JD's Journal : San Franpsycho : Step Into Liquid

: : Surf movies this week, and if you're a San Francisco surfer, it's worth getting hold of a copy of the "San Franpsycho" DVD to check out a small portion of our lovely surfing scene. Most of the video features locals you might recognise from WISE surf shop doing nice fast snaps and airs and stuff - it's fun to see it on (mostly) Ocean Beach. The wipe-out sequence is splendid, and worth the price of admission alone: some classic OB smack-downs, a longboarder going off the back of his board at Deadmans for no apparent reason at all (fear?), and some really, really ugly dropins and collisions - I mean UGLY, folks - which are fun to watch, although they were probably less fun to do. I'll look out for the next video from these guys - I'd really like to see some big Ocean Beach shot from the water, and Fort Point on a 15 foot+, 20 second winter swell.

: : At the other end of the scale, Step Into Liquid starts, of course, with Saint Laird ripping into Jaws and catching a massive air off the end section. For a split second, the impact of the size of the wave and the casual mastery that Laird brings to it are mesmerizing. And then you hear The Voiceover, and suddenly, we're back in that wonderful dopey 50's world of "kookie guys" hanging out, being mellow and sliding a few rights at Malibu.

Step Into Liquid is indeed Endless Summer 3, and does a good job of it. There are no sharp edges, lots of beautiful waves and a nicely varied cast of characters, from Kelly Slater to Dale Webster (the longest running streak of daily surfing ever likely to be attempted). Also included are the Great Lakes Surfers and the Texan dudes who surf the wakes of huge super-tankers. The Great Lakes guys are wonderful, and pull off the nicest quote of the movie - "the stoke is a global thing" - which would be ho hum coming from some surfing luminary, but from guys that habitually surf freezing two-foot windswell, you actually believe it.

There are some other nice quotes, in amongst the usual "Waves are a universal force" blather. "The first 20 years are just to figure out if you're interested or not" from Gerry Lopez. "Surfing is different - how many people do you know who just gaze at a tennis court?". And "the more you say about it, the worse off you are" from Chris Carter.

Sam George gets to hold up the Ancient Hawaiians as recognizing that surfing is "pure recreation". As always, nobody points out that the Ancient Hawaiians also ran a highly structured caste system, that only the upper classes got to surf, and that women were treated more or less as possessions. But still. It's a surf movie, not cultural studies.

And the surfing is fine. A Malloy Brother looks back and salutes a gorgeous green Irish tube; Kassia Meador pulls off elegant, sharp, thoroughly up-to-date longboarding at Malibu; the Strapped Crew glide over tropical water on their crazy hydro-boards; Slater somehow squeezes himself through about 15 seconds of warping, sliding, messy left tube. Layne Beachly and the Pro Women take on Teahupoo and demonstrate how to rip and have a great time doing it (despite being let down by a bizarrely bland soundtrack).

And towards the end you watch Snips Parsons fade, fade, fade into an enormous Cortes Bank pit. Even though you know he's going to make it you stop breathing as second after second he keeps heading into the wave instead of out towards the shoulder. And he's doing it 100 miles out to sea on a 50 foot+ wave that had only been surfed for a couple of hours. Beautiful madness.

So it's fine. Go see it. But it's time somebody ditched the wacky 50's mellow approach and did a modern surf movie with some sharp edges (and some decent music choices - the soundtrack for the Cortes Bank sequence is almost as heinous as that for the women at Teahupoo). It's not all kookie fun - we sacrifice jobs, relationships, real life to do what we do. The result is upfullness, and Liquid gets that. But surfing is a serious business, too, and not just when you're pulling in at Cortes Bank. I'd like to see that movie sometime.

my email is: jdj@pacificwaverider.com

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