Now where in the world of modern surfing did this happen? Velzyland? Cactus? Palos Verdes? Burleigh? Stockton Avenue? The Canaries? The Ranch? Narrabeen? Could be any one of dozens of intense surf spots around the globe, couldn't it?

But no, the above is not about a specific example of surfer localism per se. It's about the single most violent episode in all of human history: the battle of Stalingrad during World War II. The Nazi army had advanced rapidly for a thousand miles deep into the Russian heartland when Soviet dictator Josef Stalin told his generals that there would be no more retreat, and that they were to stand their ground to the death. And thus were revealed deep-seated human instincts of conquest, violence, and revenge, resulting in the deaths of almost a million soldiers and civilians in a little less than six months.

The Graffiti on the sidewalk says it all.

What greater contrast could there be? Warfare-to-the-death that destroys a city is about as far as you can get from riding aqua blue energy in warm water along beautiful coastlines, where the power and the visions provided by our mother ocean combine to make surfing an almost religious experience. However, if our sport/art is indeed so wonderful, then "surf rage" reveals something that, I contend, is born of the exact same primal instincts that caused ten thousand deaths a day during the siege of Stalingrad. That was man at his worst, and violence amongst surfers, blessed as we are by Nature, is pretty much in the same category.

If you think that comparing Nazis and Soviets to surfers is a bit of a stretch, then consider the following from the Los Angeles Times dated March 26, 2000. Titled "Drought Desperation", the article relates the story of a battle between monkeys and humans when water trucks arrived at a drought-stricken trading post in northern Kenya. When the monkeys saw the water, they attacked so ferociously that the humans were forced to retreat as the primates quenched their thirst. But the humans re-grouped and fought back the simians with axes and machetes. Sounds like the first day of waves after a long flat spell at Sunset or Swamis or Kirra, no? And you can take the simile even one step further when talking about conflict over water: there was a once fight involving a machete at the Ranch, where gunshots have also been used to intimidate outsiders.

All this is by way of introduction to my take on what has been the single most shameful and disgraceful aspect of our sport/art for the last forty years. One has only to talk to those who have quit surfing in disgust, or those in the non-surfing public who are unable to comprehend how surfers can reveal such base human instincts when they are so blessed by the ocean, to understand how localism and violence have stained the soul of surfing.

In early April of this year Chris Bystrom called with the idea of my writing about "surf rage" in response to the recent assault on Nat Young. His account of what had happened was pretty depressing, especially since at the time I was writing up a summary of Surfrider's Clean Water Classic event at Rincon, where we are able to run a weekend contest in great waves without security or water marshals and with the full cooperation of all the local Santa Barbara surfers. (see accompanying article)

Yet here was Chris describing Nat's serious injuries caused by a conflict in the water at Angourie. So on one hand I was filled with the satisfaction of being a part of a wonderful event where hundreds of surfers cooperated in sharing great waves at one of the most crowded breaks in the world. But on the other I was sadly reminded that surfers are also capable of being reduced to the level of primates by their selfishness and lack of self-control.

Surfing is as pure a pleasure as anything we do on this planet. The beauty, the sensation and the physical challenge of riding waves are unmatched by any other sport. But surfing's internal conflicts are also unique. They affect our surfing lifestyle across the board. In fact, it seems as though our "culture" is bookended by bullshit.

At the Neanderthal end, we have our mossbacks (a deprecatory term for old, set-in-their-ways sailors, referring to turtles who've been in the water so long that moss grows on their shells). These guys never actually live at the public surf spots they call their own, but since they usually have no where else to go in their lives, they resent anyone showing up at "their" beach, public be damned. When intruders start riding "their" waves, they start growling with indignation like bull walruses whose cows are being eyed by rivals. They rage with jealousy as if surfing was their substitute for sex, and their aggressive attitudes lead them to commit senseless crimes of passion when they cut off strangers, challenge them to fights, and worse.

At the other end of the spectrum, where professionals make their living off the sport, things are often no different. I have immense respect for Nat Young, a pioneer of advanced surfing equipment, a former world champion, a writer of surfing books, and an acknowledged leader of the surfing tribe for three decades. But Nat has always been aggressive in the water, and he lost it completely

Would you be willing to share this?
when 18-year-old Luke Hutchinson got in his way. Now Luke is no angel either, and things escalated quickly. Today Nat is recovering from injuries sustained when Luke's dad lost HIS sense of membership in the human race and attacked Nat mercilessly. And that is only the most recent incident amongst the leaders of our sport.

There is the little-known episode involving Johnny-Boy Gomes, winner of $56,000 at a 1998 Pipeline contest organized by his friend Eddie Rothman. It was the biggest first-place check ever in a surfing contest, placing Gomes at the top of the heap as a professional surfer. But only a few months later, Johnny-Boy was told to go back to Hawai'i by community elders after attacking a young local surfer at a beautiful Polynesian reef.

And who can forget another landmark incident: the 1994 World Longboard Championships at Malibu. A veteran 'Bu kneeboarder didn't get out of the way fast enough when the contest started, and so Rick Ernsdorf was hospitalized after being held underwater by Joe Tudor and then having his face pummeled bloody by Lance Hookano.

If you consider that few, if any, veteran waveriders have not seen hostile graffiti, felt the rats-in-a-cage vibe of overcrowded surf spots or witnessed real violence, it becomes apparent that surfers all too readily reveal a deplorable strain of human character in their penchant for aggression over something given for free, a gift from nature that we use for nothing more than some momentary euphoria. We surfers forget that waves are living magic. The huge storms, the powerful winds, the great global routes of major groundswells, the graceful curve of protected shorelines and the symmetry of a wave peeling perfectly all combine to give us an unparalleled experience. And what do we do with it? For whatever reason: ego, low self-esteem, selfishness, or professional greed, it becomes all too easy for surfers to ruin our heaven on earth.

How can this be? We are like true believers fighting over who will take communion, pushing and shoving and cutting in line with an infantile "Me First! Me First!" attitude as we approach the altar where our religion is confirmed. And when we finally attain the holy moment and connect with the body and soul of our faith, what do we do? "Mine! Mine!" becomes our mantra. Just ask yourself, "When was the last time you saw a pro surfer get a great wave, but then paddle back out slowly so that others could share in the same experience? When was the last time you saw a local get out of the water so that the waves would be less crowded for others? When was the last time you saw a good surfer give a kook a wave?"

Until these instincts become definitive of our surfing culture, starting with the surf industry and those making a living off the sport, surfing will suffer from a cancerous sore that won't go away. The pro tours, contests, magazines, videos, surf star reunions, big-wave exploits, and guided trips to remote perfection will all mean very little until the leaders of our sport/art publicly make a commitment that says, "Enough! We leave our egos on the beach, and we enter the ocean with humility and a true sense of brotherhood." Until that day, and until the mossbacks and thugs at a hundred spots around the world wise up to what surfing is supposed to be, the next embarrassing episode of surfers as Serbians is just around the corner.

Allow me to state my credentials on the subject. I'm writing this in our family room with a view of Oxnard Shores, a place I surfed for the first time in 1968. It is not a wave for the timid when it's good. Top-to-bottom barrels unload over erratic sandbars, and you have to be in good shape to get any waves because the sets can push you up and down the beach a hundred meters at a time. Now that I have lived here going on ten years, I often find myself the first guy out at dawn and one of the few regulars when it starts maxing. So I guess that makes me a local at a place that once intimidated outsiders. Say the word "Oxnard", and the connotation amongst California surfers is pretty negative. But those days are over at the Shores, and that's the way I like it. I want the beach where my children play to be free of the contamination of localism, because I've seen enough of it, and I don't want to see any more.

I've dealt with several versions of "surf rage" during my surfing career in California, including Topanga in the 60s, Silverstrand and the Ranch in the 70s, and Hazard Canyon in the 80s. I've had to face it down in the water and on the beach, and based on personal experience, I've found that surfers "infected" with localism can be surprisingly vicious S.O.B.'s. They can ruin a surf spot in a way that reminds me of floating garbage poisoning the sea.

Modern surfing points to Duke Kahanamoku as its father, yet his aloha version of surfing is about as far as you'll get from the heavy scenes caused by the pools of hate that have floated in lineups around the world: the toxic spills of localism. Of course, if we as surfers look to Polynesia for our heritage, what do we do when we see a history of raids, massacres, and internecine conflict throughout the South Pacific? Are we doomed by cultural genetics to duke it out over our tiny slices of paradise and the short-lived waves we ride?

Polynesian traditions aside, the fundamental problem with surfing will always be how powerfully it drives the ego. There is nothing inherently social in surfing's purest moments, because riding a wave is 100% personal. It is all about your preparation, experience, timing, strength and agility. There is nothing 'team' about it. So cooperation and humility takes a back seat to aggression and arrogance. Left unchecked, it gets to the point that we dare think of ourselves as masters of the waves after a good ride, and we usually paddle back out as fast as we can for another one. As long as you don't have to deal with other surfers and their egos and craving for waves, getting one good ride after another puts a surfer on top of the world.

But as with every powerful experience that involve self-inflation amongst individuals in a crowd, surfing can go from the sublime to the ridiculous in an instant, from euphoria and elation to fear and survival, from a generous free natural environment to a monstrous example of human greed and enmity. Surfers are the blessed sons and daughters of Kahuna gliding through Neptune's kingdom, until they start acting like troops of baboons defending territory against outsiders while engaged in internecine conflicts typical of lower order primate communities.

Another apt comparison would be to the behavior of the sea's most instinctually violent species, predatory sharks. My first experience with a real local, not some land owner or unemployed carpenter or out-of-shape big mouth, was at Lennox Head in Australia, part of the territory of a 15' tiger shark. An apex predator, it feared nothing, and we got out of the water pretty quick the times he was spotted feeding on the larger fish in the area. Sharks are a highly territorial species, in contrast to another apex predator, the broadbill swordfish, well known for its transoceanic migratory routes. Both species developed two hundred million years ago, and have remained essentially unchanged for the past fifty million years. But while the swordfish is an inspiration for speed and agility, the shark conjures visions of merciless pain and death.

So when you consider that some of the worst "surf rage" occurs in some of the world's best waves, it seems that surfing often oscillates between the wondrous hydrodynamics of the swordfish and the brutal turf tactics of the shark. One minute you're flying over the water in a perfect natural setting, only to have the waves turn into the vicious streets of South-Central L.A. As Ice-T said, "Wear a wrong colored rag, go home in a body bag."

Now, surfing is as far from the inner city as you can get. Yet having a colored wetsuit or board that ID's you as an outsider can make for real problems at some surf spots. This is truly absurd. At least in the 'hood there's a reason for the violence: unemployment, fatherless families, poverty, hopelessness. What reason do surfers have to throw down? Surfers are as blessed as any people on earth, and so it is particularly tragic when their egos are controlled by the corrosive evils of selfishness, greed, and jealousy.

I don't know if there is another sport/art/lifestyle on the planet that offers as phenomenal an experience as riding a wave and yet is cursed with human behavior in a classification with sharks and gangbangers. Surfing is an amazing thing to do, but seen through the prism of localism, it comes off looking pretty lame.

Look at surfing as a sport, and consider what it would be like if tennis was similar to surfing. You and I could be beginners just starting to volley when two hot-shot pros could show up and simply muscle us off a public court with taunts and threats while aiming powerful serves at us until we leave. Seen as an art, surfing fares no better. Surfers with bad attitudes are like graffiti vandals with overloaded minds aggressively chasing their fix of identity and recognition. In both versions, the surfing lifestyle is twisted into a joy-less, anxiety-driven fear of outsiders. Based on numerous personal experiences, that's what I've seen happen on the beach and in the water time and again.

My first confrontation with die-hard locals came at Topanga in the late 60s. I worked for Natural Progression in Santa Monica, and since they all rode our boards, they had to tolerate me. But I still got the "Out! Out!" when they saw me walking up the beach. I ignored the warning and got away with it. But when it came to unknown trespassers who didn't pay attention, the warning was followed by rocks and taunts and more rocks. And if an intruder ruined the wave of a local, things got really ugly. Of course, the boys' excuse was that they were defending a good wave from hordes of LA and Valley surfers. But in the end the Topanga locals lost, since all their houses were torn down to make way for a public parking lot and lifeguard station.

The Ranch was a similar situation. Being a boater or a guest, my tenuous connections smoothed the waters to a certain extent. Although the vibe was still in the air, it did not ruin the place for me. Not so for some friends of mine, including Angie Reno, one of surfing's great talents, who in 1971 had to fend off a machete attack from Jeff Kruthers, long time Ranch local who now, ironically, sells Ranch parcels. So I guess if you have the cash, you're in. When I was up there just last year with Rick Vogel and Yvon Chouinard, both parcel owners who have surfed the Ranch for decades, we couldn't surf Rights and Lefts. Seems that given who was out at R&Ls that day, showing up with even one guest was verboten. Yvon put it bluntly, "I don't want my tires flattened again." So we had to settle for surfing in thick kelp at an empty spot a mile away.

The Ranch brand of localism continues to be defined by wealthy owners and their doberman surf bro's. This is in contrast to Oxnard, a working-class town with poverty-driven gang problems and high unemployment. As opposed to the privileged sniffiness of Ranch mossbacks, the worst locals at Silverstrand were usually unemployed construction workers or cholos who didn't even surf. In fact, we quickly learned that surfers in the water were often the least of our problems.

Today it is nowhere near as bad as when we wrote the book on surfing the place by avoiding locals who jacked up the unsuspecting and the innocent. Being "southers" from Santa Monica, we'd park on side streets and chat up residents into watching our cars. In fact, we pioneered the peaks in the middle of the beach because the north jetty parking lot was just too risky. Unfortunately, former Malibu great George Szigeti learned that lesson the hard way. After a great session, he got out of the water only to find four slashed tires and every window of his new VW bus smashed - and a group of thugs waiting for him! So we had to be alert, and although we still had to deal with some real losers, when the waves got big we'd have the place to ourselves.

The Ranch and Oxnard have earned bad reps for localism, but Hazard Canyon, in central California's Montana De Oro State Park, was during the late 80s the worst cesspool of selfishness I ever experienced. Best on cold winter mornings with freezing winds whistling down the canyon, the place is hostile to begin with. With a small take- off zone and a thick, peeling barrel that made drop-ins extremely dangerous, the prevailing atmosphere was intimidating and tense. And since Park authorities were usually miles away, the Canyon was a set up that really stacked the deck against visitors. The regulars were no nonsense tough-guys who could surf the place so well that you wouldn't dare look at a wave they wanted. But even if a local couldn't surf that well, he would still be a factor thanks to his longevity at the place, thick arms from pounding nails, or just plain shitty attitude driven by his own personal failings.

Lead by Whitey and JG, it was a crew that reveled in its reputation for being violent assholes. Bradley Jordan, the best surfer ever to ride the place, took five years and several fights to break into the lineup. I lucked out: I knew Bradley when he was a grommet hanging around the NP shop in the Santa Monica days, so I gained entry through him. No one ever got in my face, although what I saw and heard directed at innocent strangers made me cringe more than once in the three years I surfed the place.

As it turns out, I went back a few years ago, and things had changed to a certain extent. Whitey was still whining, the takeoff zone was tight with carpenters and roofers with attitude to spare and the waves were merciless if you made a mistake. Yet, the threat of violence did not hang heavy in the air, as if the crew had finally wised up a little bit.

But unfortunately, the primal instinct of localism rarely goes away on its own. Consider the Rockside boys of Port Hueneme. Their surfing traditions came from a tainted gene pool where localism was handed down from a generation of has-been longboarders to young high school dropouts turned wanna-be surf stars. These guys were real jerks - until one of their homies was convicted on assault charges when he attacked a teacher from Santa Monica surfing an empty peak west of the pier. The guy got probation that prevented him from surfing the place for three years. But genius that he was, he was right back in the water a few weeks later, only to have a cop pulled up as he was getting out of the water who took him straight to jail to do his time for the assault and violating probation. It was poetic justice that a Rockside rockhead did time for being not only violent, but stupid, too.

The fact that a surfer was put behind bars for being violent says that the worst of the localism as I've known it is on the retreat. One reason that things are changing is California Penal Code sections 243 and 245 dealing with aggravated assault. Victims are now calling the police, and in recent years the law has stepped in to protect the innocent and charge the guilty. Witness what happened in Palos Verdes or the assault in San Diego two years ago. Guys got arrested and convicted, and newcomers were able to surf without threats from mossbacks giving 'em stink-eye and worse.

Another reason that "surf rage" is abating somewhat is the fact that yesterday's surf hoodlums have grown up and now have kids, and if there's one thing that's going to change the life of an OG (LA slang for 'original gangster'), it is having to be a father. A third reason for localism's overall decline is that, over the past five years or so, dilution has been the solution to the pollution of localism. There are now so many surfers everywhere that, as when Topanga was turned into a public beach, who is or isn't a local is now a moot point. Like King Canute ordering the tide to stop, the hard-core locals of yesterday are being sweep into submission by a constant tide of recreational surfers spreading around the world.

Riding a wave is a perfect opportunity to test our human nature, face up to our failings, and focus on bringing out the best in ourselves. Consider the non-violent example of Ghandi. He understood the devastating effects of an unchecked ego. For ten years he resisted becoming the leader of India's independence movement until he felt ready to be a powerful, yet selfless, man of inner peace. His autobiography, "The Story of My Experiments with Truth," is a wonderful inspiration in dealing with the subjugation of ego.

This is good news. Surf spots are extra special natural environments because they give people a chance to play with the ocean's energy. There is no cause for selfish and sometimes violent behavior over waves that belong to no one. As the legendary North Shore surfer Owl Chapman once said, "Be nice, share a wave, give a smile, say Hi". I couldn't agree more: a friendly vibe in the water makes the surfing experience complete.

So the next time you're tempted to vibe someone you don't know or take more waves than you deserve, consider things from the other guy's point of view. Only when courtesy and sharing define our behavior is it possible to fully realize the promise of surfing. Show some respect for Mother Ocean and leave your ego on the beach. If you're a visitor, the same rule applies: don't be confrontational, but at the same time, remember that you owe the ocean a lot, so don't turn tail and retreat without trying to work things out verbally. Localism is a toxic spill that has contaminated a lot of surf spots, and sometimes you have to help in the clean up.

If you really have surfing in your heart and soul, you simply have to act in the name of civility in the water, starting with an attitude of cooperation and sharing. If it's too crowded, get out of the water and wait on the beach, or surf someplace else. Battling the pack endlessly brings out the worst in people. Same goes for any territorial feelings you might have about your favorite surf spots. There is no excuse for desiring euphoria so much that violence becomes a way to get it. This aspect of surfing simply has to change, and that's all there is to it.

As Charles William Maynes recently said with reference to Bosnia and Kosovo, "Society . . . depends on deference, deference to tradition, authority, to law, to treaty commitments. If you lose that, the only thing you've got left . . . is force." In surfing, we have no governing authority, and the times we've resorted to criminal law to resolve our disputes have been excruciating embarrassments to the sport as a whole. So we must defer to each other in the water and respect the best traditions of riding waves: the traveling, the welcoming of visitors and the sharing of waves exemplified by the early longboarders. Thus, we must commit to personal treaties of peace with all our fellow surfers if any of us is to truly deserve the joy to be found in surfing.

Yelling to get waves, challenging guys to fights on the beach, pushing off shoulder-hoppers, giving strangers stink-eye, dropping in on kooks: Lord knows I've seen and done my share. But let me tell you from personal experience: a surfer's soul feels much better when you really make a pacifist attitude a part of your surfing identity. Always being generous and cooperative, especially when the waves are good, can be a long, and difficult lesson to learn: ask Nat or Johnny-Boy. But if we all behave as if our children are watching us surf, we will someday cleanse the stain from surfing's soul, and the localism and violence of modern surfing will be nothing more than sad chapter in a distant past. I may not see it, but if there's anything I can do about it, my children will.

* * * Glenn Hening started the Surfrider Foundation in 1984. He currently publishes an annual "Groundswell Society" covering ideas and projects of interest to "Renaissance" surfers. This article first appeared on SURFLINK.com. Sections of it were developed for a series of essays that appeared in the second edition of Glenn Hening's Groundswell Society Annual Publication. The third edition is in the works and will be available this fall. Contact Glenn for more information at GRNDSWEL@aol.com

Israel Paskowitz -- "In the setup, try to position or angle your board so it will draw the longest line across the top of the wave. Then get to the nose right away. Stay on the inside rail a little more, so you can keep to the top of the wave. Use that rail to hold you up high, even to make small turns or adjustments to keep you climbing into position. Watch excellent noseriders or videos. Study how they set up the wave. The rest is body English. Especially notice the bent knees and weight over both feet. Then you just have to get used to the more parallel stance that's used. And, that's simply practice."

Wingnut -- "Good noseriding starts from really believing you can do it. Basically it's just crash and burn. Just go out there and eat it a dozen times in a row. See if you can stay up there. Invariably, you can go one foot or 10 yards farther than you thought you could. Push it. Go out and commit to it, and go as far as you can. Just camp there. Soon you'll recognize the impending signs of pearling, and then you can do something about it.
"Also, get some videos and watch how Slick or Hynson and August, in the first Endless Summer, each set up the board for the noseride. Watch how they maneuver the nose into position. A lot of the old Bruce Brown videos have great footage of guys like Lance Carson and Mickey Munoz setting up their noserides. Keep looking at how they did it. Then go out there and camp on the nose. Pretty soon, you'll learn that being on the tip and a foot from the tip is the same thing, as far as difficulty--the only thing is, they don-t give you points for being back one foot."

Chris Schlickenmeyer -- "When setting up the noseride, stall and maneuver until you get the nose headed right for the curl. That's where the most lift is in the wave. As soon as the nose is headed for the curl, immediately start for the tip, so that when it gets there you are on the nose at the same time. Get there quick or the board will speed up and take you right out of the curl. The rest of it is body English. Watch a good noserider surf and imitate what they're doing with their body."

Bill Stewart -- "Many people have a little trouble going from Hanging Five to Hanging Ten. It's like that back foot is glued to the board and won't come up for a full ten. It's only one more step. Just one more step. Take that step! Fall off. Get another noseride. Bring that foot up. Wrap those toes right around the tip. Fall off. Do it over and over again. We have leashes today, so why not? Pretty soon you will know when you are about to pearl, because you've been doing it so much. Then you'll know when you can back off--right before that happens--and you'll be Hanging Ten all the time!"

As you try the tips from the pros, it's also good to get cross-stepping down.

Bob Howard -- Fluid and natural cross-stepping is important for getting there and back quickly. So practice when out of the water by walking the curb, or a telephone pole or 2x12 plank laying on the ground. Go quickly up and back, until it becomes so natural you don't even think about it. Lean forward slightly, comfortably, to give yourself more momentum and natural ease -- it's a slight falling forward feeling -- when going for the tip of the plank, pole, curb or board. This will make running to the nose easier and more natural. Get use to going for that tip and Hang 5 and 10. This will also get you use to the distance of each step -- from whatever your starting point is -- and how many steps it takes. But don't count them or measure them. This needs to become automatic--so just let it happen. Repeat that over and over again. Then, do it even more quickly--at a run. Go up and back until you don't have to think about it at all. Then take it into the waves. The object is to get to the nose as fast as possible. And cross stepping is the way you do that, not scooting. Besides cross-stepping adds big points to your style quotient. And you can never have too much styyyyyyle! So practice. And have fun doing it.

September 2002

Thrust and parry
Are the glory days over? The days when surfers in Kombis went off on pilgrimages and camped out in wild places, seeking the soul of the wave, the communion of the surf. Or has commercialism and crass ambition stolen the virginity of surfing? By self-confessed hodad TONY WEAVER

RIP! SLASH! CARVE! THRUST! LACERATE! SHRED! RAGE! TEAR!

That’s the language of modern surfing and it makes old-timers like me shudder. There’s a new, amped up, head-banging aggro mood that is storming the surfing world, turning one of the world’s most graceful and laid-back sports into a gladiatorial arena of neon-shouldered wetsuits and luridly-decalled boards.

But there’s also a new wave of surfers out there going back to the roots of the sport, surfing Malibu and mini-Mal longboards, styling, grooving, hanging five and hanging ten in an apparent throwback to the good old days. Yup, Soul Surfing is back. There are also scads of surfers who would rather paddle into the water at Kommetjie’s Long Beach, into a crowd of 30 other surfers, desperately fighting it out for pole position in the line-up, hoping for that one magical wave when their neon wetties and bright red boards stand out from the crowd, and some surf photographer utters the magical words “who’s that kid?”

How do you define soul surfing? For me, it’s as intangible as trying to define falling in love, or trying to describe that indescribable moment when you poke your head out of a tent in a Tanzanian sunrise and see the plains of the Serengeti stretched before you, covered in a million milling animals in a mad migration. Soul surfing is poetry and art, music and light, a moment frozen in time. A soul surfer will be able to describe in incredible detail what it felt like to be inside the barrel of a perfect Jay-Bay tube – ten years ago. A competition surfer wannabe will be able to describe in intimate detail how he or she pulled off a radical manoeuvre like a free-floating aerial, or a 360 degree tail-sliding spin down the face.

Ask me about my best waves: I can tell you in fine detail about a magic morning years ago at Olifants Bos Point when, with the mist just burning off in the early morning sun, I took off on a wave and dropped straight into a stand-up, dry barrel, my arms outstretched, not able to touch sides, the tunnel getting smaller and smaller and then, whoomph, a punch of air in the back blasting me out of the tube and onto the shoulder where three of my buddies were yelling in sheer delight at the poetry of the moment.

Somewhere along the line, surfing lost its virginity.

The January 2000 edition of Surfer Magazine, the Bible of competitive surfing, carries a cover story titled “Soulier Than Thou”. It’s a bit of a cheap shot diatribe against soul surfing which comes to the conclusion that all surfers are soul surfers, and that there is no such thing as soul surfing. Sounds contradictory, but the basic premise is that people who claim to be soul surfers are contemptuous of the competition circuit, sponsorships and kids who head bang out in the backline in brightly coloured wetsuits and logos all over their boards. But, the article implies, this is actually just a jealousy thing, because secretly, all surfers would love to be paid to do nothing but surf, so the ones who aren’t good enough to make the grade hide behind a mystical, “soulier than thou” attitude.

In the States, it seems, there is a battle on the go between those who call attention to themselves in the water, and those who surf in black wetsuits and with clear white boards, unsullied by any logos. Author of the article, Surfer field editor, Sam George, says that the soul surfer brigade have imposed a moral code on surfing “as rigid as any Calvinist’s” and the soul surfers are as conservative as those zealous Christians who in turn-of-the-century Hawaii tried to stamp out this free-spirited sport” (of surfing).

Surfer editor, Evan Slater, writes in his editorial that thanks to George’s article, “Surfer is allowing us all to break away from the crusty hierarchy and pious code of conduct that has survived since the early 70s. Just as German theologian Martin Luther argued that human intermediaries (ie the Catholic Church) shouldn’t come between one’s relationship with God, (George) contends that ‘pure’ surfing does not necessarily wear black and white and a scowl on his face just because some guy from the Ranch (a notoriously closed local Californian surf spot) said so.”

Now besides the dubious arrogance of comparing your field editor to Martin Luther, there are a number of things I find wrong with this statement. Maybe I lack a fundamental understanding of the American surfing scene. Maybe things are very different there. But in South Africa (or more precisely, the Western Cape and Overberg waters where I do most of my surfing), there is a whole different view on this debate, and it has nothing to do with Calvinism, Martin Luther or your relationship with whatever god you want to worship.

But it does have everything to do with respect.

Musician, poet, writer and surfer Robin Auld was once a competitive surfer, riding in the Western Province colours for four years. He’s been living in London and Europe for the past four years, grey places where the horizon is seldom above the top of the skyscrapers. Now he’s back in Cape Town, not in his beloved Kalk Bay, where he cut his surfing teeth on Kalk Bay Reef, but living in Kommetjie.

For Robin, “surfing is a very personal thing, and yes, I do wear a black wetsuit. I really think that the whole fight between soul surfing and commercial surfing is a load of bullshit. But these days I notice a lot less manners in the lineout, the laaities are always trying to snake you, but maybe you and I are just getting older, so we notice these things, we want some respect. The new wave of surfers seem to expect dropping in and aggro in the water as part of the game.

“The respect thing just doesn’t seem to apply anymore, and that’s sad. Aggro has taken its place, it’s almost like a corporate culture, the MTV generation, the de rigueur tattoos. I guess if I had to try and define soul surfing, I would say it means that the wave is something you try to flow with, rather than something on which you try to stamp your personality, it’s about style, it’s a dance, it is never nice to see someone rip a wave when what they are doing is fighting against the wave, it’s not about fighting the wave, it’s about letting the wave ride you.”

Picture this scene (it happened to me recently). A buddy and I are in the parking lot at Platboom in the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve. This is a rural wave in the best sense of the word, a wave of stunning beauty in a place of cosmic calm. We’re busy suiting up (yes, we do wear black wetsuits, although I confess mine has a touch of faded blue on the sleeve, and yes, our boards are free of logos, other than that of the shaper) when a Golf GTI XYZ pulls in. It’s early morning. There are a group of elderly hikers booting up for a morning’s walk through the reserve. We have already paid our respects to each other.

The Golf has five people inside and a quiver of boards on the roof. We hear the car coming from the top of the hill, boom budda boom budda boom budda boom budda boom blasting from the speakers, and those are the words of the song. The guys get out of the car, the music still blasting, one of the elderly hikers walks over and says “excuse me, guys, won’t you turn that off, this is a National Park”. He is met with a stream of “f… off you oxygen thief” and “go f… baboons” and high fives from the buddies. They are all manic, their breakfast was chemical, not organic. Among them I recognize two Cape Town “hotties”, competition surfers. My buddy and I get unsuited and head off for a secret break, knowing that Platboom would be perfection, but not having any desire to share the water with five aggro, pumped up surf wankers.

Today, you get 100 surfers in the backline at Long Beach on a good day alone, there must be tens of thousands of surfers in and around the Peninsula, probably more around Durban, and there are only so many good waves to go around. Pecking orders established over the years go out the window, and laaities drop in on you then snarl that “me and my buddies will f… you up in the parking lot” if you yell at them for their bad manners.

Kelly Slater is probably one of the most phenomenal surfers the world has ever seen. He has been the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) world champion six times, although he is probably equally famous for having been Pamela Anderson’s boyfriend. He is a surfing millionaire several times over.

In an interview with Slater last year, Outside Magazine contributing editor, Tad Friend, got to the nub of Slater, and also to the heart of what commercial surfing, the opposite of soul surfing, is all about. “(Slater) has almost single-handedly taken the sport to a new level of marketing cool. Old-school surfers carved elegant lines on long boards and prided themselves on shunning the marketplace to do manly battle with the sea. Slater is the millionaire poster boy of the new school, which cuts skate-rat maneuvers on the lip of the wave with potato-chip boards and busts air out of a sea of froth in magazine ads to demonstrate the superiority of a particular line of apparel.”

Slater tells Friend: ""Now that I've exceeded every goal I ever set," he says, "I'm basically taking this year (1999) off to look for a new fuel source. I was winning on anger, but I used all the angry energy up. I used to be able to fire up for anyone who'd beaten me in a heat, anyone who said anything negative in a magazine. I tried not just to win heats, but to dominate them, smother the other guys, kill them.”

I can’t help comparing Slater’s life, the media pressure, the hype, with that of the man I regard as one of South Africa’s greatest big wave surfers ever, Pierre de Villiers. Pierre works out of a little shaping shop in Kommetjie, and lives in a wooden house he hand built high on the hillside at Scarborough, with great views of the point break. Pierre has pioneered or helped pioneer some of the heaviest big waves in South Africa, and the world. Sunset reef off Kommetjie and Dungeons, off the Sentinel at Hout Bay, along with the Crayfish Factory at Soetwater, are his stomping grounds..

“For me, surfing is for myself,” says Pierre, “it's got nothing to do with anybody else, so I don't know how other people see me, but it's really a personal thing, it has nothing to do with how other people see me on the wave, it's how I feel on the wave, so I can't really see any sense in competitions, my surfings got nothing to do with anybody else, it's a very personal thing how and where you ride a wave.”

It is on the moving mountains of Dungeons and the Factory that Pierre moves onto a higher plane of soul. Big wave legend, Buzz Trent, once said "waves are not measured in feet and inches, they are measured in increments of fear."

I ask Pierre what it’s like paddling into Dungeons on a big day (which is about five times bigger than any wave I will ever surf, in feet and inches, but ten thousand times bigger in terms of the increment of fear). He stares into space. Then, “jaaaaaaa, paddling in at twenty feet, jaa, what does it feel like? (long pause) I think everything else is blocked out at that point, you're very single minded. Everything's happening so fast, but at the same time it's kind of like slow motion, you're dropping down and there are so many situations coming at you, there's bits of chop on the face, or there's a bit of a ledge that's come up from a rock underneath, the wave's changing all the time, it seems like time has expanded. Time gets expanded and you're noticing little things, you're noticing little bits of kelp floating up the wave, or people on the side of you, you tend to notice small things that seem to take a long time and you're adjusting to the situation all the time, you're changing the track of your board or setting an edge a little bit harder, to do the things that are going to take you out of that situation again.”

Another country, another big wave surfer.