In surfing there has always been a sort of discussion, if you will, about the issue of surfing “the sport” versus surfing “the art form.” These might not be the perfect terms to describe it, but will work OK for this little rambling of mine.
What made me think of this was last night I was sitting with my guests, who are here this week at my surf retreat on Mainland Mexico, watching a movie one of them had made about surfing on Long Island in New York. The surfing was very good by the way. I was watching ride after ride where the surfers were popping big aerial moves of some kind or another and I started to notice the difference in the ones that actually made some sort of sense in the overall riding of the wave and those that were just for the sake of doing it.
Later on, when thinking about it, it brought back a ton of memories from my beginnings in surfing and this very same subject.
OK, flashback to my early days entering surfing contests — this would have been late-1950s and early-1960s. Most of the contests were held in beachbreaks and most of the time the surf was small and would be blown out by the time the finals came around on Sunday afternoon. All the contests were held on weekends back then.
They would send you out for maybe a 15-minute heat with six surfers in it and would score you on your best five rides. Now do the math on this, just getting five rides in 15 minutes with five other guys in the water was hard enough. But then you were faced with trying to score as many points as you could on some sloppy little wave that maybe only lasted 10 seconds at best.
I remember that my thinking was that I needed to cram as much crap as I could into each and every wave to try and get points. It was like there was a meter running and each little move would add a ding ding ding or two to the tally.
I would do anything I could think of to get one more point. This would include spinners, fin first take-offs and one time when a wave closed out and I was stuck in the whitewater I even turned around and laid down on my board backward and stuck one leg into the air. It was so completely ridiculous that the crowd roared and I know it got me at least another point on that wave. I called it a “reverse bird.” Sometimes it only took one more point to win the heat and move on.
It was stuff like that which flamed the controversy between surfing as a competitive sport and surfing as a flowing art form. And I could totally see both sides of the coin. I normally didn’t do that kind of stuff when I was just free surfing, but in contests the whole point was getting points and sometimes — no, almost all the time, really — you needed to go beyond normal surfing and add some sort of something to stand out from the rest.
And this brought up the “what is functional and what is just show” discussion, which is kind of the same as sport versus art.
This brings me back to where I started in this. Watching the guys in the movie getting air. When surfers were first really exploring this I used to go down to the San Clemente Pier and watch Christian Fletcher, Matt Archibald, Dino Andino and the boys of the “San Clemente Air Corps” flying off lip after lip. It was what I had dreamed and fantasized about doing my whole surfing life.
The equipment of my era wasn’t made for that, but it eventually was and guys took to it rapidly. Today, it has become part of everyday surfing and just about anybody with any degree of skill is launching themselves regularly. And the question is back: How much of this stuff is functional and how much is just for show?
From what I see, some of these moves flow right into the context of the particular ride and make sense, while a lot of the time riders are doing it just to do it. A purist would frown on this. But I am thinking, what the heck. The whole point, at least in my mind, is to have fun. And this sure looks like a ton of fun.
In competition I am assuming they score more on function, but then I do not pretend to understand today’s judging system as most of the time I disagree with the results. This is what makes surfing subjective as opposed to objective.
Ask the expert
Q. I had a bad collision with the beach yesterday and broke the center fin off my board and ripped the entire fin box completely out of the board. Plus broke one of the side fins and box out too. The entire bottom of the tail of my board is just one big crater hole. My question is, do you think this is worth repairing, if it even is reparable? I am guessing it is going to cost me an arm and a leg plus will add a tremendous amount of weight to the tail of my board. It is an epoxy board made of Styrofoam. Should I just chuck it and get a new one or go for the repair?
Bruce Beatty
Dana Point
A. A really good repair guy can fix that without adding too much weight to your board, but there will be a little addition. The key thing here is the term “really good repair guy.” If this is not done exactly correctly it could affect your board very negatively. The boxes have to be reset EXACTLY perfectly. This is NOT a do it yourself repair or even one for the average repair guy. Only take it to one of the most respected in your area, or even travel a little to get it to the right guy. If you don’t know who that is, then call around to some of the surf shops and find out. I am guessing that a repair like that is going to cost you between $100 and $200 depending on just how gnarly the hole in your board is. I would think you would want to go for the repair before investing in a new board. If you are not satisfied with the result then you can get a new one and still be able to sell the old one as it will still have some value. Good luck.