Has Surfing Become Too Commercialised

[greygrom]

I spose the thing to do is focus on the good and try to put out as much of that as you can in your own way ... encourage the grommets and let them know their stoke is appreciated, and tell 'em a bit about history along with the rest of it all ... don't glorify the violent or the stupid, because it just encourages them ... and when it comes to nurturing surfing's Soul or whatever the hell it is, pick your own battles with care, and don't give in!

Amen brother


I think over time you give up fighting for things that changed many years ago and attempt to nurture and direct the now.

A big part of surfing sold out years ago. It is a personal decision whether any given individual joined the sell out.

Even when the summer line up is crowded with 100s of poor landlocked souls getting their annual salt water fix the “surfing is life” crew can easily be picked out, smiling having a chat and getting the most waves. Vocal agro is just a coward’s recourse for a lack of empathy for what the ocean teaches. Just ask Mr. Nat how he sold his soul to the bling culture and just when he thought he was invincible he ran head first (literally) into the solid rock that surfing is grounded in and always will be.

My beach is over run with groms. There’s is a pack in the water ripping it up on lids and boards, a pack in the car park looking good, pulling the girls and talking cars, a pack doing the surf club thing and a much smaller pack in the car park drinking outa paper bags and destroying the neighbor hood at night.

The vast majority of these groms are following the lead of their fathers which is a far bigger influence than the whole waftam surf bling culture.

[Nick Carroll]

Hi BB, I'm not washing my hands of a thing. I'm a believer in personal accountability, I sign all my articles and take the heat when they suck, I wish I was better at what I do for gods sake, or more able to influence the big surf companies to spend some of that marketing money in ways that reflect the debt they owe the sport. Honestly, they don't know how lucky they've been.

At the same time, I just don't think hard moral stances wear well over time; they usually crash into the realities of human nature, and blood ends up shed on both sides.

You don't have to worship money or have somehow crossed to the Dark Side to understand and accept the way in which surfing has grown. Most of the valuable surfing lives I see being led around me are being led by people who one way or another are engaged in making a living through surfing. They aren't cursing the darkness mate, they're lighting candles.

[oldman]

I can understand BB's frustration with it all, but haven't gone down that road myself. I'm still hopeful that I'll be out the back next time there is a good swell running.

The lack of surf kills me these days. When it is crap for ages, like it has been, I can't get out there and tell myself that 2' mush is exciting any more.

Having said that, I have found through experience that the stoke is only one good surf session away, and when you get your next 'good' surf is sometimes in the lap of the gods.

All of my surfing buddies have now moved out of town, so I am rarely out their for the company. I surf for me, and I pick and choose what techno advances I will use. The upside of commercialism is that there are thousands of people out there somewhere (probably in an asian sweatshop) who are right now designing and developing my next wetsuit with titanium and microlight fibres and anti-gravity side panels with wings and an in-built cappucino dispensing machine.

I'll take what comes, but I surf for the feeling that you only get when it is big (according to my limits) and a bit scary and I am testing my mettle. Or I surf for that feeling of a crisp offshsore and the aesthetic quality of a peeling wave.

Or I am just there because I need to be in my cave.

All the rest is just layers of crap I have to break through to enjoy those moments. Those moments are less and less regular these days, but that isn't always going to be the case.

When I no longer feel the need to test myself, when the aesthetic beauty is no longer sufficiently interesting, or if I no longer need my cave then I may give up surfing.

I surf because if I didn't I'd have to find something else to replace all that. If nobody else surfed, if all the world denounced surfers as the scum of the earth, I would still have to go out there.

There's something primal in it, and the commercial world doesn't come into contact with the primal.

[Meataxe]

Jaysus talk about verbose! The Bible ain't got nothing on you guys.

Anyone else wanna submit their phd thesis?

[BB]

Nick this all comes down to a matter of proportion. If the money you have made from surfing is in proportion to your contribution to it then I have no argument. So I have no criticism of all those photographers, writers and shapers who have made a good living. I singled you out because you are involved and you were justifying what I find it impossible to justify, which is those people whose contribution to surfing is obscenely outweighed by the money they have made from it…..and I would include some pretty famous surfers in that list.

Surfing is quite different from most other sports in this regard. At the grass roots it depends on the availability of a limited resource. Most other sports can just construct more facilities as they grow, we can’t to any meaningful extent. Most other sports also have a significant financial base in event attendance charges and TV rights before sponsors of any kind become involved. Again this is not the case in surfing. In surfing income is generated by surf industry clothing companies and other corporations who want to use surfing’s image.

My point is that surfing was irrevocably damaged by the actions of a relatively small number of people who generated enormous wealth for themselves. Now “the way of the world” argument which you are still running is all very well for those seeking peace of mind but it doesn’t in any way absolve the creeps who have made serious money f…ing up the lifestyle of the rest of us. Now this is not something I lose sleep over, but it is certainly something I think needs to be said when the opportunity arises.

[Nick Carroll]

Now I can see why you wanna give up surfing, BB. All I could say to you is that it doesn't have to be that way. Surfing is either irrevocably damaged for us all, or it's endlessly renewable for us all. Either way you've got to give something up -- on the one hand, surfing, on the other hand, being "right" about the Irrevocable Damage theory.

Jeez, Hobson's choice matey. There's a way for you to renew the stoke, but what is it? Different for each of us probably. Maybe teach a young grommet how to surf, you've only got to see the expression on a first timer's face to realise the value of what we've all learned how to do over the years, and how little has changed about it.

Best of luck out there BB.

[BB]

Surfing is either irrevocably damaged for us all, or it's endlessly renewable for us all.

Yeh right, there's no difference between a worker in Sydney and some industry suck who who gets to travel here there and everywhere, I mean be serious......as for my personal decision about surfing, it's hardly the issue......read the title of the thread......answer YES...
If surfing was an animal we would decribe it as suffering from a huge parasite load, badly influencing its overall health!

[Clif]

you simply need a road trip BB. get out of the city and pull in. recharge the stoke b/c while you hate the commercialism its here to stay. let em have it and hit the road. plenty of places out there where surfing is as you wish. see the crew in PNG who have their own surf culture. a bloke called jesse ponting wrote about them. awesome.

[vb]

yea verily and amen meataxe . Who gives a flying f..k if the local crew at Dubbo Maccas are decked out in quiksilver. For better or for worse, surfing is probably the most photogenic sport/pursuit in the galaxy and for that reason alone it will be forever "exploited".

[Tom Bb]

yeh and nah

[BB]

I thought I would post a bit more detail about what I was saying last week for those of you who may not know the sad history of the commercial exploitation of surfing. Professional surfers had existed in Australia and the USA at least as far back as the mid-sixties by trading on their reputation and advertising a range of goods. By the mid-seventies there was a push for a professional surfing tour with enough prize money to enable a larger group of surfers to live off their contests earnings and promotional income.

The surfing industry at that time could not afford to fund this tour so there was a push to gain sponsors outside the sport. In the first years of the tour contest sponsors ranged from tyre companies through cigarette and alcohol distributors to soft drink manufacturers. At that stage it was all something of an illusion. If you look back to that time the majority of the successful surfers were essentially sponsored for a large part of their early career by their families….(Shaun Tomson and Mark Richards most significantly). Most of the other “pros” led a fairly hand to mouth sort of existence on their contest winnings and whatever sponsorship they could obtain from within the surfing industry. Many worked pretty well full time as shapers between evernts.

Surfing could quite easily have continued on this trajectory with a limited pro tour with no downside at all for the average surfer. The real push to change this situation came from a very small group of surfers and, more significantly, the surf clothing industry. By this stage the major brands were well established and though they had their ups and downs were doing pretty well, certainly their executives were earning considerably more than the surfers!

The great betrayal occurred when these companies realised that they could get free marketing for their products if they could attract a large global company already marketing to the youth market. The choice was obvious and the unholy alliance between cola and surf clothing began. The logic was simple. The cola company used surfing and images of surfers in their global advertising and the surf clothing companies rode on the back of their advertising to become the corporations we have today. The only losers in this were, of course, the ordinary surfers who have found the limited and relatively scarce resource of quality waves increasingly over loaded ever since.

My point is that this need not have happened. It all came down to the ego and greed of a small number of already wealthy businessmen and an even smaller number of surfers who aspired to join them…….after that the deluge!