ALAS POOR SURFER, I KNEW HER WELL
When Surfer magazine closed it doors recently we lost not only a 60-year surfing institution but a slice of our surfing identity
By Tim Baker
I was enormously fond of Surfer magazine because (let’s be honest here), quite apart from their proud history, stunning photography and generally lucid prose, they used to send me money on the reg - crisp, paper, bank cheques in glorious US dollars at a time when they were worth about double their value in a languishing Aussie dollar. Those Surfer magazine cheques kept me alive during a lean patch in the life of a freelance surf writer – the occasional major feature assignment was like winning lotto.
Surf journalists have been lining up to write their thoughtful and heartfelt eulogies to Surfer Magazine, which abruptly shut its doors last week, brought on by the slow suffocation of the internet, and finished off with the hammer blow of COVID-19. So, I guess it’s my turn.
It’s difficult today to imagine a time when a surfing magazine would send a freelance writer to the Mentawai Islands, all expenses paid, to write one 4000 word feature article and pay them the equivalent of what was for me close to a month’s income for my trouble. No social media posts. No blogs. No video clips. Just one long, indulgent, rambling rave that none of us would ever have any way of knowing if anyone would read or not.
Difficult, also, to imagine a time when a surfing magazine would rent a large, two-storey beachfront abode to house a dozen of its staff and contributors for the duration of the Hawaiian contest season. Even harder to envision a hundred or more of the who’s who of pro surfing rocking up at said abode for a good old-fashioned “slide-night” in which highlights of the surf season, in the form of slides, or transparencies, would be rendered wall-size on a large screen with the help of an apparatus known fittingly as a projector. The crowd would hoot and holler and chug beers, the waft of herbal smoke heavy in the tropical air, and the audience response would help select images for the magazine’s Hawaiian coverage. That Hawaii issue would be the first glimpse most mainland surfers would get of their surfing heroes’ performances in the Islands, a month or so later, and a couple of months later for those of us in the Antipodes.
Surfer was born in a different time, in a world almost unrecognisable to the young surfer of today. When John Severson cobbled together that first issue of what he called “The Surfer” back in 1960 he was looking to help galvanise a collective identity for surfers, who were a much-maligned minority in mainland America, considered lay-abouts and bums. Like many surfers of the day, he was convinced they were on to something deeply worthwhile, in their child-like play in the ocean. And he was determined that a valid and fulfilling lifestyle could be built around wave-riding, just as it had been in Hawaii for centuries.
A subtle cultural divide distinguished the two main US magazines. Surf-ER, the emphasis always on that final syllable to distinguish it from its main rival, spoke to a sense of identity, who we were. Surf-ING referred to an activity, the physical act of wave-riding. Surf-ING was younger, more progressive, quicker to jump on the latest trend or generation of rippers, from the first aspiring pro’s of the Free Ride era - Rabbit Bartholomew, Shaun Tomson, Mark Richards – in the ‘70s to the so-called New School of Kelly Slater, Rob Machado, Shane Dorian, Ross Williams in the ‘90s, and the Kai Neville Modern Collective crew - Jordy Smith, Dane Reynolds, Dusty Payne, of the 2000s.
Surfer was more timeless, authoritative, less fickle, with a certain moral gravitas. Getting a story or photo, or especially a cover, in Surfer was a Big Deal. And the people at the helm of this august journal seemed to me larger than life. Former editor Steve Hawk was skate legend Tony Hawk’s big brother, for goodness sake. Matt Warshaw became the chief historian of our entire sport and culture. Steve Pezman started the Surfers Journal, literally the last man standing in the world of print surf media in the US. Pez once interviewed counter culture guru and LSD advocate Timothy Leary, a living link to modern surfing’s hippy roots.
The photographers were a breed of their own - legendary eccentrics with personal foibles that ran the gamut from loveable to terrifying, often within the same character. Art Brewer could be deeply intimidating or a playful Labrador. He had a fisherman friend in Hawaii who hoisted a flag when he had a fresh catch of ahi (tuna) to sell and Art would call in to grab a slab. He must have warmed to this young Aussie surf scribe who was totally in awe of him because he patiently taught me how to cook blackened seared ahi one balmy Hawaiian evening. After a hard day’s surfing and scribbling notes of the aquatic action, accompanied with a six pack of Sierra Nevada pale ale, I thought it the most delicious and exotic thing I’d ever eaten.
Aaron Lloyd was a sensitive artiste and quietly practised calligraphy when not shooting Pipe and gave me a gift of a hand-painted card depicting one of his vaguely eastern characters that represented something so profound I can’t quite recall it. John Bilderback once told me that if you tried to hire a commercial photographer to swim out at Sunset Beach and shoot a roll of 36 frames as close to the pit as possible, you couldn’t pay them enough to do it. Wildly talented surf photographers like him would put their lives on the line repeatedly in the hope of scoring a few hundred bucks for a double page spread or poster or the relative fortune of a cover. The late Warren Bolster hired a helicopter at vast expense to give us our first aerial view of the North Shore surf, decades before drones would make it so common place to become dull.
The magazine’s photo editor would dole out his precious supply of film, usually Velvia, the photographers would shoot carefully and discerningly to make their quota last as long as possible, send it off to “town” (a photo store in Honolulu) and get it back a couple of days later in quaint little plastic boxes, then pore over them on light boxes, using little magnifying glasses called lupes, to see what photographic gold they had captured. They’d carefully place their selected highlights in round “carousels” and then they’d invite the entire North Shore surf community over to witness their splendour projected on the big screen accompanied by a raucous running commentary from some of the biggest names in surfing, as the relentless Pacific Ocean roared in the background. These days we all scroll through our Instagram feeds alone on our phones, agonising over likes, and call it progress.
The death knell the internet has delivered to print media has been well-documented and the irony of writing about all this print and paper nostalgia on a surfing website does not escape me. I read in the comments section of one of the nastier surfing sites that no one but surf journalists cared about the demise of surfing magazines, but I’m not convinced that is true. Will anyone ever pore over the archives of surfing websites the way we leaf through and treasure old surfing magazines?
A few personal highlights: Dave Parmenter’s Hemingway-esque Alaska story evoking the natural wonder of a bold new surfing frontier, Derek Hynd’s annual, carnivorous Top 44 review, in which he’d devour pro surfing reputations like wounded gazelles, the iconic Duke Kahanamoku cover of their annual Big Issue - Surfer’s choice of the surfer of the century reflecting their long-lens view of history, Ted Grambeau’s panoramic travel spreads from the far reaches of the surfable world, surviving on his wits and maxed out credit cards.
The activity of Surf-ING will always endure, but I wonder if the identity of the Surf-ER took a hit with the demise of its printed name-sake. Who are we without a collective village square to share and pass around, to hold in our hands, roll up and stuff in a backup for some inflight reading on a surf trip, to cut up and stick on our bedroom walls?
I love working on this website. We have video, sound, unrestrained by the physical limitations of page counts and ad ratios and the interminable grind of monthly deadlines. But we’ll always be pixels on a screen, dots and dashes in a computer code, no matter how lovingly assembled.
The tactile experience of a fresh box of magazines straight from the printers, the feel, the smell, the weight, toasted with a carton of beer and a bag of corn chips, is a heady kick that’s hard to match. So, I’ll raise a glass and shed a tear for the sad demise of a once great publication. Those US cheques had long since dried up and I’m not sure any surf writer will ever again score an all expenses paid junket to the Mentawais and be paid handsomely for the verbiage they produce. But it sure was good while it lasted.
