"Authentic" surf culture
Makes me wonder if the movie Going Vertical is going to be a crafted piece surf industry marketing.Anyone seen it?
Rip Curl (claw) funded 'Going Vertical' for whatever that means.
I love the film 'Children Of The Sun' (1966) If you watch that film George Greenough is going vertical in really nice waves and all the other surfers are riding longboards.
Oh well if it sucks people into believing shortboards are the only thing to ride I might get a cheap second hand Mal out of it.
That would be good spongebob.
I see it as the corporates trying to cash in on the 'retro' thing and the current fascination with older style surfcraft.
George Greenough was the man though, everyone knows it.
I look forward to watching the 'going vertical' movie (on dvd) I have heard the movie is well done.
I also want to see if they laid cred on Greenough, rather than the Mctavish.Brewer thing that has been televised.
Yeh just watched the trailer for it,looks interesting.They claim they will answer the big question.After all this time I doubt everyone will accept the answer,no matter which way it gos.
In my memory the first person to actually go seriously vertical was Wayne Lynch. There was a photo in Surfing World of him at Long Reef doing a vertical backhand re-entry that just blew us all away. For all the talk I don't think you will find evidence of McTavish, Nat or any stand up surfer getting anywhere near that angle until considerably later. Even Greenough was more into s-bend cutbacks and tubes than going vertical.
The Brewer vs McTavish thing is just hype. McTavish was designing super wide 7-8ft boards that were just a logical extension of the work Midget had already done with his stringerless models. While whatever Brewer was doing was only marginally relevant to Australian conditions. The real change came later when boards dropped into the 6ft and under range. This would have been around 1969. It was only then that vertical surfing really started to happen. Look at the photos of Col Smith from that era then go back and, apart from the Wayne Lynch photo, see if you can see anything remotely comparable.
McTavish, like Nat, was always great at self promotion and to be fair, he did make a contribution, but at this stage of development it would have to be considered minor compared to those who came after. There are lots of other shapers from the era of true innovation who are more deserving of attention than a bloke who has spent the last forty years popping out mals!
old 'blindboy' knows his shit.
What is the fascination with 'going vertical' anyway, if you watch a current contest scene the surfers take off do a bottom turn and 'goes vertical' and it is pretty ugly to watch over and over and over again.
Maybe someone should make a film called 'going horizontal' with surfers catching waves and not doing any turns.
That's a bit harsh '63. I have watched a few WCT contests on TV in the last couple of years and I love it. The standard of surfing is incredibly high and some of it is quite subtle. What you see as one type of vertical slash is often a whole variety of quite different techniques. The judges slam surfers for repeating themselves so, at least at WCT level, you don't see much of it. Focus on where they go after the vertical position and watch where the tail and fins are. There is a huge difference between a straight up, straight down, fins in the face sequence and a big fins out, tail sliding drift back into the pocket.
As for why vertical is so important,it is the way to control down the line speed. Taj Burrow scored a 9 something yesterday on a wave he could not possibly have made by simply going horizontally along the face and if the primary technical goal in surfing is not to make sections then I'm not sure what it might be.
I came across a piece in the SMH business section taken from Phil Jarrett's latest book...a riveting account of the history of surf business...well I didn't fall asleep until I'd read a couple of hundred words. I don't know if Jarrett was aware of the irony but he describes a series of meetings of the Quiksilver board in France during prime surfing season.
So there they all are, quality waves at their doorstep and what are these purveyors of "authentic surf culture" doing? Sitting around chuffing ciggies, drinking expensive wine and wondering how to make another ten million! Not so much as a mention of an actual wave. You'd have to laugh if it didn't make you cry!