Å·²©»áÔ±Èë¿Ú

Is anybody out there? This was the question. The Extinction of Dave Rastovich was originally The Ark of Dave but by deadline had become a disingenuous failure. The ark was empty.

The lifestyle consumption that indelibly marks your time and fun: surplus to planetary survival. By action, by creed, the ²õ³Ü°ù´Ú±ð°ù—d±ð²õ³Ù°ù³Ü³¦³Ù¾±±¹±ð to past ethos and current demands. Ninety-nine-point-nine-nine per cent of us, guilty. The blackboard of surfing virtue, rated by mainstream thinkers of 1970 as the lifestyle signposting the future and the evolutionary act leaving no trail, is now but a rubbed-out slew of chalk dust. Is there a parallel in history of a hedonistic movement being so wantonly unconscious to damaging folly? The irony of surfers—by daily habit the cleanest of humans, also most filthy.

At the turn of 1970, master bluesman John Mayall arrived in LA for the live studio album USA Union. From writing to recording to mixing, 48 hours. The integrity of the sound, unbeatable. USA Union fed surfing counterculture, 1970 through ’73 with a particular track weighing heavily on environmental blues consciousness. At the time it was the greatest green blues track ever recorded. It may still be. As you can read, the magnitude of the problem was never addressed.

NATURE’S DISAPPEARING
Man’s a filthy creature
Raping the land and water and the air
Tomorrow may be too late
Now’s the time that you must be aware
Nature’s disappearing
Polluted death is coming, do you care?
Garbage going nowhere
Soon the dumps will spread to your front door
Lakes and rivers stagnant
Nothing lives or grows like years before
Nature’s disappearing
The world you take for granted soon no more
Read about pollution
Make manufacturers uncomfortable
Boycott at the market
Containers that are non-returnable
Aluminum, glass and plastic
Eternal waste that’s not destructible
Å·²©»áÔ±Èë¿Ú’re a generation
That may live out our natural time
But as for all our children
Born to suffocate in human slime
Nature’s disappearing
And we are guilty of this massive crime

Dave was over by The Gannet. He took his constitutional walk back from the shed for lunch, following the creek most of the way. In the kitchen he prepared balanced fare, neither rushing the process nor swallowing the articles without chewing. Indeed, unlike the long morning surf being the great natural appetite accelerant, long hours sanding a stage one hull of a recycled catamaran would tend not to be the case with infiltrations of dust leeching a fog bank of poisons into the body. Be that as it may, hungry or not, toxically compromised or otherwise, the host served me first before seating himself at the table. As a host, even time short, consummate.

Poor form to interrupt Dave’s eating but I got straight to the heart of a short chat, that of an heir apparent. Did one exist?

The answer didn’t exactly fly out of his mouth, but Dave was silently expressive. Seconds ticked by, 10, 20, accentuated by slow munching. Something ticked over in back of mind. A name. Jack. Jack McCoy. Was Dave weighing up names or counting with full mouth? I could hear Jacko’s force of voice from 20 years ago, booming across an otherwise empty beachside Chilean cantina as Jack slowed to a crawl in finishing his catch of the day Å·²©»áÔ±Èë¿Ú three were there for Blue Horizon. Jack rose up in slow but loud and deliberately syncopated sermon.

“Thir-ty-chews-per-mouth-of-food-is-good-for-the-gut, brah.�

Dave may have been counting his every munch ever since. But perhaps not. He eventually came up with a response to my question.

“I can’t think of anyone.�

Future Shock was a work on global futurism by Alvin Toffler, published the same year as USA Union was released. Tapping social tumult if not revolution, it spent the longest run of any book on the New York Times Best Seller list in the 1970s. This particular statistic counted. Here, the surfer was lauded in avoiding ‘future shock� by dropping out to defeat the rise of technological displacement and form alternative pathways. It was over-simplistic. Daves of the early 1970s abounded, achieving alternative lifestyle sustainability, even if a fair percentage were dodging government and urban issues only to farm weed to success. It took an American émigré, Marsha Connor, to introduce ultimate daily pragmatism to their world. She pioneered one-hit daily sustainability via her crunchy granola, never before seen in Australia. Not only did she capture time, place, mood and need, but packaged it waterproof. Surfers simply added milk and carried the bag for a full surfing day.

Rightly or wrongly the surfer was the signpost to the future, beacon of a nervous Å·²©»áÔ±Èë¿Ústern world. Just as surfersâ€� opt-out lifestyles were brewing to influence non-surfer demography, Toffler’s call was blindsided. The smallest ratio of the global surfing tribe struck the biggest blow. There was irony. The most freewheeling intellectual surfer of all time, Fred Van Dyke of Punahoe College, Oahu, engineered the Smirnoff Pro Am event at Sunset Beach, along with mainstream mainland US coverage. It was the metaphorical rolling stone that put prototype pro surfer against predominant soul surfer. The two surfers best representative of the phenomenon between 1969 and 1978 were those with the clean understated lines. The same moniker, barrels from behind the axe—Gerry Lopez and Wayne Lynch. They did not preach futurism as competitive pro surfing and at least swayed part of the silent majority. Even if veering towards surfers being paid to play, what could go wrong?

The mainstream hammer was down to sudden affront. Sydney sports journalist Mike Hurst created a jingoistic group named The Bronzed Aussies. He tapped an appearance by mile world record holder John Walker at the local ES Marks Field, sending them onto the track to walk a lap, pre main race. It was mid-January 1977. They walked in front of thousands, not as bedraggled surfer blokes but as superstars in tight fitting velour jumpsuits. World Ratings Champion (Peter Townend), World Cup Champion (Mark Warren), Big Boofy Bloke Looking Like Jack Thompson (Ian Cairns). They smiled, laughed, waved, achieving warm reaction similar to ring girls. Hurst forged space next morning in print and electronic media but the furore went further. It forced a first and last bond between TracksÌý²¹²Ô»åÌýSurfing World magazines in condemning perceived false pretence. The Bronzed Aussies did not represent surfing as a whole. Ultimately, however, it would, to this day.

I wrote a piece for The Surfers Journal in 2021 called “Evolver 100â€�; a redemption attempt listing those best currently representative of ideal surfing example. Genders, handicaps, disciplines body to board, all inclusive. The onus zeroed in on footprint. Footprint, because in environmental cost/benefit analysis it was transparently key in returning the surfer to positive planetary relevance—returning to Toffler. Pro tour surfers generally failed to touch 100. Steph Gilmore, John Florence, Jordy Smith featured. Kelly Slater was the only active competitor ahead of ‘The Unknown Surferâ€� rated 13. In hope, number 13 was the undiscovered marvel, perchance secluded in self-sustainability next to a hard-packed sandbottom year-round pointbreak at the end of a deep mud-bound forest, riding with style and high lines on old bulletproof equipment, which does tend to romanticise a Dave heir … somewhere.

The outcome for Dave was never in doubt, Torren Martyn second. Then came a glaring insight. Average age in the list up to Number 13�55. Some were 80-plus—Frye, Munoz, Chouinard. This is Dave’s scope relative to other surfers; also, the false economy of an industrial train that’s run the other way for 50 years. The ‘other way� starts with mass surfboard construction and disposal, industrial air freighting and waste disposal not far behind. No surfer purporting to be environmentally concerned gets out of this if keyed into mass industry consumption, even Dave and lauded board builder Gary McNeill.

Green means lean, and lean means local and local means next-to-no freight. The ‘other way� roars of behemoth private/public pro/amateur administrations dictating arcane belief systems of which road and air travel ride parallel to negative inside man Darwinian herd mentalities. The ‘other way� comes from boardriding clubs conditioning kids to attack the inside, prime crime of most lineups.

So here sits Dave, by passage of time a throwback in a 21st century paradox, a beacon of what once could have been.

An academic’s novel from a century ago posed the likely origin lore of the Robin Hood figure as a village boundary protector rather than fugitive rambler. Such a person most probably did exist in the region of Sherwood Forest but not as a Robin of Loxley and most probably not with merry band, less probably with a Maid Marion. More probably still as a semiliterate youth of certain physical stature who, having mastered the art of the staff, made use of it, staving off half-starved returning Crusaders from trespassing the village gates where the road north from London ran closest. This figure was humble, resolute, highly skilled. Pro surfing through the decades on the back of The Bronzed Aussies model, master conscientious injections as athletic baselines. None match the injections with conscientious objections to unjust environmental outcomes.

Take 2 million capable surfers out of a total 10 million—ones good enough to know how to actually surf with good or bad technique. Of these, say 300,000, which is a conservative estimate, act out as apex surfing predators in cutting around the herds in anthropologically stark neo-Darwinism. This is an exemplar of humanity’s race to the bottom. Generically reared by communal nurture no matter country nor locale (with the exception of Makaha), this cross culturally generic state of mind is perhaps best set by a random visitor arriving at any surf spot to become the undiagnosed sociopath upon hitting the water to attack and attack, again deepest inside position whilst wallowing in his own filth. Oops, forgot the gender warning. All are male from age 13 on. One surfer in the 2 million acts-in as apex surfing defender on multiple fronts.

Very few surfers, not even Dave, escape with clean feet. Offset, mass offset, elevates him to huge green positive. His fame buoys not only the socio-economic doctrine of Patagonia the company but that of hard goods producers. In main frame is Gary McNeill, whose output with Dave is unavoidably transnational and has been for decades. Compared to mentor, Dirk Van Straalen, avoidably transnational through cottage philosophy and lateral experimentations. Dave’s footprint in the killing Bambi sense is affected by secondary factors at most basic; freight, but also by proportion of non-revolutionary materials used in production of frontier flax weave boards with McNeill that also feature a ratio percentage of reconstituted foam. Then there’s the percentage of standard production boards built for market without Dave’s name attached but ultimately influenced by Dave’s team stamp.

Back to lunch. Å·²©»áÔ±Èë¿Ú were running over Dave’s past; leaving New Zealand at primary school age, being a freak nippers paddler as foil to Grant Hackett, same club, ocean swimmer; exposure to experimental knee paddling craft; as the kid surfer winning in Bali, almost blowing off the strange Nike-attired older man strolling the beach who only introduced himself at the very end as Dick Van Straalen; the mythical Burleigh designer who’d been in mind for several years.

Then in answer to the original question, Dave put forward a name.“I’ve got someone. Ruby Southwell, Sunny Coast. Å·²©»áÔ±Èë¿Ú (partner Lauren Hill and Dave) did a great with her, one of our best. Kind of reminds me of Steph, actually. She was in the Ments in a village when Covid shut everything down. It changed her life. She adapted to old ways, took on the language. She stuck up for the village surfers when the travellers started returning. First boatload said how great it was turning up with no crowd there. They were the crowd and Ruby told them as much.”

No pressure, Ruby. Maybe The Ark of Dave it can still be.

This story was first published in Roaring Journals.