Week 3: A Sentimental Journey

For this post, I borrow the title of one of the readings, because while this set of readings was important in establishing surfing's beginnings in California, I also think they were key in identifying what makes surfing so personal and even spiritual for some. Reading about Granny, Doc, Vince, Jim, John, etc and their post-Depression surfing experiences painted a kind of idyllic scene. It definitely played into the American obsession with nostalgia, for me, harkening back to a "simpler time" when summer fun was leaving the house and raising hell with your friends. While I think that leaning too heavily on nostalgia is unhealthy and unoriginal, these articles were definitely helpful in painting surfing as more than just a sport for braggadocios but as an all-encompassing lifestyle, that in Doc's case was incredibly healing as a victim of PTSD. As was mentioned in discussion today, surfing gets you in touch with nature in its purest form, wind, weather and water. That's what impresses me most about forming relationships ocean through any sport, because it is so universal. I enjoyed these readings a lot because they were definitely less about the materialism, localism and competition usually associated with surfing. This era of surfing is kind of, in my opinion, the calm before the storm - surfing is still small enough to avoid overcrowding, there's little to no territorialism, and it hasn't been fully commercialized and bastardized by Hollywood and the Beach Boys.

(woo! 11:52!)