Surfing Waves

Darius Devas’ short film ‘William Finnegan – Barbarian Days’ is a portrait of Pulitzer prize-winning author William Finnegan, narrated by Finnegan himself with excerpts from his memoir Barbarian Days.

This is my favorite sentence ....

"The close, painstaking study of a tiny patch of coast, every eddy and angle even down to individual rocks and in every combination of tide and wind and swell, a longitudinal study through season after season, is the basic occupation of surfers at their local break."

What stands out for you?

Thanks for posting that. Love the book. Makes me feel like I mis-spent my life not surfing enough.

I'm with you on that!

I surfed a lot as a kid because my grandfather owned a vacation home on the Marin coast. I kept surfing through college by attending UC Santa Barbara instead of a school more suited to my talents. Then there was the LONG layoff for marriage, family, career and mortgage payments. Retirement is the happy ending with constant trips to my favorite break.

Such a great book. Where will the film be available (theatres, online)?

Tom

Sorry to say the film linked above is all she wrote... but it's very good.

This was the best surfing book I've ever read. It's so well written and is so obviously written by a surfer. It even made me realize what a niche understanding and unique jargon surfing really has. This book really transported me to the early days of surfing and introduced the idea of Feral Surfer before that term even existed. I haven't found a surf book that even comes close since reading Barbarian Days.

Neat. Thanks. You know, I think I know where BoMan got the book. (smiley face)

billie_morini wrote:Neat. Thanks. You know, I think I know where BoMan got the book. (smiley face)

Ahhaha...Thanks Billie.

Another takeaway from the video...

My memory of learning a spot, of coming to know and understand a wave is usually inseparable from the friend with whom I tried to climb its falls.

It's more productive and a lot more fun to figure out a spot with a buddy!

Surfing is a different thing for different people. That book comes the closest to how I see surfing. Because of my choices in conditions and breaks I spent a lot of time surfing alone. I seemed to want to learn stuff that no one else wanted to learn. Still obviously Finnegan was a surfer who became a writer. Many of the surfing books have writers who became surfers. It all presents different perspectives of surfing. Such a varied thing. This web site has opened my eyes to what surfing is for perhaps the majority of surfers which somehow has completely escaped me as I only know my own experiences which are similar to that book.