Surf Culture

Love of surfing, the search for the biggest and best wave, desire to live by the sea and in the sea, experiencing the ride of your life is all part of the basis of the surf culture. It is a lifestyle choice and touches on speech, fashion, music and the media by way of magazines and movies. It began in the early part of the 20th century and reached it's zenith in the 50's and 60's. But the surf culture is still alive and flourishing today and those who are a part of it are bound by afierce love of the sport.

In Northern California there remains a surf village by the name of Pleasure Point that still has the original cottages that were around when pioneer Van Dyke was there. Ocean Beach is another example of an area that was dedicated to the surfing lifestyle. But due to the vagaries of the weather and the fickle nature of the ocean along with the fact that a surfing life is geographically influenced, because of the need to live on the coast, beach life was a definite influence on the surf culture. IN the 60's the easily recognisable marks of a surfer in Southern California were the use of a "woodie", the wearing of board shorts or bikinis for the women, and surf music. It was a surfer who developed the skateboard so that they could surf on land while the surf was flat and there has been a number of spin-offs which continues to grow. Surfers earned the nickname of "slacker" or "beachbum" with "beachbunny" for the women. This arose from the fact that the intense love they have for their sport and the need to search out that perfect ride, made it difficult for them to live the traditional 9-5 existence and therefore they chose a surfing lifestyle over the usual capitalistic one. This has led to many surfers being seen as free spirits who follow their sport first and as these people moved away from the regular path and sought to live in harmony with the sea and their life, they became known as soul surfers. But there are those who instead choose to follow the competitive circuit and lucrative endorsement deals and it was questioned whether this wascongruous with a surfing lifestyle. In more recent years this debate has been dropped as the surfers of today are more able to combine the two sides of the culture and meld them into a whole.

Surfers also have their own slang and a universally recognised word would be "stoked" - meaning to be happy. But other words that are used in connection with the lifestyle are "gnarly", "radical" and "tubular". Surf slang and the uptalk of the Valley girls were influenced by one another and for a time was extremely popular. By the late 1990's it's popularity had diminished considerably but certain words or cadences have permanently crept into the English language.

International Surfing Day is on June 20th annually- a global day of celebration of the sport of surfing and surf culture.