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?

- SEAN DOHERTY

Maybe, when all this is done, the defining image of the time will be the unknown surfer sprinting up the beach in La Jolla, on the run from a lifeguard boat. He’d just paddled out and broken the San Diego surfing ban, his act of civil disobedience cheered on by the crowd in the street. Local surfer Derek Dunfee, who captured the whole thing on video, described it as “one of the best things I’ve ever seen at the beach.” Surfing as defiance. The waves weren’t even that good, but nothing was going to stop that kid from paddling out. When interviewed later—his identity hidden behind a mask—the fugitive teenager offered, “Surfing should be brought back to the world because we really need it.”

Back in April, they were simpler days. We only had to deal with a pandemic and a few corona cops—not the breakdown of social order, the upending of world geopolitics and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Since the scattered beach bans lifted, however, we’ve at least had surfing. With many liberated from employment and free to surf, surfers around the world have been able to paddle out at their local break and wash it off. As the world went mad, the people went surfing. It was a splendid, simple spell, with the experience rendered back to its elemental parts—surf, surfer, surfboard. The worse things got, the more essential surfing became.