The Surf Curse
The other day I did something extremely uncharacteristic. I woke up early on a sunny Sunday and bolted down the coast to…Salt Creek? Yeah, I went down and surfed a wave that might as well be placed next to the fountain at Fashion Island mall. It’s fickle, tricky, unfathomably crowded and freakishly pretty — it’s like a gap-toothed runway model. It’s so beautiful it’s ugly. Or vice versa.
I was meeting a friend down there and as odd as it was to be in the epicenter of Orange County on a day that promised to be about as crowded as Southern California can be (weekend, sunny, south swell, been flat for weeks, etc), I walked down to the beach to find fun peaks and at least the first 30 minutes, a pretty modest crowd. I’ll take it, and did.
Within the time it took for two long-period sets to come — it was painfully inconsistent — the crowd turned thick and I lost interest. I sat there basically waving the white flag, happy to enjoy the sun and clear water and the fact that I got a few waves this early on a Sunday when I overheard a few guys talking about a recent trip to Italy.
The first guy raved about it being his first vacation in some time and how much fun he had. The other then followed with a story of his own about chasing a girl around Italy in his youth and how — and here’s the important part — he would love to live that Mediterranean life in Europe, and seriously considered it…but he’s “a surfer.” I started daydreaming of fresh olive oil, tomatoes, Old World red wine and walking around on bricks made of immortal Roman concrete and thought about his funny conundrum: the surf curse.
Because we live the world’s greatest lifestyle we have to make sacrifices. Like limiting ourselves to living in regions that makes up less than 10% of the earth’s landmass because we like to ride waves. That’s a fair bit of life and culture we skip to make sure we’re salty every day. And maybe that’s why we divert here on our website to the arts so often. It’s interesting to daydream about living that life, but the reality is, we aren’t going anywhere. We love Salt Creek and all its beauty marks.
We have to skip living in Paris or Tuscany, and so instead we watch Godard films, study artists like John Baldessari, learn about musicians, go to Murder City Devils shows, read books by Joyce Carol Oates and Raymond Carver to refine and well-round ourselves and create as cultured a life as we can by night so that our days can be spent riding waves on our surfboards. It sounds funny when you think about it. Or explain it to someone. But they usually get it. Who doesn’t wanna surf?
We're like children who refuse to age and play in the ocean all day, blessed by our curse, not unlike our pal Sisyphus. Only difference is we get barreled sometimes after we paddle back out. And that kinda makes all the difference in the world. —Travis Ferré
