Last week I found myself standing in the front of a classroom at an elite California University. I was there to talk about surfing to a class that was studying…the surf industry.

As I thought about what I would say to this classroom full of freshmen from all over the country paying top dollar in hopes of a “surf business education”, it hit me how much change I’ve witnessed in my 25 years of mixing it up in the surf world. I decided I would not mention how I got my start: sweeping toxic chemicals into an alley dumpster, pumping resin into huge drums and organizing the porno mags on the back of the glassers toilets when I was 15. But I would mention that it was an unorthodox industry to break into, and that I liked to think my NSSA resume and ability to recall the sticker placements of every professional surfer from 1996 played a factor in my acceptance. I was not able to enroll in Surf Industry 285 at a major university as they were, and the skillset that got me in was no longer useful either.

As I worked my way from the grom comps, to the glass shop to the surf shop to the magazine shop to making my own media shop, I’ve seen major shifts in boards, brands, competition, films and seen how we consume our surf content completely change in a relatively short amount of time and I’ve managed to operate fairly independently for the last 15 years. I’m from an interesting time. I straddled the fence of two polar opposite eras. One that was an adolescent in a world with multiple magazines and no cell phones to one that was in their 20s unable fathom the need for a print mag or navigate a world without a cell phone. As this class unknowingly forced me to review the tape of surf history, my surf history, and assess our status as an allegedly billion dollar industry full of brands that can barely afford to pay someone on their staff to edit an Instagram clip, I reckon with the fact that we’ve become Rome in wet trunks. A teetering, crumbling, publicly traded corporate industry in the red. It quickly becomes clear to me that the surf map these 18 year olds are trying to study is very much not the territory anymore.

I walked into the classroom that day with a text on my phone from a major marketing manager at one of the biggest surf brands in the world that doesn’t advertise or pay me anything asking me why I didn’t tag them on an Instagram post featuring one of their team riders. I had gotten it from the surfer directly. Questions like this a decade ago would seem impossible. I would have been taken to sushi lunch for running a clip or photo of said brands surfer and I'd return to my desk a hero drunk on Japanese light beer. The media ran the entertainment and brands paid top dollar to make the media man dance and everyone made money and the industry was sturdy and supported each other. Now brands expect media men and consumers to dance for free. But why? This industry no longer works together. It’s every brand, surfer and league for themselves. Us vs. them. It is rare that collaboration works anymore. And there are exceptions like what we did with Reef this year where stories and marketing work together and rad things are made, so there is a model. And I hope there is more of that. But it can’t be counted on.

As I stared into the stoned over eyes of the youth in that classroom learning the surf industry, I wondered what I could share with them of value? What could I say that might stick with them, or guide them? I was standing in the middle of a burning museum trying to tell them about what was once inside. All I could do was share that I have dedicated my career to trying to package and present surfers and surfing the way I enjoy it — as the rad, beautiful, healthy, edgy, fun, irreverent, counter culture-light lifestyle that I have moshed with all my life and will continue to do so whether big surf brands want me to or not. The longer we exist out here alone, the harder it will be to get rid of us and the less we need them anyway. Cockroaches spitting beat surf poetry and Friday newsletters, refusing to go away because we’re too determined and too nimble and too small and influential to fail. Throw a bucket on the flames if you can. Class dismissed.—Travis Ferré

[Above photo: Sally Mann, Picnic, 1992]