Bye, Bye, Surf Mag

An unfortunate fact of my surfing life is that I grew up in Florida.  When I was a late teenager I spent a lot of time around Daytona/New Smyrna Beach surfing and partying.  It was the 80’s- Mtv Spring Break with Martha Quinn by night and Ponce and Smyrna inlets by day.  Good times. Bad waves.

Our older mentor of trouble was a guy named Jim, but we called him Jim ‘Macrete’, or just ‘Macrete’ for short.  He partied harder than all of us.  He had this huge step van (think Charles Chips wagon) that we rode around and ’smoked weed’ in. It had a ‘mad rats’ skate banner on the ceiling that he had stolen from a skate contest. He was such a legend to us.  Oh yeah, and Jim Macrete’s old lady was ‘Hot’.

Once Jim Macrete found a bale of weed on the beach near 27th avenue just before the cops did and it took three squad cars and seven officers to convince Macrete to let the pot be confiscated.  He was taken away in cuffs while staking claim to the bale and was later released uncharged without so much as a doobie.

Every time we went to Jim Macrete’s house there would always be new surf mags. We would just sit there and pour through them one photo at a time wishing we could walk right into the perfect surf in the photos rather than slog another knee high Florida ’swell’.

One day I asked ‘Dude, do you have a subscription to all these magazines?”  Jim laughed and said casually, “No, I buy them for a quarter at the 7-11″.  I was, like,”uh..what..how do you do that”? Macrete went into story mode and started…”Ok, so I’ll tell you this but you can’t go blowing my hustle at the 7-11 around the corner…go over to the one near the Beacon breakfast joint, but not this one.”  We all agreed. “So, you just go in there and pick up a newspaper and then browse the magazine rack…when the coast is clear you slide a copy of the latest mag inside the paper…and then just buy it for a quarter.”  We were in awe.  Such genius.

After that I bought most of my mags for a quarter. The 7-11 on Silver Beach in Daytona was one of my victims.  It was too easy. Sometimes I mixed in a coffee or a 7-11 burrito to make it look legit.  At the time I thought it was cool.  It is not until one gets older, stops smoking weed, and gains a bit of conscious and perspective that they figure out how lame they are. I probably owe someone some money right about now.  I just don’t know who.  Upon writing this I realize a charitable donation is in order.

I digress.  So all those mags were studied, nay, worshipped.  I knew every ad, read every article and knew every 80’s surfer from Scott Farnsworth to Joey Buran. I hung the posters on my wall and cut out the hot ‘blue man’ bikini girls and put them on my door.  The photos were discussed again and again and spawned dreams of faraway lands and exotic travel.

Right now there is probably a grom somewhere doing the same thing. Just like us.  Or is there?  Wait a sec. Hmm?  Is today’s grom more likely to post things on their facebook ‘wall’ than in their room? Will walls in kids rooms become digitized so my son can post video clips of Jon Jon’s little brother ripping? Will he be more likely to read articles on his ‘digi pad’ (whatever that ends up looking like) than from a surf mag stashed in his trapper keeper? Yes. Yes to all of it.

Tired is the title ‘Print is Dead’ (here’s one from TIME).  Magazines are going under at an alarming rate, not just because of the economy, but because the media is outdated.  There is even a death pool for magazines that has some pretty impressive titles on the list (including water mag). Mags are outdated when published and costly to produce compared to their website counterpart.  Now one sees websites and blogs in some industries taking over the entire media. A good example is TMZ in the entertainment industry.

So what about our little surf industry?  Yes, major surf mags are toast and I will predict that one of the major US Surf Magazines (or all of them) will crash and burn by this summer.  Is this bold? Hell no.  It is inevitable. Why? They are slow to adapt.  They are out of touch.  They are not profitable. They can’t compete. Do I need to go on?

I am not exactly stoked about this as a photographer.  This will effect the magazine’s ability to buy photos from us. Internet sites pay about 1/4 or less of what magazines pay.  The world is changing, but there is plenty of opportunity. I don’t want to be slow to adapt like the surf mag.  The future is bright and dark, but this is an article for another time. For now read Vincent LaForet’s article The Cloud is Falling.

So what does our future media look like?  Well you have Surfline and the wannabe wetsand.com, which seem to be taking Surfer and Surfing magazines place on the internet. I would expect a few more of these. Yes, there will also be the old mag sites, but they will probably fold along with the publication. Next you have sites that promote their products and try to serve as media outlets – ASP world tour, Clothing companies, etc.

Finally, you have the bloggers.  I expected someone would gear up and do this, but I have so far only seen a few.  My favorite is PostSurf.com written by Lewis Samuels.  Strangely enough he just wrote an article about Transworld Surf’s new issue that is basically a catalog (The timing is coincidental as I had been working on this post since last week).   Funny stuff especially for the cynic.

I would like to officially say ‘Bye Bye Surf Mag’.  It was nice knowing you.  You were a big part of my life.  It makes me wonder about Jim Macrete. I haven’t seen him in 25 years.  I have this vision of him being some old, out of touch codger pinching Surf mags from the 7-11 in New Smyrna.  If so, what will happen when he rolls up to the convenience store one morning and finds that ‘Surfer’ went out of business and the only way to find good surf stoke is going online.  Hopefully he’ll just go surfing and not worry much about it.