Photo: Beatriz Ryder // WSL
Airs are a hilariously divisive facet of the surfing world. Despite the fact that they’ve been around for decades at this point, they still define progressive surfing (so much as the term even makes sense). As such, they are met with their fair share of criticism from purists, curmudgeons, and general haters of fun. That can’t stop the rest of us from loving them though, or stop YouTuber Dylan Graves from creating an examination of the maneuver.
His first step is to define what an air actually is, which involves querying a who’s who of aerial surfers, before landing on a definitive explanation from none other than the ultimate pioneer of the skies: Nathan Fletcher. “An air is when you go down the line, go down the face of the wave, do a bottom turn, you hit the lip, and then you go above the lip, into the air, and then hopefully land,” he says.
Can’t argue with that.
With the easy part out of the way, Graves proceeds to delve a little deeper into the role of airs in surfing. From there, the video delivers a highlight reel of the best airs ever hucked – according to some of those aerialists themselves, before creating an exhaustive timeline of the progression of airs in the history of surfing. From there, he goes on to debate the finer points of scoring airs and the future of the maneuver.
In the end, Graves emerges from his examination with a perspective that the controversial and ambiguous nature of airs is actually what makes them special. “Even the origins of this maneuver are up for debate, and I think there are certain aspects of airs that we’ll never truly know everything about. And that, to me, makes this maneuver, and surfing as a whole, that much more fascinating,” he says. “I think it’s cool to know that we get a better understanding of this maneuver each time someone new gets catapulted into the air for their first time. What other sport allows for something that’s so open to interpretation? That to me is the beauty of surfing. It’s subjective. And it’s an art form.”
