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In Reply to: communication breakdown posted by tunenut on August 1, 2005 at 18:47:17:
the popularity of the sport, no one would give a hoot about the championships, no surfing millionaire board shop owners/designers/marketers.
I'd bet one could travel to most of the places shown in TES and still be the only guy catching the waves...
Follow Ups:
When you see the surfing culture in Hawaii in the 50s as portrayed in Riding Giants, it truly seems it was a beautiful and idyllic time. I find it hard to blame the people who were there for looking at the crowds now and remembering fondly times when they and their friends had these amazing waves all to themselves and the small circle of friends who centered their lives around this completely uncommercial life.If you see the first part of this movie, you will see that these particular people are not the ones who care about championships and millionaire surf apparel companies. Of course, some people found ways to make a good living and others got rich, but that's not what the early people were in it for (again according to the movie and it seems pretty accurate). They were just living cheap, close to nature and enjoying their days. And then Gidget hit. I think it is the Gidget movies that get most of their criticism, not Endless Summer.
I think that you hit the nail on the head. The Gidget films brought thousands to surfing. I think the problem that the big wave surfers had with those films was that they misrepresented their lifestyle, and the people who knew nothing about surfers absorbed those images, thinking that is what surfers did and who they were. The beach bum, after nothing but girls, drinking on the beach, etc. Those Gidget films did not show the extreme amount of work to obtain a certain skill level, or the risk to life and limb. I think that is what they complain about.I think you can see this in the admiration they had for Laird Hamilton, and what he has accomplished. He was certainly young, and actually eclipsed their accomplishments. But he paid his dues, worked very hard, and ultimately, became, according them, the best big wave surfer in the world.
I think the same thing applied a number of years ago when Michael Jordon tried to play baseball. Many major league baseball players were not happy he was allowed to attend spring training. Randy Johnson quipped that he would knock him out of his Air Jordons if he ever pitched to him. Some players felt that they had worked their lives to acheive their level of success, and here was a guy that basically paid his way onto the team. Well, I suspect that most of the people who flocked to the beaches of Hawaii did so because they thought it cool.
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