“Rich or not, we all agree that many surfers can be dicks, and I’m sure we’ve all met our share of wealthy assholes. Now riddle me this: what do you get if you cross a dick and an asshole?”
The future of surfing belongs to the rich man. We might as well say goodbye to the working class surf hero now. This future star is not from some grotty beach town like Coolangatta, he is from a decadent urban sprawl. He does not have the dirty fingernails and calloused palms of a grafting man, he has delicately manicured and moisturized hands. He does not have the guilt-ridden determination of someone whose brother spent his last $7 on a surfboard; rather, his mummy and daddy pop down to Hayden Cox’s surf boutique to spunk another $1000 on this week’s hottest shape. And he certainly hasn’t scrapped his way to the head of the line-up, he has merely used daddy’s dollars to put in the hours at the local wavepool.
The catch-22 facing surfers has always been this: the best surfer gets the most waves, but if you don’t get the most waves, you’ll never be the best surfer. Premium waves are a rare and precious commodity. But what happens when they aren’t anymore? What happens when the thing stopping you from getting the best waves is not weather, or crowds, or status…but simply money?
If we’re to be completely honest, it’s probably already about money.
Surfing is a sport for the developed world. We’ve all seen the grinning local boys splashing around in the shorebreak with pieces of debris, attempting to emulate the fancy visitors. They’re never going on a surf trip, are they? Fuck, some of us have probably got surfboards with a greater life-expectancy.
You definitely don’t meet many surfers living on the poverty line, unless it’s by contrived design. But there’s a happy medium and in the future even they will be ousted by the super wealthy. Have you met many rich surfers? They are not good company. They pull up in shiny, new vans, wax up yet another brand new board, then tell stories of tropical barrels from their latest charter trip. The combination of surfing and money is not pretty. Rich or not, we all agree that many surfers can be dicks, and I’m sure we’ve all met our share of wealthy assholes. Now riddle me this: what do you get if you cross a dick and an asshole? More often than not, you probably get a deeply unpleasant experience.
Perhaps there’ll be different classes of wavepools based on social status. Maybe there will be a bargain basement crumbly 3-footer in the middle of an old quarry for the shitkickers, whereas the rich guys will bankroll a 6ft drainer in their own personal inner-city Eden.
Most of us love the idea of perfect waves on tap. The first glimpses of Kelly Slater’s wavepool technology had most of us reaching for our wallets, but realistically the contents of most of these wallets won’t stretch far.The fact is that wavepool technology is going to be prohibitively expensive, regardless of solar-powered claims. And the reality is that most surfers won’t be able to afford the time or money necessary to use this technology to get to the highest levels of the sport.
In the future when waves are traded (in monetary terms), surfing may only exist for those who can afford it. When wave counts can be bought and sold, a select social class will have a stranglehold on line-ups around the world, having refined their skills inland by virtue of money and time. Yes, wavepools may well usher in a new class divide in surfing.
But perhaps there are bright spots. At least we’ll be able to drop the fucking tiresome cliche that “the best surfer is the one having the most fun.” Instead, he or she will be the one with the most money.
