hiya wa howa aswat

By Raph Anemolius

There’s plenty that’s great about it, but, please, watch out for these:

1.     It turns you into a moron, only interested in one thing. Think about it. Anyone who’s interested in one thing only is BORING! This is a universal truth, therefore you are in danger of being really fucking boring.

2.     It makes you selfish. Yes, whether you admit it or not – your obsession with surfing comes first. You’ll miss work, play and quality time with friends; time you could spend helping people who need help; time you could spend making yourself a better person. You will leave wonderful girlfriends/boyfriends because they ‘just don’t get it’; you will cause pain and anger to your parents or spouse; you will miss key moments in your childrens’ upbringing and important moments in the last years of your parents’ lives. This stuff is irreplaceable, but it’s ok, you got barreled again, dude.

3.     You will start using words like ‘dude’, ‘sucks’, ‘going off’, ‘sick’, ‘mate’ and a host of other perversions of the English language, no matter where you’re from. Balinese, Russian, Australian, French, Cornish – everyone succumbs eventually/occasionally and we all sound like twats. That’s because the original perversions mostly came from California and Australia and twats in those countries don’t know they sound like twats. We just absorb the twat-shit that these people have spread through their economic and psychological control of the sub culture. To any sane human being, we sound like twats and that’s that.

4.     We get arrogant because we think surviving a big drop or making a tube or riding Uluwatu or our home break or any fucking thing to with surfing makes us somehow better human beings than other human beings. It doesn’t. We are as good human beings as we are good human beings, regardless if we surf or not. Male surfers buy into the myth that they’re cool because chicks – who are as simple and dirty as guys underneath all the pretence – find surfers’ body-shapes and tans horny – in much the same way men find strippers automatically horny. (‘Wow! They’ve got tits!’) Doesn’t make male surfers great people. Female surfers think they’re great because so few women surf that they get off on being a step above fellow members of their gender. In many subtle and truly shallow ways, being a surfer makes us think we’re fantastic. And we’re not. Unless of course we are – but that’s an entirely different story.

5.     Surfing is dangerous. Skin cancer, surfers’ ear, staph infections, spinal injuries, shoulder and lower back wear, red eyes/pterygiums, shark attack, pollution exposure, damaged hair and water on the brain that makes you stupid.

6.     You will waste time and you will waste fuel. Both time and fuel are money, so you will waste money, too. You will stare at computer screens for hours when you’re not surfing, wishing you were surfing, looking for a hit in some sad vicarious form, planning your next surfing excursion and dreaming of ones you can’t afford. Later you will drive around looking for waves and checking spots just around the corner or, fuck it, 500 miles drive away just because you’re a radical dude and you want to impress your friends with how hardcore you are. If there’s no rideable surf there, or if it isn’t as good as the surf you just left, you’ll happily drive back and surf that. You waste hours of time, gallons of fuel and therefore uncountable amounts of money. And did we mention – you add carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that probably wouldn’t be there if you weren’t a surfer?

7.     Your whole ‘close to nature’ vibe is only a skin you wear when it suits you, unless you really are someone that cares about nature and maybe even does something about protecting it. You don’t automatically qualify as one of those people just because you’re a surfer.

8.     You are a colonialist. Might as well buy a pith helmet right now. You’ll fly to foreign shores and not, probably, give a damn about understanding, integrating or having any awareness whatsoever about the impact your presence has on the destination community/culture. Not your problem, mate. You’re just there to surf.

9.     Surfing will start to make you think idiots are heroes. People who take huge amounts of drugs, drink like lunatics and drive rental cars like assholes suddenly become worthy of your respect because they’re often the same people who take off late on huge waves and pull into giant tubes and get spat out. Watch out for this. They could still be assholes.


10.   It’s a beautiful thing, but you need to be careful to retain your sense of right and wrong, good and bad, time and place etc. Surf culture is fuelled by commercial interests that know no depths. In their search for sales, they will say anything and sponsor anyone to promote their products. Just because you love the sensation of riding breaking waves, don’t let these things turn you into a twat.