How Ethical is this website? do we need more insta-crowds than we already have?

well, if we are going to get rid of websites. let's also get rid of those pesky cell phones, which i'm sure contribute more to crowding than the web.

and for that matter, let's loose the trucks. if we really want to go technology-light ... let's walk to the beach.

anyway, my point is that train has left the station. cellphones, trucks, websites, social networking are here to say. let's make the best of them and keep the stoke going.

despite all of this, when it's perfect and 2x over at ocean beach at 7am on a weekday morning, the crowds are *always* light and i'm always stoked ;) (and that's at a break, in the middle of a city, with more technology-per-capita than perhaps anywhere else in the world)

If OB was a point break with one take off spot, I could see your point....but OB is the exact opposite and can hold hundreds of guys all getting their fair share of waves.

This site is great. It's like having a dozen or so buddies to tell you how their session went.

the train may have left the station but that's no excuse for jumping on it.

my answer to the question would be: it's mostly devoid of ethic.

these guys are apparently trying to be switzerland. fair enough.

i'm no fan of SMS, but you get into a discussion equivalent to "do guns kill people, or do people kill people" on that.

there's no doubt SMS'ing surf conditions can be a very lame thing to do insofar as it can easily lead to insta-crowding, but who cares if its linda mar? nobody. however if its donteatus cliffs, the four guys down there are probably not going to be too damn happy about the 8 strangers who show up later in the day just because joe kook decided to pull over and take a peek on one of the 3 out of 5 good days a year it has, and go "wow, there's a surf break here!! i gotta tell the guys!"

likewise, people who live at a break and check it religiously, tracking its seasonal patterns (response to tides, currents, sand deposits/sandbar formation, etc), generally do not look favorably upon folks who show up during that one epic stretch of surf+optimal conditions, setup tripods, and start calling everyone they know.

its happened before, it'll happen again. but it happened before the internet came along, and before people hooked up websites to SMS. word of mouth moves pretty damn fast too, and the second or third good day in a row at any given spot is usually a crowd scene.

no-one's forcing anyone to call people, sms reports, or post pictures, so you can make the case that its not the site that is the problem, its people's judgement/individual ethos.

so basically... drink responsibly, kids.

Dudes!!! Fullers is totally going off right now! Let's drive down there and hit it!

Agree with Cryptomail, nicely said. It's simple, if you don't like crowds and want to surf a break all to yourself than leave San Francisco or any other major city for that much. I grew up in California and have lived next to the beach my entire life and the only thing I know is nobody ownes the ocean, the beach or a break, especially OB. I love OB, the people and if it's crowded on a sunny Saturday afternoon with head high waves, so be it. I surf in the morning, early and usually get a nice peak to myself and if there are a few other guys in the line-up, I get stoked if I see someone score a good wave. I believe in what comes around, goes around and if you give good karma, you'll receive good karma. If you don't like the changing times, the internet, this website, than you have the choice not to participate.

Other thing about OB, I'm thankful that most folks don't bother to hold position out there.

If there's a pack on a peak, odds are high that 10 minutes later they'll be 200 yards down the beach thanks to our golden gate tides.

@surferman: well put sir.

@toooshy: it's *all* about OB ;)

explain "bro-down bro-brah" for this old man.

Sounds like you don't want anyone coming to your beach, whether or not they get advance notice from the internet.

Personally, I'm too new to surfing to participate in elitism (though I know a thing or two about respect), and I hope that doesn't change with time. I'd hate if, a few years down the row, I were whining on the internet about how Kids These Days Have It Too Easy.

Ok, Clint :)

putting the away back in rockaway ...

Sure have thought about it. Someone pinged me on twitter about this a while back. I think they were trying to put together a 'movement' against 'surf reports'. Can't find those folks right now.

We already have buoys, weather satellites to collect data. Surfline, surfpulse, pacific waverider, blakestah (ok, not anymore) to put a story together about what's likely to happen. Stokereporters are a finer-grained, eyewitness version. duckdive, beachbum, kook, willy, beachbum, sticker, mattdh, overthefalls, and crypto put out excellent reports. But they're just additional 411. I like that there's some info about the popular places and that I can still find unpopular places (that may or not be working).

My personal surf-habits are limited to the early AM hours a timeslot that already self-selects for smaller crowds of die-hards. I'm as likely to ignore the (stoke)report about blown-out conditions in OB as I am the buoy readings while I hunt for something rideable.

Just out of curiosity, what's the site traffic like these days? Seems like there are a bunch of new folks posting reports. Are there even more people who read-only? If every reader goes to ###### on a given morning, how many people will be in the lineup? What's the worst-case scenario?

We should get rid of the internet.

A line comes to mind from the napster-filesharing days:

"the toothpaste is out of the tube and the tube has been pounded flat... there's no way to get the toothpaste back into the tube."

(heh, I said tube)

@crypto I run that same play. I just start a bit to the south. It usually works!

Actually, I rely entirely on this site to Tell Me When To Go*

___________
*Dumb

Times are rough and gas is expensive so this site helps me with my decision on where to surf. If OB is 1.5x + and LM is smaller than I'd rather take my chances and go to LM and not get killed at OB. However if OB is HH + and LM is smaller or nothing but closeouts of course I'm gonna head to OB.

When Choi Wan hit last weekend I was not gonna tackle OB because it's more than I can handle. I treked over to LM and it was crap. Only 5 guys at Rockaway and much better.

Are you a Rockaway regular? If LM is crap and Rockaway is manageable for me of course I'm gonna surf there. Yes, Rockaway is a small place but people who surf there have more etiquette, experience and are more respectful there unlike the other side of the hill. The most I've seen out there was about 20 people last year and it was OH. Lots of lefts and rights and no problems at all. Everyone was sharing waves and were stoked! Even on a good day you rarely see Rockaway crowded. People still go on the other side of the hill or head to OB.

Mmmm... I struggle with this on occasion, but obviously, based on the fact that I post up reports, I fall in to the camp that believes the dogs are already loose, and adding one more dog to the hunt ain't gonna kill the rabbit any faster. Besides, I do love talking with others about the hunt & sharing my stoke from a good one or my depression from a crappy one (or lack thereof if it's too kooksloppy).

Having said that, given my recognition of the sensitivity to the issue, I don't post up reports from less well-known places than OB, & I tend to be rather location neutral on my OB reports.

Beyond that, I think @greacen & @cryptomail covered my thoughts on the issue pretty well.

I somehow seriously doubt that the hordes at LM check this site before descending on that place with their NSPs, soft-tops, and Walden Magic Models :-)

BTW, no offense to owners of NSPs, soft-tops, or Walden Magic Models is intended. Well okay, maybe just a teeny tiny bit ;-) Please don't run me over in the line-up.

Darling, I keep my soft-top on the inside where it can't hurt anybody (but myself).

Not sure about the rest :)

Haha @tehdely, it's all good. Safety first!

If you want to really thin the lineup, outlaw wetsuits. Would be game over for 99.99% of us. How did those guys do it up here pre-Jack O'Neil.

more surfing !! less complaining I say.

Man, forgot my wetsuit one dp morn. Didn't want to flip a bitch to grab it & waste valuable surf time so tucked the nuts up & ventured out in just the bathing suit & rash guard. Lasted about 30 minutes before my body made a firm statement that it doesn't survive in those temperatures.

Still, I was proud I made it 30 minutes.

Well, this was a lotta years ago, but if I remember correctly, surf was only around head high, so I wasn't too worried about leash breakages or getting stuck outside.

35+ comments on your first post. Not bad @toooshy!

I usually surf at Linda Mar but I still enjoy reading the surf reports from all over. Unless folks are saying that it's the worst day ever, I'm probably still going out if I have the time and probably to whatever break I feel like hitting. I'm unlikely to jump to Ocean Beach just because a report said a few people had fun. It may motivate me to move around my schedule to get out RIGHT NOW instead of later in the morning, but more the most part I just enjoy reading the reports.

The big reason I read everyone's first hand accounts, buoy data, surfline, cams, whatever is I want to learn how to read waves and conditions on my own.

My dad was a storm chaser in college in Nebraska so my brother and I grew up learning about storm systems, barometric pressure, cloud formations, all the nitty gritty of the weather. As a family we were crazy dialed in to our local weather to the point that when my brother was in college he called me in LA at 3 am to tell me a winter storm system was X miles away with Y mph winds and he wanted me to verify for him that he could make if from his dorm in Chicago 2 hours to our parents house in Michigan before it hit. While most of what we were going on was hunches and assumptions backed up with weather channel data, it's an awesome feeling. (He was right. He got in with 15 minutes to spare)

I'd love to get that dialed in to our local coastline. It's probably a lofty goal but at least I'm having fun trying to learn.

Wow. Quite the dialog. Great points everyone. I think crypto summed it up well ... that this site is about making friends, forming a community and above all, amplifying the stoke.

At the end of the day, i don't think that StokeReport will ever compel hoards of people to decent like surfing locust upon rockaway. But I really hope that we'll continue to enjoy reading about each other's sessions and exchanging thoughts on our bizarre passion with like minded fools.

(and I'm sure that we'll help get @tracey dialed in to our fickle coastal conditions before long)

wonder if storm chasers in Nebraska these days say, oh man you should have been here 20 years ago. Chasing was so much better. Too many storm kooks these days. Too much internet, radar, doppler, sidescan radar, ultrasound, cell phones, Starbucks. It's all gone to hell.

[checks to see if stormstokereport.com is still available]

Ha @king. I'll have to ask him. It sounded to me like it was mostly a bunch of guys in a van yelling "LOOK AT THAT!" hoping every cloud was a tornado and geeking out over stats. I'm sure there's got to be a little bit of resentment that you can now sign up for Storm Chaser vacation packages. Tho I doubt anyone's complaining that rural Nebraska is too crowded ;)

Even though he's not chasing weather, my dad still keeps a sharp eye on it. He watches Tom Skilling on Chicago's WGN every night, NOAA is his browser homepage, he has a weather radio that beeps when there's a warning or watch, and he has an antique barometer in his office that he checks every time he walks by.

After seeing me surf on Lake Michigan, he's started tracking lake surf conditions. He calls me to say there's a storm coming and they are expecting 4-6 foot waves or to explain that for the lake offshore flow is bad and onshore flow is good. It's really sweet. I love my dad. If he lived in Cali you'd bet he'd be on stokereport geeking out about how there's a low pressure system here or the wind will shift directions 23 degrees at 11:54 am.

I keep an old NOAA weather radio by my bed that he gave me when I was little. While it no longer tells me about incoming thunderstorms, it does give me buoy data! Plus any guy who knows what it is and thinks it's cool wins bonus points.

Stoke Report saves me gas, that's all there is to it.