Stab’s Guide To International Surfing Day

Today, the Laird’s day of June 18th (or the 17th, depending on your side of the international dateline), is International Surfing Day. It falls smack-dab between World Juggling Day and International Picnic Day. Which is to say: It is incredibly important. Sacred even.

You clicked this article because you surf. Or because you are very bad at managing your time on the internet. Probably both. Anyway, you are here and we are here, so let’s make something out of it.

International Surfing Day was invented by Surfing Magazine and The Surfrider Foundation in 2004, probably as a Ponzi scheme. Its Wikipedia definition (a real thing) says it’s a worldwide celebration of surfing. It then goes on to say something about dune restoration projects and I stopped reading because I didn’t want Google to start targeting me with ads about Birkenstocks. 

Anyway, I left the page feeling like I knew enough to write a guide. Here we go. 

The brighter side of sharing, with Kelly Slater.

Community Bonding.
International Surfing Day is about love, which means it’s the best day of the year to get into a fight in the lineup. Grabbing somebody by the collar of their zipper-less entry wetsuit and punching their face repetitively only proves that you love surfing more than them. Find me a judge that won’t be swayed by this defence and I’ll find you a giant pussy.

International Surfing Day: It’s not for a party of one! Or, is it?

Festivities.
Be a community leader by hosting a free screening of the Occumentary. Cook up a free barbeque. Fill an entire cooler with enough ice-cold beverages to go around. Put in a lot of effort to make it a memorable event for everyone. Invite only your dog.

Be an eco-warrior, be like Rob! Photo: Paul Catalano

Being an environmental eco-green warrior who saves the entire planet.
You might notice pieces of trash as you leave the beach with your chemical surfboard that will take hundreds of years to disintegrate and your wetsuit made of petroleum and all the blood, war, and general harm that goes into the production of it. Be sure to grab two pieces. Remember: You are an eco-warrior. You are Rob Machado.

Social Media.
The point of ISD is to go surfing today. Posting a surf photo that wasn’t taken today is not only purpose-defeating, it is also a way of asserting dominance over your competition and establishing somewhere, buried deep down beneath layers of consciousness, that you are a good candidate for reproduction.

Even if you live in a wave-starved region, you shouldn’t need a reason to suit up and paddle out. Matt Pagan demonstrates in his home of Los Angeles.

Surfing.
Be grateful that it exists and that even though it can be paradoxical and sometimes feel arbitrary, it subdues your insanity a great deal — but not to a level in which it is unacceptable to read or write asshole articles about its celebratory day on the internet. Surf for at least three hours.