Back to the Beach in 6/1/06 NY Times
Posted: June 1, 2006 3:46 pm
following is an excerpt from the beginning of an article about surfing culture, in today's NYTimes:
Back to the Beach in New York
By GUY TREBAY
Published: June 1, 2006
WHEN Jimmy Buffett hit Rockefeller Center plaza last week, to plunk away at his guitar for the "Today" show, the Bard of Margaritaville came barefoot and wearing vintage-looking board shorts and a T-shirt, as if to signal that summer had officially begun. Make that the Endless Summer. It has been decades since Mr. Buffett first tapped into the cultural sweet spot that is surf culture. And, while his take on beach bum narratives typically leads to a bar stool and the sun slipping behind the Key West horizon, that his philosophical roots are in the culture of wave-riding seems perfectly — one could almost say, gin — clear.
Lately, the octopus grasp of surf culture has become so inescapable that it is hard to contemplate a time, just over a half-century ago, when surfers were legitimate counterculture types, a wave-riding minority of oddballs, semi-sociopaths, dropouts, athletically gifted isolates with the occasional drug or messiah problem, or just all-around good-time freaks.
That was long before the waves at Ditch Plains on Long Island became so crowded after Memorial Day that one practically has to take a number before paddling out; before those Americans who call themselves surfers rose 90 percent to 2.7 million between 1987 and 2005;
etc
Back to the Beach in New York
By GUY TREBAY
Published: June 1, 2006
WHEN Jimmy Buffett hit Rockefeller Center plaza last week, to plunk away at his guitar for the "Today" show, the Bard of Margaritaville came barefoot and wearing vintage-looking board shorts and a T-shirt, as if to signal that summer had officially begun. Make that the Endless Summer. It has been decades since Mr. Buffett first tapped into the cultural sweet spot that is surf culture. And, while his take on beach bum narratives typically leads to a bar stool and the sun slipping behind the Key West horizon, that his philosophical roots are in the culture of wave-riding seems perfectly — one could almost say, gin — clear.
Lately, the octopus grasp of surf culture has become so inescapable that it is hard to contemplate a time, just over a half-century ago, when surfers were legitimate counterculture types, a wave-riding minority of oddballs, semi-sociopaths, dropouts, athletically gifted isolates with the occasional drug or messiah problem, or just all-around good-time freaks.
That was long before the waves at Ditch Plains on Long Island became so crowded after Memorial Day that one practically has to take a number before paddling out; before those Americans who call themselves surfers rose 90 percent to 2.7 million between 1987 and 2005;
etc
