“I’m seeking out a new way to live and if it’s surfing, that’s the way I’ll do it. I’ll be a surfer for the rest of my life.”—Andy Warhol

I’m not surfing right now. Not by choice or protest or laziness or anything like that. Just a persistent recurring neck thing that likes to knock me out a month or two every year thanks to a late drop at State Park 10 years ago — don’t worry ,we’re working through it. Steady diet of Eastern medicine , emo rap and Aaron Rodgers optimism. We’ll be OK. I see you El Niño.

Yesterday, I got my first dose of the sea in a few weeks thanks to the local summer we’re experiencing in Southern California. Clean beautiful beach conditions and light crowds. Ahhhhhhhh. I got in. Had to. Since surfing is still a week or two away (fingers crossed), I layed on my back, closed my eyes and thought about it. Fully immersed, eyes shut, floating, no board, thinking of wave riding. Of surfing. What did I see?

I’ll start by telling you what I used to see. And hear. Surfing was bold, cool and enthusiastic. It was stylish. Self confident and composed. Films were made for surfers. Contests were run for surfers. We did our thing. We filmed it. We cut it. It sounded good. It looked good. We all gathered and watched. At the beach and in the city. Haleiwa to Paris. Ericeira to NYC. We were present. We got the girl (or boy). The hero. The surfer. The world looked to us, for our styles, our demeanor. We didn’t mind but we didn’t need ‘em. That's what it used to look like.

Last night, floating like a kelp flotilla in the shorebreak, I saw something else. Halloween came early. I nearly panicked and started swallowing water. First of all: everything I saw was soundtracked by terrible licensed Art List music. It sounded like a dive bar band playing Foo Fighters in a hospital waiting room. Dirty and sterile at the same time. The surfing was glitching and scrolling past me. Every clip needed to load. It was captioned by ChatGPT and included a typo and an ad. Surf websites all posted the same clips. Same captions. Copy machines. Stab threw condescending shade with an Aussie accent. Surfline made the waves look bad so we didn’t even check it. The World Surf League lectured us before threatening to cancel us. Surfer was being run by a chatbot typing perfect SEO headlines. Every surf spot was thick with soft tops and bad surf hats. The masses came running, right? Everybody surfs. This is it?

Nah. Andy Warhol would run.

Please tell me it was sleep paralysis. As the wheels touched down from France following a fantastic week at the Quik Festival, we decided we gotta keep this rolling. This purple website’s going to make it our problem to fix us. We need our swagger back. Time to release Surf Film 2. Time to do it live. Factories by the Sea in every town. Time for surfing to bang again. Time for me to surf again. Did I say a week? Fuck it, I’m riding a wave today. I don’t care how bad it hurts. I never want surfing to look like that again. —Travis Ferré

[Above artwork: The Maelstrom. Bodo, 2022 by David Hockney]