The Spirit of Surfing: What I Learned In Porter 33A

Ride a Wave Organization - Johnny Promo


As the quarter comes to a close, it is a good time to reflect on what I've learned from each of my courses. With my major being film and digital media, I took special interest in the media aspect of this highly informative Porter Surf Aesthetics course. Though I was only able to make one of the Tuesday screenings in person, I made time to watch one film from each week on my own as listed on the syllabus. My conclusion after seeing each of these movies, discussing them in class, and reading the papers on media representation is that the shore represents the portal to another place. Coming into this class, my perception of the beach and surf scene was the just the physical understanding of the elements as they existed prima facie. As I learned about the historical roots of surfing through movies, articles, photos, and the well presented Salt of the Earth Conference, I became more aware of the spiritual connection surfers have with the waves.

In my mind, I draw a strong line between the documentary surf films with their serious athletes and the surf narratives with their typecast characters. Though both types of surf film have their differences, one thing remains the same; to enter the shore is to leave the world behind. This was exhibited best in a physical sense by the 1966 film The Endless Summer in the scene where the surfers travel on foot to reach an untouched shore. Their journey had taken them all around the world and to fully escape all civilization they walked across seven miles of sand dunes barefoot to reach the ocean. When they arrived at the shore, they played in the waves with the spirit of astronauts playing on the moon - elated to freely explore their own untouched world. The spiritual sense of leaving the world was best exhibited by the Rio theatre screening of Hawaiian: The Legend of Eddie Aikau (2013) during the Salt of the Earth Conference. This film showed the joy Aikau gained through his spiritual connection with the waves, and how he used that energy to positively affect the people around him. Though I am not an experienced surfer of any sorts, I can relate to his feelings with the joy I experience skiing on a fresh powder day. I've been skiing nearly all my life and finding an untouched powder run through the trees is one of the most satisfying feelings in all the world. Surfers, I imagine, experience similar elation when they catch their best wave of the day.

One of the reasons I chose to work with the Ride a Wave Organization for my final project was due to my fascination with the concept of localism. Before taking this class, I had a vague idea that native Santa Cruz surfers might not like hundreds of people clogging up their breaks, but I was intrigued to learn that it was a legitimate problem across the globe. Ever since the first two surf clubs were formed on the shores of Hawaii, localism has caused constant rifts between travelers and natives. Working with the Ride a Wave Organization gave me the chance to support an organization that welcomes people from around the world to celebrate surfing, not the self. The video Meagan Freeman and I made shows the joy that surfing can bring to someone considered to be an outsider.

All in all, I've learned a lot in this class. Trey, keep up the good work. I look forward to seeing that beautiful redwood plank board hanging in the Porter dining hall very soon.