Tabla de contenidos para Summer 2019 en Surfer

I’m told that space is pretty big. Infinite, in fact. And in all that infinite space, there’s a whole lot of weird shit being discovered more or less all the time. In April of this year alone, scientists snapped the first-ever photograph of a black hole using a method called very-long-baseline interferometry and it looked sort of like an out-of-focus Cheeto; astronomers announced that they may have detected a new planet orbiting around our solar system’s closest neighboring star when they noticed that said star, Proxima Centauri, was experiencing “wobbles” in its orbit caused by the planet’s gravity; and, lastly, an earthquake…err…marsquake?…was detected for the very first time by NASA’s InSight lander on the surface of Mars. And that’s just some of what’s going on in the observable universe, which…

What is happening now probably has less to do with a wholesale renaissance in bodyboarding and more to do with surfers wanting to get as far as possible from what surfing has become: contrived, corporate, serious. “Beneath the rubble they lay hiding. Hideously disfigured and battling chronic drag-induced psychosis, they roam the underground trenches of this dystopian deep web of horizontal (and vertical) wave debauchery. Gathering in secret. Dragging abandoned slabs to feed their obscure addiction, recruiting those rejected by the mindless control of hard society into their flaccid underworld commune. Not quite alive, not yet in the fiery pits where there’s weeping and gnashing of teeth, they lay in this soft purgatory, awake in anguish where the wages of Drag are surely death.” Above is the description given online…

We called him “Crazy Craig.” He was, or, presumably still is, a surfer in the Central California beach town where I surfed growing up. I don’t remember if his name actually was Craig, come to think of it. Maybe it was Carl. Might have just been a fun bit of nickname alliteration we assigned to him. Nor do I remember if he behaved like a crazy person out of the water. Actually, he seemed like every other middle-aged surfer in the ‘90s when you’d see him at the taqueria after a session. Battered two-wheel drive Toyota pickup splattered with paint and ladders, he must have been a house painter or contractor or something, just like pretty much every other guy was back then on the Central Coast. But Crazy Craig…

I was standing in the middle of REI, turning a $45-dollar can of bear repellent in my hands, first taking note of the bloodthirsty antagonist from “The Revenant” depicted on the front before curiously looking at the ingredients on the back. The label’s bold lettering explained that, if I purchased the predator-strength pepper spray, I could deter a bear situated up to 30 feet in front of me. It also explained how, if not handled correctly, the chemicals inside could disable the user, not the bear. I pictured myself fumbling with a small aerosol can as 600 pounds of ravenous fur and sharp teeth barreled towards me from a mere 30 feet away, taking aim at the hangry beast and accidently macing myself in the face. The only thing worse…

“This image was shot from the Torrey Pines Gliderport during a larger northwest swell in the middle of December last year,” says photographer Todd Glaser. “This spot is famous for having a deep water canyon, which will take a straight and walled west swell and create A-frame peaks up and down the beach thanks to the refraction underwater. One of the interesting things about this beach in particular is it’s a heavy beach break, so depending on who you talk to during the session, one surfer might say he had the best session of his life—like the guy in this photo—and another person might say he broke two boards and didn’t catch a single wave. Everyone’s session is totally different out there.”…