Alas, inclusiveness has its opposite. Newbies to surfing soon learn of the phenomenon of localism and its intent to exclude, whether by subtle “stink-eye” or aggressive surf rage. Surely, every sport known to us has had its spoil-sports and its detractors: soccer hooligans, out-of-control, amped-up fans after a football game, basketball games interrupted by fistfights, steroid use and doping in baseball, cycling, and so on. To see how these violations of the rules of sport (written and unwritten) play out in surfing culture, let’s look at how the “rules of engagement” are violated despite the commonly-held assumption that the ocean is vast and open to all.
Two standout cases, among hundreds, from Australia and Hawaii remind us that some regard surf breaks and access to them as privileged and off-limits to outsiders. Let’s say you were a local Aussie grom just turned fifteen, with your sagging board shorts, sun-bleached hair and an attitude, and you’re headed down to Narrabeen’s beaches just north of Sydney for a morning’s wave session. Or you’re a mere visitor, keen on checking out the surf, oblivious to the fact that you are a small part of the sheer growth in numbers visiting these popular beaches along Australia’s southeast coast. You hadn’t comprehended the immense surge in surfing after the arrival of the famous Malibu board in the 1950’s. You were unaware, too, of the entrenched territoriality, the dark sway of local gangs, of masculine hegemony that had arisen on many Australian and SoCal breaks and along Oahu’s north shore, among other places. So, board under your armpit, you started paddling out, heading to the lineup. Suddenly, a searing blow to your head knocks you off your board into the shallow beach break. What you don’t know was that the leader of a local crew had been standing atop a dune whacking golf balls into the crowded lineup. Staggering from the whitewater, dazed and aching, you made your way up the sandy incline only to be confronted by a seething clot of local nasties who drag your skinny ass to a nearby parking lot. A Ph.D. thesis by Colleen McGloin (2005) of the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, tells us that you might then be tied to the “grommet pole” in the car park, force-fed booze, stripped, smeared with excrement, whipped with leashes and left overnight. You, the “fekkingfaggottyfaceddickheadturdeatingbutthole” had, after all, violated the unwritten rules of etiquette, failing to recognize the “ownership” of this particular surf break.
Such a manifestation of profane localism is mirrored in maraudings of the “Bra Boys” of Maroubra (another Sydney suburb) in the Hui o He’e Nalu gang of kanaka maoli (native surfers) on Oahu’s north shore, and the “Bay Boys” of Palos Verdes at Lunada in Los Angeles, all of whose members shared style of dress, lingo, tattoos, and hair styles. At one time or another, each gang has clashed with police as they express resentment for trespassers onto their beach or wave turf.
Haole surfers from California visiting Waikiki in the 1960s precipitated many confrontations of their own–crashing bars traditionally off-limits to non-locals, and “browning out”, otherwise known as “mooning”. Such pranks gave California’s testosterone-overdosed aggro punks a transgressive kick along Waikiki where it seems to have been a gas to float in the lineup with trunks hiked up around one’s neck. One might then forgive native Hawaiians like the black-short-wearing Hui o He’e Nalu who, disrupting surf competitions loaded with hot Aussie and South Africans stars, felt locked out of their customary surf zones. At Pipeline, vigilante gangs like Da Hui and the Wolf Pack retaliated big-time against visiting mainlanders’ disrespect for local surf breaks. The sport had, after all, originated with their island ancestors. In Bali, pro surfer Rizal Tanjung and his mates tried to police the Kuta Beach breaks from profanation by hordes of visiting Aussie surfers.
It wasn’t only non-locals who profaned the breaks. The sheer presence of girls could threaten to challenge the bogey of hegemonic male territoriality. Director Bruce Beresford’s film, “Puberty Blues” (based on a 1979 novel by the same name with different authors), takes us to Cronulla, another part of the Narrabeen stretch, where it’s axiomatic that “boys surf, girls watch.” Girls are even excluded from the film’s depiction of a commemorative paddle-out for the ruling tribe’s male buddy. The film’s two young schoolgirl stars (belittled even by other cheeky babes) have long been objects of casual brutality from local males. Finally, they take up their newly-acquired surfboards and stride boldly into the surf. It’s a triumph of female empowerment and a symbolic challenge to the gender divide in the 1970s surfing culture and beyond. Domination of Australian surf spots and ensuing conflicts between gangs or clubs, still occasionally mars area beach life. Elite surfer Ken Bradshaw, who was surfing with Mark Foo at Mavericks when Foo died, in a lengthy 2011 Vanity Fair interview, reduces this dark side of surfing to “too many surfers in the world and too few good waves to ride.” It’s a kind of Darwinian view.
For Hamid, who owns a video shop in Taghazout, Morocco, “Art,” a 78-year-old who’s been surfing at San Diego’s Tourmaline Beach since the 1940s, or Cheryl, a young girl enrolled in a summer surf camp in Myrtle Beach, these issues are reasonably remote. For them, like millions of us, surfing is more than merely riding the waves. The closer you get to the surf, the excitement becomes hard to contain. The surf is always there beckoning for you. Once you have mastered the pop up, and caught your first wave, you’re hooked on the transcendental feeling, ready to put the workaday world aside. Ready, as Jaimal Yogis puts it, “to bob on the fingertips of Kanaloa,” the ruler of the sea.
