridable part of a wave? Is the tail is wagging the dog?

No wonder the “kids” are flying into the air. It’s the last frontier offered to them using equipment that can only go two directions; straight up and straight down. (I will concede one more thing to the modern high performance equipment; the floater).

There better be a new Nat Young out there fast or the whole ASP type contest thing is going to collapse under its own weight. Maybe then progression can reinvent itself and the “high performance” surfing world can throw off the chains of the 6’2"x18.5"x2" no nose, squash thruster.

2

Well, I must respectfully disagree there, pal :slight_smile:

Having actually been in the water several times at Trestles within minutes of the last heat each day at the Boost Mobile Pro, I can assure you that those pros are the best there have ever been. The old time pros are the first to admit it. Herby Fletcher, a Pipeline ripper himself, gives the current generation a big thumbs up, as do people like Mark Richards, Shaun Thompson, and Tom Curren.

When I go to Trestles for that contest and paddle out, I am blown away by the level of performance around me. And, on a different note, I am equally impressed with their manners in the water. Last time I paddled out at Trestles was literally five minutes after the last heat of the day. All the pros and a couple wannabes (me and others) were in a tightly knit bunch, waiting to paddle into the peak when the horn blew. The surf was a foot overhead, and the following pros were out practicing right next to me: Kelly Slater, Pat O’Connel, Mike Parsons (contest director), Kieren Perrow, CJ and Damien Hobgood, and many, many more. With the exception of one wave, each time I paddled for a wave a pro backed off to let me go, and the one wave in which the pro didn’t back off (Mike Parsons), I wasn’t even in good position anyway. They were true gentlemen, asking, “Which way are you going?” or “Go, mate.” I was thrilled, absolutely thrilled.

Recently (Feb) I was in Hawaii for the Hansens Energy Pro. The level of surfing in double overhead Pipe was outstanding! those guys were dropping into fifteen to twenty foot Pipe (Hawaiian announcers called it 6-8 with 10 foot sets) as casually as I drop into five foot Beacons. If they had fear, they didn’t show it.

The old school guys were incredible, but they used a lot more board to get into the wave very early. They had much more control in staying ahead of the falling lip. The old school guys like Lopez were bottom turning as the wave feathered. The new guys are bottom turning mid face or just barely under the falling lip. They are getting deeper on steeper waves using boards smaller than I would use at D-Street.

The current pros are incredible athletes. Bottom line. They are the best, and the next generation will be even better.

Just my humble opinion.

3

I took LeeV’s comments to be about style not ability. Sure almost all sports have better athletes now because more people are into sports, start at a younger age, and have access to better training/fitness equipment. While better athletes may be pushing the limitts harder, that does not mean that the now accepted comp/mag style is interesting or even good for the long term future of the sport. Yes they can wow me, but I’m still more impressed with much of the video found online in non-contest situations where ams and pros are riding boards other than the standard sponsored comp board. It just looks better to me.

$0.02

4

Good point about the generic style, but it makes sense considering they are riding similar equipment. Peterson ripped, and was probably ripped at the time. Surfing is freedom of self-expression, in style and boards.

5

My comments are not about the surfers…for a number of reasons, they are probably as good if not better athletes than most of the greats from the past. I’m also not questioning their guts or artistic ability. Anyone that throws themselves over the edge at Teahpoo or Pipe, Waimea or Mavs is from another planet as far as I am concerned.

It’s the symbiotic relationship between contests (in their current format) and design that has resulted in basically two dimensional surfing that is foisted on the general public as “high performance”. This “high performance” permeates the rest of the sport, dulling creativity, confining talented designers and surfers.

I cringe at the posts or articles that belittle anything other than the standard 6’2" thruster. “Why ride a fish, its just going backward.” The thruster, in general, has not opened new vistas in surfing. The ASP is still riding the same waves the ISP or whatever did in the past. And the old farts covered more water.

In my opinion, the flash of MP drawing “new” lines on the same wave as Slater’s vertical slashes was a revelation as to how far backward high performance surfing has gone.

6

You gotta love that old school… I guess that’s why we’re old. The slash, lip bash, air, wave pass you by thing is really boring to watch. It hurts sometimes.

7

Yeah, I’m in agreement…'course, I would be. The ‘maneuver set’ that’s used in contests is flash to impress judges, as perhaps it should be, and the gear is optomised around that. But is it the best for all-around surfing? I don’t think so.

So, why have the contest moves ( gnarrrleeeeyy aiiir, duuude) found their way everywhere, like an ex-wife in a small town? They don’t necessarily work better, indeed they are often worse. A sort of parallel - the pentathalon and the decathalon in Olympic-type competition were originally competitions with weapons, based around skills a Classical era soldier was supposed to have and use in battle. Running, leaping, going over walls, throwing weapons. But they became stylised to the point that they had no functional relation to the original skill-set. You find these permutations ( I won’t call 'em evolutions) in a lot of sports.

In my own masochistic pursuit ( rowing) the weapon of choice is a long, skinny, eggshell-fragile boat that demands a very different set of skills and very different use than a rowboat that was meant to, say, go out to the clam flats so ya could dig a bucket of clams. I suppose you could try it, but there’s noplace on the thing to put a pair of boots, a clam rake and a bucket and if you did chances are they’d go straight through the bottom of the boat - it’s built that light. Racing sailboats: you have huge crews, lots of sails, various and sundry other things that make the boat go like hell on closed courses but if you were trying to get across an ocean with 'em they’d come apart at the seams.

What ever happened to good ol’ functional surfing as something that drove design?

8

LeeV-

I’m sure it was Michael Petersen…Read the contest review in the new Surfer, there’s a whole article on that contest, and it mainly focuses on Petersen (who watched it from the restaraunt above the venue)…

9

Surf Contests -

Ignore them and maybe they’ll go away.

10

I’m sure there will be plenty of people here that disagree with me but I was watching Morning of the Earth last night and I have to say that I found the surfing to be often awkward looking and pretty boring. Yes, they covered alot of ground on those clunky looking single fins and they had alot of speed but there just wasn’t much done in the critical sections of the wave. Terry Fitzgerald would come cranking off a bottom turn and I’d be looking at the lip he was heading for expecting him to destroy it but he would just make a midface turn and continue down the line. Sure, the boards were holding them back but there were limits that they were just not exploring (maybe it was due in part to their listening to music of the type found on the soundtrack - awful!) In contrast, take a look at Kelly Slater surfing the green single fin board in the film Shelter (or was it Thicker Than Water?). He pretty much goes mental on it. I would consider myself to be pretty much an old schooler and if you check Dale’s thread title Influences you’ll see where I stand on new school boards, but I would have to say that, at its top level, the surfing being done these days is leaps ahead of where it has been.

11

I was’nt going to jump in on his because there is no objective was to say what is good or better. To me it boils down to,“you paint on your canvas and I’ll paint on mine.” My subjective opinion is this. Like LeeV I find the new school surfing a bit boring. Everyone has the same basic style. There is no question the new school surfing is more athletic and I can appreciate the difficulty in learning the moves. It comes down to preference. Do you like quick turning trick oriented pocket surfing or hard turning, fast, smooth surfing? To me, the kids are better than ever. But, it’s not that much fun to watch after about five minutes. Mike

12
Quote:

Yes, they covered alot of ground on those clunky looking single fins and they had alot of speed but there just wasn’t much done in the critical sections of the wave

My personal opinion is that “these are the best of times, these are the worst of times”. One must view old film in context of the times. I don’t recall much concern about “going vertical” during the “Morning of the Earth” era. Seems like top caliber surfers would mention things about carving circles on waves (carving 360) or standup barrel rolls. Probably the equipment hindered vertical carving. Perhaps having to swim after every wipeout held things back too (pre-leash). The rollercoaster was about as safely vert as things got.

Multi-fins opened up new areas of the wave, but closed others. Suddenly the trim line became something that was passed going up or down. That’s okay, just different. Thrusters have to be surfed a certain way, however, and that rigidity obviously rankles, or worse, bores a lot of people who knew other skies. Makes it easy to judge contests, however. But what has it been now? 25 years of thrusters? Not even the original foam longboard era lasted that long. No wonder everything else under the sun is bursting forth.

The real question here is this: What is performance surfing in 2004? I see two, maybe three arenas. If two: Contest and free surfing. If three, shortboard contest, free surfing, and longboarding. A case could be made that the sheer numbers validate longboards as a contemporary performance class. Shortboard surfing (as seen in thruster dominated contest surfing and photo-op boat trips) is mind boggling, and probably what most would aspire to do if circumstances allowed (age, health, crowds, resources). There is nothing to indicate that the top guys of 1970 couldn’t do what people are doing now were they the same age with the same equipment. People are people.

But what is performance surfing in the free, or non-contest arena in 2004? I would offer this for discussion: the biggest surf, the most dangerous surf. The parameters of this have not yet been determined, but I can tell you: DEATH. Once a couple of people die at certain spots or at certain sizes of a wave, then a max will have been determined. The next challenge would then be developing equipment to push that boundary, but that’s about it.

Groundbreaking performance surfing is now about dancing on the edge of death. It takes a lot of time and money to do that. How many of the people who have their hats in that ring are sponsored surfers? Most? And if that is the cutting edge of performance surfing, how many of them do it just to maintain their “careers”? How many risk their lives for a fistful of dollars? And when somebody does die, the sponsors just use their ad space to memorialize the fallen warrior, in many ways owning that image in perpetuity, and call the next available contender…

The thing that bothers me is that this cutting edge of performance surfing doesn’t seem to have any influential bearing, positive or otherwise, on the surfing done at my home breaks.

13

Granted the Pros are unreal.But lets get really real…Heres the average scenario nowadays.Perfect peeling 4 foot lefts…going for hundreds of yards.Now along comes the average 17year old magazine reading, video watching, tattoo dude and what does he do?Takes off too late cause his potato chip board doesn’t float him,makes a turn,tries to smack the lip or catch an “air” and then falls off hooting like a banshee while all his Bros give him a thumbs up.Meanwhile the perfect wave peels to a perfect end waaaay down the line.Thank God for leashes cause most of em can’t even swim.Sad but true.

14

And If your getting bored after 5 minutes of watching the same lip smack after lip smack think of what that judge, who is scoring the rider, doing to keep themself awake or alert. The Judge is thinking Red Jersey snapped it back in .04 secs whereas orange snapped that exact same move in .06, red wins!!!

15

I guess I agree that contest surfing is boring, but there is no one to blame. The contest promoters have to put together some sort of criteria to judge so it’s close to being fair (although that’s impossible), and the competitors follow those rules the best they can so they can win and put food on the table. I think they are all doing the best they can. Remember not too long ago when length of ride was one of the judging criteria, and competitors would ride the soup the whole way in. That was just miserable to watch.

I prefer the “Expression Session”. I don’t know if they still have them (they had a lot of them in the 70’s), but there was no pressure to follow any rules or criteria. Contestants just went out and tried things and weren’t afraid to risk falling. I can’t remember if there were prizes or not. Maybe everyone just split the money evenly, or there wasn’t any money to begin with. Anyway, it was much more enjoyable to watch.

16

A step in the right direction would be to make all the contests NO LEASH. How about using tourists from the heartland as judges.No guidelines…just which one do you like best?

Roger

17

Perhaps when you’re a part of something it’s harder to step back and see the repetitiveness. I think the only thing as hackneyed as a surfer repeatedly smacking the lip… is this discussion. How many times have we heard the “modern day shortboard is a bunch of repetitive bullsh!t by a bunch of soul-less punks who don’t respect me as their elder” story? Talk about trite.

Granted, I prefer shortboarding, and I think that the contests are boring… but that’s why I don’t watch them (with the exception of first hand – on a good, big day). I’d much rather surf than watch… and if I can’t surf, maybe I’ll go to the gym, or swim some laps – so I will be in shape to paddle my shortboard in early next time I’m out. If contests bother you so much, why watch them? Why even waste the time complaining about them.

An analogy: About 10 years ago skateboarding started making some radical changes, the boards and wheels got smaller… people started doing some insane tricks. No more kickflips, now you need to do a double kickflip, with a 360, switch, and a late shuv-it at the end. The problem was that there was no consistency, they were going slow, and tricks were done on little curbs… Nobody cared at the time, they were doing things that nobody has ever done. 5 years later, the tricks tamed down - little, but now we were sticking them with consistency… and we were going fast, throwing them high, and catching them mid-air… clean, with style. Looking back, people now laughed at the prior generation; “no style, no speed… what a bunch of kooks”. It’s a natural progression, a necessary step by which we evolve. I can’t wait to see what the kids are doing in 5-10 more years.

You guys need to relax… maybe go surf? Watching contests pisses you off? Well, then don’t watch them… throw in your old school video and reminisce. I see so much talk on here about how surfing about expression and just having fun. Well, in case you haven’t noticed, those kids are expressing themselves, and they are having fun… you guys are the ones getting pissy.

18

Maybe this is another one of those phases that surfing goes through, being partly directed by equipment and media, both larger than they have ever been, and, as usual, the only limit being surfers themselves.

That’s why a lot of us guys read this forum, because we are ready to learn more about what we don’t know, to change, to try new things, to grow. The best energy you can get, is giving something you don’t like no energy at all.

If I don’t like contest surfing I don’t watch it. But if I haven’t been surfing for months, and onto the tv flashes a surfing contest, I watch it. No matter what it’s like, I enjoy it. I can’t help it, it’s still surfing, and I can’t not watch. Even if there only a handful of decent turns, I’ll be influenced by them, and possibly learn something. And all the guys surf reasonably well because they have reliable equipment for their needs, it’s their job.

To me, every board made and every wave surfed is an expression session. I want to see this phase run its natural course, and it will be interesting to see what changes the most.

19

I love this sort of conversation. It’s intellectual. It’s too bad people can’t actually have real political conversations. I seek and yet I never find a good forum for genuine, dignified political discussion.

That’s what I love about Swaylocks. It’s boring for the kind of people who don’t want to take the time to think. Therefore, they lose interest quickly and move on to somewhere else, leaving it for the people who love surfing, shaping, etc.

I guess I didn’t quite understand the focus of the initial topic. I think you are right about contest surfing hitting a wall. Sure, they are at better venues, but what can they do to make it so that people actually want to watch? Not much in my opinion. Surfing is not a spectator sport, like golf. I am always amazed when I see golf on TV because I wonder who (besides golfers) would want to sit on the couch and watch a guy walk around playing golf as the announcer whispers into the microphone.

I don’t think the old school guys covered more water. They just stayed farther ahead of the curl, like I was talking about before, because they rode bigger boards with more floatation. Those boards were huge and could catch waves earlier.

Rooster said it best in that this conversation really has no merit, because it’s a very subjective area. There is no right answer. I mean, what taste better, chocolate or vanilla?

Personally, I enjoy contests if I am there, but I don’t like the way the kids act like mindless zombies about the whole thing. I, myself, enjoy wearing surf clothing, but it isn’t a necessity. The kids won’t be caught dead in a plain white t-shirt. They would rathter pay 20 bucks than 5 if it says “Billabong” on it.

I try not to worry about all of it anymore. I am growing up (35) finally, and am just interested in catching some fun waves and feeling like I had a good time on a wave. If I shortboard I try to ride like the pros, but when I take out my 8,2 Phillips, my 10,0 noserider, or my 7,6 seventies pintail, I’m just having a good time.

And I don’t worry about crowds that much. When the waves are good, there are plenty of empty breaks around here. If I want long point breaks, well, so do a lot of people, so they are crowded.

The biggest area of concern, to me, is pollution. I am very worried about what we are doing to the oceans: Overfishing, sewage, containment walls, dams, jetties, and especially urban runoff are all important to me. In Florida, I recently learned that they are literally injecting the sewage down deep into the earth into pockets between layers of rock. That’s pretty stupid. And now they are worried about it seeping into the water supply (aquifers), and into the ocean. It’s happening. The ocean is becoming polluted. The solution is simple: Limit urban growth. Every new house has to have a septic system, which means that every new house will have to be on bigger lots, which means more expensive homes, but so be it. Stuffing four houses on an acre is crazy (which, unfortunately, includes my house).

Houses that are spaced out means no sewage (septic systems only) and less runoff. Plus, like a lot of places, we don’t need gutters and storm drains. When the rain washes through a field, it cleans better than going into a drain and straight into the surf.

Unfortunately, the very thing that attracts people to our area (the beach and ocean) is going to die, thus, repelling people from the ocean.

That’s why I joined Surfrider (finally) and plan to actually get involved.

I don’t care if the surfspots are crowded. that’s just my own self interest.

The ocean is everybody’s thing. We just need to take care of it.

20

You’ve officially retired from the ASP tour.

SHANE DORIAN: That’s right.

SURFER: Why?

SHANE DORIAN: There were a few factors involved. Number one, I was in Portugal surfing in a contest a year and a half ago, the waves were one-foot and I lost my heat. I was on the WQS. I was doing a couple events because I was doing crappy on the WCT–I hated doing the WQS. I was miserable. I came in after losing a heat, the waves were one-foot and I didn’t care and no one else cared. I came in and I checked my emails and my friend was in Tahiti and he sent me photos of Teahupoo that very same day. The waves were fifteen feet, glassy and the guys were getting spit out of barrels. I said, “That’s it, my days on the ASP tour are numbered because I don’t ever wanna miss perfect waves again.” Surfing that dribble in Portugal that nobody cared about, let alone me…it just broke me.