JD's Journal : Random Stoke Thoughts

: : Well, let's start with an email posted on a website that describes hundreds of breaks all over the world (you can find it without difficulty if you want to). Each break has a comments section, and every decent break has comments like this:

"Boo Hoo by Patto 4 Jul 2003 Let us all have a minutes silence in respect for the demise of so many beautiful uncrowded spots. It has happened all over the world as wankers pick up surfing as a trendy alternative to jacking off over the latest style of sunglasses. Vale surfing. However, if you are prepared to seek out, you will be rewarded."

Brian is very, very stoked

Hard to disagree - the surfing world is so much smaller and more crowded than it was even five years ago - I've heard reports of 40 people out at places in Alaska, crowded breaks on the Skeleton Coast in Namibia. I've met travelling surfers from Israel, Holland, Canada. Places in California where I could guarantee a two or three-person session five years ago now have 20+ out during the week sometimes.

So. Change is the only constant and we can either be victims or students. Surfers have been bitching about over-crowding since Gidget, but there were always those who were willing to strike out, take the risk, give up daily life and go and find a sacred place. The spots are still out there. And you still have to leave the mainstream to go and find 'em. So when your favorite private spot gets posted on the internet, or written up in some book, or the dreaded SUV carrying four massive longboards shows up in the parking lot, take the time to mourn, bitch at the universe for not staying constant, then pick yourself up and go look for somewhere new.

Every day, empty waves break somewhere. Every day, billions of people live lives that are wildly different from yours. You just have to go find 'em. It was always this way. And it will be for a while.

Mark is cold and stoked

: : And here's an organization dedicated to preserving the stoke (www.groundswellsociety.org)! A bit of a bizarre concept - organizing stoke - and they dont look like the usual bunch of monkeys. But still, they're trying something different.

And while you're checking something new, buy a copy of The Surfer's Path (www.surferspath.com) - a mag that combines the production values of the Surfers Journal, with an up to date worldview (something the Surfers Journal, I'm afraid to say, tends to lose in its endless evocations of 50's California and Hawaii).

Stoked local

: : Finally. Has there ever been a more stokeless depiction of the surfing life than MTV's "Surf Girls"? Whoever produced this program managed to take a bunch of young women surfers and turn them into every other dumb MTV brat. You could have trained a camera on the parking lot at Linda Mar for three weeks and picked up a thousand times more positive vibe from the women who surf there every day.

"North Shore Boarding House" is a little better, mostly because Sunny Garcia surfs like a bandit and appears to be driven through life by a powerfully unstable combination of rage and love, which is kind of interesting to watch.

: : Oh, the mainstream. There's a reason we try to stay outside it. It sucks.

Find your own holy places, choose your own models, make your own stoke when you can.