Back off, War Child! Photo: Screenshot
Avoiding the ire of surfers is almost as hard as the actual surfing itself. We’re a touchy bunch, and the slightest misstep can earn you the most despised term in the surfer’s lexicon: kook.
We’ve already covered the equipment you’re not allowed to use, lest you earn the feared moniker from surf culture. Now, we’re adding a list of actions to avoid as well. Without further ado: here’s six things you can’t do because surf culture thinks they’re kooky.
Stretch
There’s a lot of ways to hurt yourself surfing – fin slashes, board strikes, reef rash, good old fashioned drowning. But of all of those, there’s none so undignified as pulling a muscle. Fortunately, that particular humiliation is pretty easily avoidable by doing some light calisthenics before paddling out. Less fortunately, the dirty, and perplexed, looks you’ll get from other surfers for doing lunges in a dry wetsuit will be seared in your brain for the entire session.
Cross-Train
It turns out stretching is just the tip of the iceberg, here. Most sports embrace cross-training. Training outside your sport affords lots of opportunities for progression, especially in something like surfing, where waves can be hard to come by. Unfortunately, the more sport-specific cross-training methods for surfing are all pretty goofy. To be real, surf-skating, pop-up drills, balance boards, and whatever new contraption is being sold on Instagram, are probably gonna give you more muscle-memory than you can get from relying on surfing alone. After all, we only actually spend seconds on our feet each session in the ocean. But your dignity is going to suffer. Big time.
Compete
For decades, surfers have argued about surfing’s true meaning. Some say it’s a mystical connection with nature. Others that it’s the self expression that comes from dancing across water. Pretty much none of them think it’s pulling off a full rote and scoring a 9.5 out of 10. If that’s something you want to do, you’re gonna get a lot of shit about it from plank riding soul surfers and van-dwelling trustafarians. Hope the zero dollars in sponsor money you got for that clubby comp was worth it.
Surf a New Spot
There are plenty of real reasons it’s tough to venture into new waters. Going to a new location means losing institutional knowledge. All of a sudden, you have to figure out where to paddle out, what tide the wave breaks best on, if there’s any hazards to watch out for. Those are all surmountable, though. The thing that’s really keeping newcomers at bay, more often, is a bunch of middle-aged dick heads who’ll throw a tantrum (and potentially hands) if they see someone they don’t recognize. What’s more, those locals are backed up by a loud online contingent of fellow middle-aged losers, who’ll back them up and label any outsiders as kooks and losers. So more often than not, you’ll just end up staying in your lane.
Naming Waves
Like a lamer, more sun-damaged version of the mafia, the surfing community has an aversion to naming names. In this case, those names are the proper monikers for surf breaks – mostly online. What ensues is a sort of euphemistic ballet, in which surf Redditors, YouTube commenters, and screaming Instagram users attempts to prove that they know what’s what, without actually saying anything.
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Learning How to Surf
Above all, the greatest sin in surfing is being a beginner. Whether you’re a grom or got back into the sport after a long hiatus, or god forbid began learning as an adult, the greatest lesson surf culture has to impart on you is that you are not wanted. If you ignore that lesson, though, you may eventually last long enough to join the ranks of the seasoned locals – and as a reward get hassled about all the other things on this list.
