Over 10 years after the original air-based competition series faded away, the WSL is breathing new life into the concept with today’s most radical aerialists. But will the outcome be any different this time around?
“I remember us talking about how there wasn’t a platform for what Barney and all the Santa Cruz guys were doing,” recalls Snead. “At the time, Barney, Ratboy [Jason Collins], Flea [Darryl Virostko] and their friends were consistently doing these incredible airs—probably the best in the world then. But airs were still really frowned upon by judges in most traditional contests. Barney and I thought, ‘What if we made a contest just for the air guys?’”
At the time, aerial surfing was progressing in quantum leaps and capturing the imaginations of surfers worldwide through surf films and magazine spreads, but it hadn’t been adopted by the World Tour surfers of the time and was still considered a fringe subculture. In fact, 5 years earlier, a group of World Tour surfers went so far as to pen a letter to SURFER complaining about the amount of coverage aerial pioneer and punk provocateur Christian Fletcher had been getting in the magazine
“False images are being created out of second-rate surfers at the expense of high-ranked professionals,” said the letter, signed by JeffBooth, Barton Lynch, Damien Hardman and a host of other top-tier pros, which ran in a 1990 issue of SURFER. “It’s quite unfair to dedicate yourself to the sport, train hard and travel around the world, only to pick up a magazine and see a guy who spent his summer at Trestles on the cover and centerspread.”
Esta historia es de la edición Volume 59, Issue - 7 de Surfer.
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Esta historia es de la edición Volume 59, Issue - 7 de Surfer.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
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60 Years Ahead
We had a whole plan for this year. Funny, right? Surfer's 60 year anniversary volume was going to be filled with stories nodding to SURFER’s past, with cover concepts paying homage to the magazine’s most iconic imagery. Our new Page One depicts something that’s never happened in surfing before, let alone on a prior SURFER cover. And our table of contents was completely scrapped and replaced as we reacted to the fizzing, sparking, roiling world around us. In other words, 2020 happened to SURFER, just like it happened to you.
A Few Things We Got Horribly Wrong
You don’t make 60 years of magazines without dropping some balls. Here are a few
THE LGBTQ+ WAVE
Surf culture has a long history of marginalizing the LGBTQ+ community, but a new generation of queer surfers is working to change that
For Generations to Come
Rockaway’s Lou Harris is spreading the stoke to Black youth and leading surfers in paddling out for racial justice
Christina Koch, 41
Texas surfer, NASA astronaut, record holder for the longest continuous spaceflight by a woman
END TIMES FOR PRO SURFING
By the time the pandemic is done reshaping the world, will the World Tour still have a place in it?
CHANGING OF THE GUARD
After decades of exclusive access to Hollister Ranch, the most coveted stretch of California coast is finally going public
What They Don't Tell You
How does becoming a mother affect your surfing life?
Four Things to Make You Feel A Little Less Shitty About Everything
Helpful reminders for the quarantine era
The Art of Being Seen
How a group of black women are finding creative ways to make diversity in surfing more visible