Jeff Quam describes surfing with paipo and hot curl boards and discusses beach crowding and "localism." Recorded at Dana Point Library.
Transcript
So, some of these board behind me, I saw another need for the belly board that over here, it's called the piper board. I rode them as a young boy. They were very popular in Laguna, they came from a guy from Hawaii that came over. Hr introduced it to a lady called Marge Calhoun, she brought it to Brook St. then it wasit stuck there in Laguna for some reason. There were other version up and down the coast but that one stuck in Laguna. And it's very unique in what it is and what it can do on a wave. A lot of people in surfing throughout their lives, when the boogie boards rose they looked at it as encroaching on surfing in a way and they made fun of it almost and weren't respectful of somebody being a good athlete in the water. He may be on a boogie board but he's a good athlete and you need to respect that person. So when they got to a part in their life where they couldn't surf anymore , your back gives out your knees give out you can't get to your feet easily. So surfing become very labored and you lose the joy of surfing. The piper board, you're lying on it, it's a hardboard so they don't have to admit they're riding a soft board boogie board, which in their eyes is not a very good thing. So the piper board allows them to ride a hard board, it's made like a regular surfboard, they lay down on it, you get the view that you would always get the view you get in surfing where you're getting barreled, the wave is throwing over you and you're looking out of this beautiful scene, maybe there is this beautiful scene on the beach, or whatever you see. And so they reacquaint themselves with surfing again and they find that joy again. So that's what that piece of equipment is about.
The other one is the really ancient design called a hot-curl board. It's very famous and it started about the 20s or 30 and went to about the 50s, late 50s to 60s, then it faded from surfing. What it brings to surging, back to during, it takes advantage of a different part the different energy of the wave. It's the swell energy it rides more than it's the falling-down-the-face energy and it's not something happened in surfing when competition came in the scene where that become the most popular and most driving part of surfing was competition. So then it's like oh look at me I can this this big splashy slash and I'm ripping and tearing and all these terms to for describing surfing. Where before when I was young, the best surfers the ones who blended with the energy of the wave and made it look easy and beautiful and smooth. So the hot-curl board, you can't do the slashing , it requires you to be blending with the wave and there's a friend of mine, Gene, that made up this quote , I think he made it up, at least that's what he says , Surfing is a dance, and the wave always leads. The greatest compliment I ever got, I was surfing at Trestles,, which is a semi-point wave, which is a long wave, I rode this wave all the way down to the end and I was walking back and this lady, very excited, came up to me and she said Oh, that so beautiful, it just looked like you were floating I said, technically I am floating on the wave [laughs]. It was such a great compliment and that's what I would always strive for in my surfing is to become that entity that looks beautiful and wonderful.
You know we can't turn back the clock, so I see many people that are angry about crowding, but who are we going to ask to leave? Should it be my grandfather who got here in 1920? Should it stop there and say Nope, sorry, that's it no more. So that's fighting progress and to do that is really not very sensible. It doesn't seem right to me, it's just what it is and we just have to evolve with it - that's the big thing. Localism in any form is not ok in my book.
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