There were science experiments conducted in the 1930’s by comparative psychologist Dr Winthrop Niles Kellogg. He aimed to raise a baby chimpanzee alongside a human newborn in exactly the same way, in an attempt to see if the ape could start to adopt human behavior patterns over time. Do you want to know what happened every time?

The baby starts acting like a monkey.

I have no idea what this has to do with anything but it seems somehow relevant.

I’m feeling quite chalant [Editor’s note: “chalant” is not an actual English word, but if you apply the opposite of “nonchalant” here it works exactly as Joel intended it to so we let it stay. Poetic license or something. As you were.—ed.] about surfing this weekend to be honest.

Nostalgia is a disease, I know. Still, being the hypocrite that I am, the vast majority of music, movies, literature, pop culture I consume and enjoy is pre-90s. The good old days, before I was even born. The same goes for surfing.

Very chalant actually. I don’t want to say with certainty that surfing and it’s adjacent cultures were better whenever ‘back then’ was, but I can’t help thinking it sometimes.

Like now. I’m staring blankly at a seemingly endless screensaver telling me to ‘Stay Tuned. The MEO Pro Portugal pres. by Rip Curl will be right back!’ I know I’m not missing much though. I was very offended, however, when the WSL broadcast team cut to the same screensaver a few weeks ago, just as the local boy Barron Mamiya had conquered Sunset and was about to receive his regal ride up the beach, high up on the shoulders of the exuberant crowd and his peers. Imagine this happening just as a young Rafael Nadal clinches his first prestigious Wimbledon title and collapses, exhausted to the lawn court.

“Stay tuned, we’ll be right back!” Heinous. Egregious. Disrespectful.

Log champ Joel Tudor getting canceled by our surf overlords from a tour that doesn’t even exist.

Parko going from lifesaver to fun police.

Zuckerbot claiming his 15-ft feats to the world. Fuck right off!

French Champagne taste on a lite beer budget. I can’t be satisfied.

But then I got a message from my brother back home in Durban. The South African East Coast has recently been lit up by an off-season run of swell and I was expecting more picture and video evidence of the sweet, gorgeous carnage. Some sub-tropical punch between the piers.

But no. He had been going through some old box of forgotten belongings in a dark, dusty closet at mom and dad’s when he came across a relic of sorts. An antique of a bygone era. An old DVD copy of Kelly Slater and the Young Guns, 1 and 2. Remember those?

I was 13 years old when the original came out in 2004. I had a big, bright blue and orange Gunston 500 poster on my wall. The historic comp had in recent years been rebranded as the MR Price Pro because cigarettes couldn’t sponsor sporting events anymore. Bacardi was still a sponsor though and bikini clad girls would throw branded frisbee’s into the sweaty masses from the judges tower and winner’s stage. If you caught one (frisbee, not bikini girl) you could bring it to the tower and receive a free six pack of fruity new Bacardi Breezers, available in a variety of tropical flavors. I somehow managed to snag a frisbee in the melee and brokered a deal with one of the older local beach bums. He could share the pack of Bacardi Breezers with my buddy and I if he secured them for us. I got drunk for the first time off the overly sweet fizzy pop, there in the North Beach parking lot and felt pretty cool about it. I don’t remember surfing that day.

The DVDs came free with my subscription of Zigzag Magazine. It was the best thing I had ever laid eyes on at the time and I watched it religiously, at least once a day. I played the soundtrack in my head throughout sessions and imagined I could do the same things as a young Dane Reynolds. Of course I was only dreaming.

Present day: I immediately went online to see if I could find a copy and what do you know, you can find decent quality versions right on good old YouTube. I was quickly warped back to a gromhood, frothing out over Ry Craike’s reverses and Mar Ohno’s effortless style. The wizardry of young Jeremy Flores, Clay Marzo and Julian Wilson. Suddenly all the other noise was drowned out by an electrifying Wolfmother riff.

So do yourself a favour and unsubscribe from the bullshit, even if it’s only for an hour. Watch this before your next session or at least add it to your Spotify playlist and let the windows rattle on the way down to the beach and feel the sweet Bacardi Breeze after. Maybe nostalgia isn’t such a bad thing. —Joel van Wyk