Quiksilver Pro 2012 The Outsider: Neon Wilderness

In: Quiksilver Pro 2012 by Steve Shearer 23 Comments Fri 24th Feb '12

Tags: dane reynolds , steve shearer , asp , The Outsider

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"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the kings horses and all the kings men
Couldn't put Humpty together again."
Traditional Nursery Rhyme.

Greetings sports fans. Welcome to the auspicious year of the Water Dragon, a symbol of great optimism and dynamic growth for our illustrious and numerous Chinese comrades. We welcome them warmly to the Sport of Kings.

The contrast, of course, couldn't be greater with our own self-flagellating Western economies and the great and noble pursuit of Pro Surfing, financed as it is by Big Surf, whose fortunes are bumping along the bottom of the retail river, waiting to be scooped up and flensed by predatory bottom feeders of the vilest disposition and motives.

Should we take a moment to survey the landscape? Whenever I feel that impulse come on I take the drive north from the cow paddocks of sleepy Lennox Head up to the seamy underbelly of the Gold Coast, where things like the ASP HQ, surf retail and Pro Surfing reach their glittering apotheosis.

There's time to think before one enters the exhausted squirm of motorways which lead into the fibrillating heart of the surf-industrial complex. Coolangatta. The Cooly-gatta now stands poignant and quietly sad, a town in rictus, deserted by big money.

Money colonised Coolangatta like heroin did in the post-Vietnam era, like a cancer does a healthy body, leaving as it's legacy the ghastly tumours of high-rise buildings, internal skeletons of retail shops now empty and lifeless like cadavers in a morgue.

Marooned on this economic reef lies Pro Surfing, prey to a viciously polarised debate which saps it's legitimacy and drip fed by surf corporations who are at the bleeding edge of the greatest transfer of economic wealth from the Old World to the New World ever seen. The Old Markets that have acted as cash cows for the sport are doddering and decrepit, milked dry by a predatory capitalism that socialised it's losses onto unsuspecting taxpayers.

The industry needs access to Asia to grow. And the biggest Asian market, of course, is our ancient, somewhat repressive, communist friend the Peoples Republic of China. The Nike People's Republic of China ASP World Tour. That rolls off the tongue doesn't it? Why waste anymore time looking for a global sponno? The Reds are the only ones with the readies. And that's not just my opinion. In a freak accident I ran into one of the founding heads of the major surf corps on the sands of Snapper Rocks. He spoke to me on condition of anonymity. We'll come back to him.

Writing about Pro Surfing has been a pastime for me for two years. In those turbulent times, anyone who casts a critical eye on the caper can't help but develop a kind of paternal fidelity, perhaps similar to the feeling garnered from caring for a mildly disabled red-headed step-child. I mean no disrespect to mildly disabled red-headed step-children either. It may be that their highest purpose on Earth is to make the ASP look good.

I kid, I kid.

Maybe it's closer to observing some kind of clumsy endangered animal like a dodo before it went the way of the, well, dodo, a species uniquely ill-suited to thriving in it's natural environment. It's hard to say. Whatever it is, the constant game of existential whack-a-mole which seems to keep the ASP in perpetual crisis mode makes for uniquely compelling viewing.

Is there clear air ahead for the ASP? Perhaps, but the next controversy to pop up could be as close as a failed drug test away. My message to the ASP: embrace the chaos.

In the absence of a desperately needed "pitch-man", a CEO who could conceive of and drive a compelling narrative, Pro Surfing has now hitched it's caboose to a new crop of uber-mensche who are still too young to buy a drink in the USA. Medina, 'Brother' Andino and John John Florence have all of a sudden made Julian Wilson seem a veteran and Jordy a washed up has-been.

Florence, in particular, has been off the hook, delivering the kind of otherwordly performances at the Pipeline which recall the greatest live performances of Hendrix. In response Dane Reynolds has thrown down his own freakishness, via the delayed mechanism of web video.

Of the two, Florence's houdini act at Pipe was by far the most engaging. The simple self-evident fact that Pro Surfing must rely on: Live music is more compelling than the studio version when it comes to great talents.

Dane on tour was live and uncut: the incendiary performances complete with multiple WTF moments, the mid-heat implosions against lesser talents, the awkward, oblique interviews with fawning surf journalists. It seemed more transparent. More honest. A multinational corporation paid him huge sums of money and in return he entertained the masses with his talent. Now, ironically, as a freesurfer, Dane the concept, the entity, the product, is more tightly controlled in terms of public exposure than ever before. Freedom through unfreedom.

I raised it with him at the weirdly downbeat press conference today which took place at the happily corporate surfers tent.

"So, no more live and uncut gigs for the fans eh? We get the three minute clips?"
"Man, I'm a recording artist now. There's less live gigs for sure. Shit, everyone gets tired of touring. You've got to get back in the studio sometimes otherwise you get no new music."
"Is that what you're doing? Going back to the creative source?"
"I think so. Yeah. Essentially."
"Any books to recommend to the new kids. Still on the Bukowski?"
"Oh yeah, still on that. You know that one that starts: 'So I'm an artist now?'" (laughs)
"Sweet, hope you get a match-up with John John"
"Me too, that'd be rad"

An audience with the former Messiah always requires a steadying ale and on my way post-haste to the nearest bar I ran headlong into the Captain of Industry mentioned earlier in the tale. Fresh off the sand as it were.

I opened the exchange: "Is surf dead?"
"Nah, nah. (laughs). Look this is the biggest crisis the surf industry has ever faced. Europe is a basket case. Whose got money to spend on surf gear when the family budget won't balance? But there will be a new dawn."
"Does the thought of a new CEO of the ASP taking control back from the franchises make you nervous?"
"No, cause it's not gunna happen."
"What would you say to critics who say the sport needs an independent body to govern it?"
"I'd say you're dreaming. The surf companies have bankrolled it since day one. The surfers own the other half."
"What about a global sponsor?"
"In exchange for what? What do you think they want? Control of the product. You don't get something for nothing. I don't think the surfers would want to sell out for that. And you think you're going to get the webcast for free?"
"What about being to offer a consistent product?"
"It's competition between the brands that is producing improvements in the webcasts. A consistent product could be cheesy and not representative of the surf culture. Look around (he swept his hand), this isn't golf or tennis."
"No, no it's not."

The baldly stated facts are that the brands will relinquish control of the ASP over their dead bodies. They will drive it anywhere they want. Any structural reform is impossible in such a scenario. In effect a new CEO will be merely another puppet placed in position to advance the status quo agenda.

The most wildly inappropriate thought went through my head after this convo, triggered by something one of the Aboriginal dancers had said in the opening ceremony. Love Mother Earth. That's what he said. And he meant it.
Everything, Pro Surfing, the Surf Industry, the whole capitalistic nine-yards-ball-of-wax is predicated on growth.
Growth.
Pro Surfing doesn't need to grow.
It needs to shrink.
Back to a clipboard on the beach and a cooler of cold beers for the judges.
Mobile and fluid, low impact, built for the core and the romance of peak performances in peak conditions instead of the bastardry of circus top sideshow surfing.
Pro Surfing as performance art and sport at the pinnacle. As privilege for the very few, not cashcow for kids homeschooled on the myth of mainstream acceptance.

It could happen, but not in this lifetime.

But chin up comrades, our all too human hearts beat strongly yet. The Messiah walks among us, still clothed in the dust of this suffering world and the cosmic violence of our Communist overlords is a nightmare for a different time. Our rookies stand ready to shine, like fresh autumn blossoms thrown into the maw of this consumerist maelstrom, as yet unsullied by rain or mud.

The divine comedy is ready to resume.

Shalom shipmates.

Stop The Presses: J-Bay has been dropped from the World Tour this Year. Expect further amputations as the wounded surf industry attempts to quarantine the global infection.

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