By: Stuart Kellermyer

It is easy to espouse vitriolic rhetoric against novice surfers and the crowds they create, but we all had to start somewhere. I didn’t pick up surfing until I was eighteen, but my experience as a neophyte was as different from my father’s experience as it is from what I see today. I had to actually go into a surf shop and talk to surfers. I had to fork over real money for a hand crafted, hydrodynamic work of art, conceived of and created by a surfer. Any mistakes I made were remunerated with flesh, by board, by bottom contour or by angry local. I won’t say there were no surf schools then, but I wasn’t aware of any, and they were certainly less pervasive. I was lucky enough to work with a cool Hawaiian cat who mentored me through my first year of trying to ride waves. He taught me more than how to stand on a board. He taught me how not to be a kook. He explained the dynamics of a lineup, as well as proper etiquette. He told me where to go, and more importantly were not to go. These are all valuable lessons which are simply overlooked today. The nuance and understanding surfing as a culture is ostensibly ignored.

The story of how you become a surfer in the new millennia was reveled to me last summer in one trip to the Santa Cruz Costco. There was a large south swell running, double overhead at good exposures, and after a morning session north of town my wife and I stopped in at the wholesale giant on our way home. As we parked I noticed a super stoked cat putting fins on two brand new Wavestorms. I could tell he was radical because of the flame decals on his EuroVan. Once inside the store we passed the rack displaying the made in Taiwan watercrafts and witnessed several being pulled down and placed in shopping carts. Surfboards in shopping carts? (It still hurts if I think to hard about it.) In the checkout line I counted five being rung up at various registers. We were surrounded. It felt like being the lineup. Finally as we wheeled our cart out passed the “Returns” line there it was, the cuop de gras. A gentleman, still with sand in his hair, holding his buckled board patiently waiting to exchange it for a new one. Let me be clear, this was a day with consequences, even at beginner breaks. At high tide lifeguards and fire fighters were busy plucking the unsuspecting summer enthusiasts off rocks, jetties and break walls all over town. None of these people I saw buying boards at Costco looked like surfers, and most didn’t appear to be the least bit athletic, but there they were ready and willing to put themselves, their children and others in danger for under a hundred dollars. My guess is this was not the last broken Wavestorm returned that day.

To illustrate my strong feelings about, or rather against, the Wavestorm I need not look further than a recent experience at one of my favorite summer breaks. I was out on a medium size southwest swell morning getting my share when this gentleman and his Costco special paddles out. He moves straight to the center of the pack and immediately challenges for any bump moving through the lineup. Despite this obvious breach of etiquette he had no trouble picking off a few waves with the foam barge he was piloting. He wasn’t a bad surfer, but had no discernible style. He had only one move; Drop in, grab rail to come off the bottom then straight line. I don’t know if he could turn that thing, because I never saw an attempt. As I sat on the outside waiting for a set I noticed the kelp bed rise with incoming swell. The bowl was forming directly in front of me so there was no need to reposition. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see the Wavestormer scrapping toward me placing himself directly in my path, essentially boxing me out of a wave that came to me like a gift. Fine, after a few disagreeable mutters, I altered my position and moved to grab the third wave in the set. The wave was over head and I was deep, but the section breaking before me was easily makeable. Just as I was coming clear of the white water, I see this same “gentleman” on his way back out. He turns and drops on the tail end my wave. Any hope I had of making the section dashed by homie on his foamy. I was forced to ditch in the soup as he tried to navigate the shore pound barrel section for which he felt was worth burning me.

As I stood in the shallow froth and gather my board I looked to my left ready to sound off my displeasure, when I see that true justice had been served. The blue kook craft had been folded in half. The providence dispensed by the afore mentioned shore pound provided a more profound message than would any words of mine. On any other surfboard this would have been an expensive and inconvenient dose of karma, but two days later, at the same break, on a new Wavestorm, replaced for free, out paddles the shoulder hopper showing the same disregard for priority in the lineup and displaying no semblance of surf etiquette. Without any serious consequence his approach, much like his style, did not improve.

So my problem with the Wavestorm is not the people who ride them, or attempt to ride them. I get it. Surfing is cool and everybody wants to be a surfer. After all that is what the industry has created through imagery and marketing. There are many different brands of foam boards with which I do not take issue. So it is not about the soft tops, though after being hit by one I can attest to the hardness of their stiff plastic bottom surface as well as the sharpness of their rubberized fins. I do prefer having a beginner pitch a foamy in front of me rather than a real board. I don’t blame Costco for selling them. It’s a billion dollar industry so why not try and get a piece. As I see it, it’s the return policy that creates the true issue. You can get your stick for under a hundred bucks, and no matter if you paddle out where you have no business, surf like a kook and snap it, run it over in the parking lot, or have it fly off your car because you forget to or don’t know how to tie it down, you just return it and it is replaced. No questions asked, no lessons learned. There are no repercussions. Unless they hurt themselves or drown, hurt someone else out of pure cluelessness, or get served some old fashion surf justice with a beat down on the beach (which is highly frowned upon) the kooks will remain kooks with no incentive to change.

Perhaps I should take my grievance directly to Costco… I’d rather petition the surfers. So on a final note; I was at a stoplight behind a Lexus SUV with a pair of Wavestorms on the racks. On the rear bumper was a sticker that read; “Buy Local”. Sound advice, perhaps that should extend to your local shaper as well as your produce. There are artists and craftsmen (and women) in every surf town attempting to scratch a living out of shaping surfboards. My advice is; go into a local surf shop, talk to the people who ride and shape good boards. Tell them where you’re at with your surfing and where you want to go. You might take away more than a beautiful new wave riding craft. You might gain some knowledge and perspective the cashier at Costco will never be able to provide.