Splitting The Political Peak

Surfing cares not for your political preferences. Is that a good thing?

- Justin Housman

I’m writing this column just a few days before Donald Trump is sworn in as the President of the United States. By the time you read this, “President Donald Trump” may seem normal, but here in my present, your past, the concept still boggles the mind. Where I live, in the People’s Republic of San Francisco, something like 90 percent of the population voted for Hillary Clinton, so the concept is especially mind-boggling. But a quick Internet search shows me that Brevard County, Florida, home to some of Florida’s best surf (Sebastian Inlet, Spanish House, Melbourne Beach) overwhelmingly voted for Trump. Presumably, a big chunk of those Brevard County voters who cast ballots for Trump are dedicated, lifelong surfers. So, I suppose, for many Brevard County surfers, “President Hillary Clinton” would probably be nearly as mind boggling as President Trump is to me.

But hold on a second. If surfing is so fundamental to our existence, and we build our whole lives around surfing, shouldn’t it have some impact on our politics too? Sure, surfing doesn’t really seem to have much to do with politics on the surface. But, in terms of lifestyle, San Francisco surfers probably have a lot more in common with Brevard County surfers than we do with people who support the same political positions as us, but who live in landlocked states and have never set foot on a surfboard. That doesn’t seem to matter, though. We like to think that surfing makes us some kind of a like minded tribe, but at least in terms of politics, that’s clearly not true, even at a fundamental level.