Steve Shearer April 05, 2009

There are trails of small white crystalline shells glinting in the sunlight at Bells this morning. Little glistening trails meandering up and down the beach. Easter Sunday.

I had just been in the Media Centre marvelling at the spectacle. Rows and rows of blinking electronic devices: iPhones, Apple Macintosh Computers, content of every description being created by earnest young hipsters with pageboy haircuts. Europeans, Brazilians, some of them balding, but they don't care, for them this is still the Garden of Eden; the golden age of innocence that ended in California with Gidget and Australia post Morning of the Earth. A seam of weary irony and self disgust which runs deep in the soul of even the most battle hardened, iron-girded western pro is wholly absent in them. Miki Dora standing over the Messiah's shoulder with that accusatory voice:

"By adopting my particular type of self-imposed exile I can outdistance these scourges of mankind: those who believe in consciousness without existence and those who believe in existence without consciousness - these caricatures who go to ludicrous lengths to assert their own importance, their own grotesque, overblown ambition." M. Dora.

But in Europe and Brazil, no such purist or philosophical hang-ups exist. Total Coverage as the Final Solution! Immediately! Digits and bytes and blogs and P2 cards being furiously hot-swapped while the creaky kneed Old Guard journos get on the inter-thing-a-majingy and bitch and moan about these Young Turks who have stormed the Old Citadel of Surf Journalism.

People with notebooks and heat draws mark bold asterisk's beside the big names: Jordy Smith - Big Asterix, Ben Dunn - nothing. I peered over many dandruffed shoulders and nothing but empty space next to Ben Dunn's name. Ben Dunn was in the water. I made a point of meeting up with him on the famous steps. Unentouraged, as it were. I gave him a hoot and some encouragement. Me and Ben go back to the Year 2001, when he was winning everything junior and the pro world lay open at his feet like Gods Own Eden and all he had to do was just keep being little serious winning Ben Dunn. And now....now, he has somehow been relegated to the boondocks of history and you can hear the wind whistling through the tussocks of unasterisked tumbleweed being blown down empty streets when he surfs his heats.

I am standing next to a teenage surfer and an aging coterie of French Men dressed in surf executive chic. They all have the look note perfect; all with magnificent bouffants of greying hair, original Rayban Wayfarers and soft leather slip-ons. Sclerotic Noses inflamed by the wind and maybe one too many Bordeaux Saint-Marie's at the chalet last night. Roués to a man no doubt, Nicolas Sarkozy-Lite, with mistresses scattered across the globe.

Ben Dunn busted the fins out. I turned to the young teenager beside me. He had braces on and industry clothes. "Was that an air he just did?" I enquired. "I dunno, I'd prolly call it an air".

But despite this brazen exhibition of modern surfing Ben gets pipped by Dusty Payne in the final twenty seconds...no, five seconds. Dusty is riding the wave as the heat ends. It is enough to relegate Ben Dunn to Round two and a possible dirty turd. He throws his board down in the shorebreak. No use going into it, it was hardly a McEnroe Meltdown but still, one can't help but be impressed by the human dimensions. The cruelty, the goddamm cruelty of it. Hung out to dry in the last seconds, the lonely walk of shame up the steps. Those little blank spaces in the Media Centre on all those heat sheets next to his name where asterisk's denoting Total Coverage stand proudly for the anointed ones.

On the beach prior to the Clash of the Icons, which is Occy and Curren surfing again - huge asterisk's all round, by the way, though it barely needs mentioning - the beach is filling up with Victorians. Dogs are cavorting on the sand, little intelligent Pappilions and Shih Tzus, chasing round and round, mounting each other and rutting like mountain goats in spring. Their little neckties and belled collars providing a small treble note in the higher register. Tres delicate. Atmosphere, you understand, amongst the general cacophony of commentary and sirens.

I was having a conversation with a family of Indian people on the Bells Beach. Whilst Surfing remains a white-bread sport and ignores the East Asian Economic Miracle (millions and millions of new middle-class consumers...think of it!) it will remain some little ol' backwoods adventure for the cynical post-Dora Californians and ambivalent Morning of the Earth Aussies. And the innocent Euros with their proud bouffants and soft leather slip-ons......well, they are hampered by a debt crisis of positively gargantuan proportions. But Old Man India, the patriarch, is standing there with his arms folded and a crisp golfing shirt on, very similar to the kind worn by Kelly Slater, wondering what the hell all this fuss is about. He stares out to sea in vain and sees, well nothing really. Some bobbing shapes, vaguely human in aspect, silhouetted against the sun.

But I foresee the expansion of Pro Surfing into the sub-continent. Imagine the web-casts. The bureaucracy, the general pandemonium and spectacle. The Indian genius for logic, IT and bureaucracy would dovetail perfectly with Professional Surfing.

Tom Curren walked by me and I said to him, "Surely Tom, you must be sick to the eyeballs of showing up to this kind of regurgitated nonsense." Actually, I didn't because you don't say that to Tom Curren, even if you think it at the time. So I said, "You still get a buzz out of these gigs?" Tom looked at me, never seen me before and then said, "Uh, yeah....yeah"

Exactly Tom. All those asterisk's and bouffants bouncing up and down as the Legends wheel about. Who wouldn't dig that? Even Old Dora had a soft spot for those bouffants and sclerotic noses. Wait until India gets on board, I thought. They have real reverence for elders. You and Occy will be getting wheelchaired down these cliffs when your 80 to be webcast back to an adoring crowd in Bangalore.

But Tom Curren rode a 5'11 squashtail and ripped. No point banging on about it here. The Coverage was, as they say, Total.

There was an expression session just after the Clash of the Icons. A bunch of pros who were being offered $1000 dollars. The Messiah was in it but he steadfastly refuses to catch a wave. He is sticking it to the Man. When he does get a wave he does a couple of lazy turns. Sticking it.... To The Man. Nothing conscious, you understand, he's not sitting there saying to himself "fuck all you bouffanted asteriskers and seal trainers and bald-headed total coverage guys with your creamy leather pumps and P2 cards roastingly hot from all that hot swapping".

No. This is symbolic subconscious stuff, just a tiny rupture in the irony seam so a little bit of Dora comes bubbling up like hot oil: "...these caricatures (he walked down past them on the stairs).... asserting their own grotesque, overblown ambition." Exactly. What with the bouffants and the asterisks and the fucking Shih Tzus and Papillions and all the other holus-bolus scourges and consciousness-free existences. Well, what's the Messiah to do? I mean, you collect your paycheques of course.....to refuse would put you in the middle of that mediocre rabble willing you, just willing you to punt.

The siren came and the crowd filled in. I walked up the stairs with the Messiah. Proud as punch of him. He hasn't been reading many books lately. No Bukowski, no Fante. But here in the deep south of Australia, at Bells Beach he's still sticking it to the Man.