Citater om surfing

"Thus, for many serious surfers this lifestyle is not simply an association with the appropriate status markers (clothing, brand names, travel destinations) but with the physical act of surfing and the requirement to live near the ocean and maintain a flexible work schedule"

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"The kinds of choices surfers make about work, income, scheduling, and where to live suggest that there is something in surfing that encourages transgression of certain dominant norms. Furthermore, the practice of surfing provides little in the way of accomplishment or achievement in the traditional sense. There is no goal, no box to check when finished. In addition there is no destination, no linear movement. The surfer exits his daily pursuit of pleasure at the same place as he started.

Hence, there is a cyclical quality to the surfing experience. There is something decidedly different about the accomplishments of surfing, something Eastern, even, in the search for brief moments of pleasure through repetition, dedication, and process. The surf arrives in repetitive sets which take their rhythm from distant storms and lunar cycles. Moreover, surf appears seasonally, following the long solar cycle. Even the riding of the wave itself is a cyclical process: paddle out, wait, turn and ride, then paddle out again, wait, turn and ride. It has no logical ending or beginning. "(Duane 1996b:114).

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"Many surfers come to understand surfing as meditation or process, not as conquest and immediate accomplishment. After all, over years of surfing, only a few hours are actually spent standing up riding waves, while most of one’s time is spent waiting, watching, and anticipating. Listen to retired professional, Mickey Munoz, in Liquid Stage (1996):

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I’m out -- sitting out there alone. And I’m thinking ... this is what I need, this yoga of sitting and meditating and waiting for the wave, and then I realized that -- that surfing, for me, was the process of surfing, not the wave riding itself. That was only the icing on the cake ... The real meat of surfing is living life.

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So, again, we see that there is something different about surfing which encourages the decision to forego the pursuit of more Western (rational, masculine, etc.) goals and instead pursue waves - ephemeral moments of experience. In some cases, surfers who embrace these alternative ideas have clashed with those who sought to commercialize the sport."

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Many surfers have tried to resist these mainstream messages and the few published biographies of dedicated surfers reveal the unique solutions and iconoclastic philosophies that have emerged as a result of the nearly continuous tension between commercialism and the everyday experience of the sport, which is rooted in coastal places and their natural cycles. But surfing, as an independent and radical subculture, represented a threat to the Protestant work ethic, to the middle-class contract, to those who believe in constant growth for its own sake. There are many elements of the subculture which did not rest well with Western, capitalistic ideology. A waitress at the beginning of the film Big Wednesday makes the point clearly:

"You damned delinquents are going to have to settle down someday and get a respectable job," she tells the surfers.

"But we’re well respected surfers," they reply.

"Shit," she says, "the sport’s a disease.""

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"Mike Doyle (tidligere redaktør af magasinet "Surfer") feels that this is his most important contribution to his readers:

I think too many people feel guilty about enjoying themselves. I think the world would be a lot happier place if everybody spent a little time every day doing something they really loved. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, one thing I can tell people that might be useful for them, it’s this: It’s okay to have fun (Doyle 1993:235)."

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Alle ovenstående citater er fra "Waves of Commodification: A Critical Investigation Into Surfing Subculture".

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"Du kan ikke bare tage fra havet - du bliver også nødt til at give noget tilbage" - professionel windsurfer Fabrice Beaux, i filmen "New hawaii"

For at forklare hans syn på hvordan surfere skal behandle havet, kysten og den kultur der er i det område. Det han giver tilbage til området, er at lære de lokale fiskere og børn, at bruge bølgerne og havet til at lege i.

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