Memories Fraught with Ambivalence!!!

[MakoShark]

Just stumbled onto this thread & must say I'm impressed. Good thread Al. Celebrate surfing on another level. Having said that it’s always been about doing it. I tend to wallow in my thoughts between surfs.

If there is one thing I would like to do in order to give at least something back to surfing in return for all that it has given and continues to give me, it is to write a history of a surf spot and its surfers, to be read by surfers.

May respectfully suggest North Narrabeen as a suitable topic for an in depth look at a special surfing location on a number of different levels. Briefly, it’s produced the most champions of any single beach in the world and continues to do so. Its has a reputation for lots of reasons discussed here on RS & elsewhere. Locals are passionate & motivated. It’s a high performance break in a major city & its success is based on a conglomeration of like minded individuals whose number & membership is constantly changing.

[Lucky Al]

Nice suggestion, MakoShark. And really appreciate how you went ahead and wrote half the book proposal for me. With just a little elaboration and sections on rationale, readership and further market considerations should be ready for submission to publishers. Cheers! Seriously though I'm not the one to write a book on North Narrabeen - gotta be dozens of others far better qualified to take that on. I grew up in Wollongong and I've only surfed North Narrabeen twice in my life. North Shore private-school girls and the world they inhabited (which in my mind included all of northern Sydney) always seemed so strange and inaccessible to me!

[puurri]

North Shore private-school girls and the world they inhabited (which in my mind included all of northern Sydney) always seemed so strange and inaccessible to me!

EHEHEHEHEHEHEH etc: and so for most of us!

Wenona girls strange cattle.

[MakoShark]

No worries Al.

Personally, I’m a bit close to it. Spent most of my surfing life there & still only know half the story (Alzheimer's?). It’ll take someone with the benefit (or gift) of perspective to define its soul & attack it from the right angle.

I suppose it would be really painful doing it from Kamogawa at any rate, wherever that is.

I also hear you about the “north shore girls”. For the most part I couldn’t associate with their “world” either. I ended up marrying a girl from the Gong.

[collnarra]

i like how when she accepted some literary award she said there was no tradition of surf writing/literature.

I felt the same way when I first read Dr Timothy Leary's judgement on surfers, that we were somehow on the social cutting edge ... flattering as it may have been, he was speaking entirely out of his arsehole.

OMG (as the kids say nowadays). How was Leary channeled by Steve Pezman at the beginning of GLASS LOVE? Surfers are on a higher plane? Come to narrabeen sometime, steve.... I think we're actively devolving.

[Lucky Al]

Just occurred to me maybe doesn't matter where I'm from, if I can convince funding body to give me money to live in Narrabeen for year or so, get right people to open up and read right stuff in local archives oughta be able to do as reasonable a job as anyone. Maybe history of North Narrabeen does need bent perspective of someone who in the depths of his ignorance equated North Shore private-school girls with North Narra bazzas!

[nthnbeachesguy]

Thought maybe it was just me who enjoyed reading jack londons books. My favourite of those i have read is the Sea Wolf, try and get my mates to read it all the time with one success and he was frothing on it too. Some good ideas and thought processes in there, sorta tear down religious thought to an extent as well, while upholding darwins theory of evolution, maybe thats what i liked about it as religion and people advocating it to me is somewhat akin to fingernails on a chalk board. Oh and on that did anyone see that doco on discovery channel about the gospel of judas?

Hmm been a while since i have written a paragraph of unresearched bulls__t based on my opinion for a while, might have been since 1996 when i was removed from high for fear i was going to drag down the TER average of one northside selective school.................

The original post seemed somewhat like sentimental bulls__t with a bourguoise (spelling) lemon twist.

[Provocateur]

Hey Lucky Al - Don't be duped by this genre of scholarship. The babyboomer generation spawned a dubious "discipline" known as leisure theorists. In Australia and the U.S. these social refugees were mostly ex-Phys. Ed. postgraduates and were zealous in their belief that modernity and technology efficiency would deliver vast amounts of leisure time that would create an insatiable demand for leisure services. Old growth forests were destroyed to publish tomes of pseudo-Foucault sociologist literature that deconstructed all many of physical activities.

As the venerable NC alludes to, there is a rich tradition of sufing literature written as a reflection of "time in the water".

Indeed this site has developed its own tradition of quality and authentic surfing prose with the likes of Larry etc.