Will Surfers Ever Stop Chasing Their Tails?

Ed note: the following is the 634th installment of our new weekly email chain called the Stab Fwd. If you’re into it, subscribe here.

Big news this week. 

Within a few short weeks, we’ll be watching the world’s best-ish battle it out at Pipe Masters (unless Koa Rothman decides to paddle out that day). Take a moment and let that settle in.  

Now, ready for the catch(es)? Steamer Lane is back on tour and the World Title will be decided at a one-day event at Lower Trestles. 

I’m going to be honest, nearly earnest, here. I love the WSL. I love making fun of it, too, but we’ll get to that. I watch every comp and I think there are some great people involved in that organization. Surfing is lucky to have such a good platform and surf fans are lucky to have events that entertain and inspire us and make us yell obscenities at a screen. 

And, damn, we’re harsh on it. That’s because we surf. 

Which means that we know surfing intimately, intuitively, so that we scoff at anything that might water down what we know to be the best thing in the world. 

Which means that if competitive surfing dies, nothing really changes for us. 

Which means that we are trained to avoid satisfaction. 

That list is far from comprehensive and I’ve thought about the first two in depth before, but I’ve never really considered the third. 

Satisfaction is a curse in surfing. It’d leave you happy to dick around in waist-high waves your whole life. It’s the difference between Netflix and putting on that wet wetsuit when the wind randomly decides to swing offshore on a cold winter afternoon. It’s never wanting to try that new board or push harder on your next turn. 

We all know better. 

Think about kicking out after wrangling one of the better tubes of your life. Of course you’re fucking happy — experiences like that expose you to layers of life whose existence you couldn’t even fathom otherwise — but now you know you have to sit a little bit deeper on the next one. 

Maybe that makes us more enlightened. Or maybe it makes us akin to dogs chasing laser beams. I’m good with either, as long as we keep getting waves. 

Ok now scroll down for the irreverence. 

Major WSL Update: 2021 Tour Is ON, Hawaii Starts In Less Than A Month, Trestles To Decide World Champion

Click in for the deets. Wouldn’t it be kind of funny if Kolohe Andino won the World Title without winning a regular event and can I put some money on that?

Environmental Activism At Your Fingertips

You know what else is at my fingertips? A keyboard. This new organization, Surfers For Climate, sounds great — but I have to say something here. They shared a post asking people to drop a shaka. Ummm, excuse me. Who drops a shaka? You throw a shaka and that is not a mistake you want to make heading into Hawaii season

Home Has Never Been So Sweet

Australia is not my home but this makes me wish otherwise. This is the feel-good short surf film the world needs right now and/or at any other point in time. And if it’s not your vibe, watch the Noah Beshcen edit. That’s a good way to calibrate where you sit on the 2020 surf spectrum.

Do you want to surf better but maybe not surf better? 

Confused? Ok, get ready to get more confused by watching Mac from the long-running American sitcom It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia surf on a board with an electric surf fin. Yeah, or don’t. Up to you.

Do you want to surf small waves with fervor?

Consult this edit of the aforementioned Kolohe surfing small waves with fervor. I think Stab’s own Michael “Mikey C” Ciaramella found the perfect words for it. 

“It reminded us of the absurdly entertaining vimeo clips Brother used to publish about a decade ago. You know, the ones that got you legitimately psyched to go surf tiny waves.” 

“Yeah, this is a little like that. But with a beard.”

One last thing: 

Never trust a person who describes any wave over 6-foot with any odd number that doesn’t end in 5.