I was 14 years old when I joined the chorus of voices chanting, “surfers rule.” We scrawled it on our Pee Chee folders and chalked it onto the sidewalks we skateboarded. We shouted it and we believed it wholly.
That was until someone holding actual authority put us in our places. In my case, that was parents, teachers, and, once or twice, a cop who thought we were being a bit too rowdy, which we were. But what if the code we surfers lived by extended beyond our local surf breaks and bled into a society where rules are written miles from the ocean by those bound by poly suits and hard shoes?
Most surfers I have known live by unwritten rules enforced not by jail time but the possibility of ostracism from our tribe. Of course, there are exceptions to these rules, and in our zeal, we sometimes miscarry justice.
Nonetheless, I believe our method works far better than legislation from people who have never known the joy of a north swell or traded the sting of winter’s dawn for the bliss of racing the shadow of a six-foot wall of water being pumped from the Aleutians to your home break.
The thick padding they wear, along with all that hair gel, insulates them against the reality of the natural world. If that were not enough, a silk noose chokes the brain from the blood necessary to think clearly. No wonder Sacramento and Washington rarely get it right.
If surfers ruled, the waste of a million toilets would not be flushed into the ocean, making Tijuana Sloughs unsurfable and much of the surrounding land uninhabitable. We would find a way to protect the vulnerable sea creatures and the increasing numbers of people who view the ocean as their favorite playground.
Throwing a lit cigarette from a car would be punishable by exile. Littering the beach would carry the fine of having to pick up yours and everybody else’s trash on the offended property for a year. Kidnapping tiny and helpless animals from the tidepools and leaving them to die in buckets in your back yard would be punishable by drinking salt water until you puked.
Shoulder hopping a local would carry the same punishment it always has: You would be forced to return to your point of origin until you realized the full extent of your crime.
While the above is little more than a childhood fantasy, my friend Ken Eichenberg and I recently established a YouTube Channel called Surfers Rule. Our aim is to correct some of society’s offenses against those of us who live as much in salt water as we do on land.
While we hope to make our points, we vow to do it with joy, revealing never-before-told surf stories, offering tips on surfing and health, doing honest product reviews, introducing you to those who are making a difference in our fight to protect our oceans, and premiering new music.
Learn more about Surfers Rule here. While there, don’t forget to subscribe. With a little work, surfers ruling may no longer be a fantasy, but become a reality. And, how cool would that be for us, the surfers of the world, along with everyone else?
