A Lesson in Love for the Stokereport
Or
Open Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow
Sorry all, for this is long, but please read it if you are a regular contributor to “the Stokereport.”
Long time surf scribe and Ocean Beach regular since the 1980s, Matt Warshaw was most likely accurate when he claimed that Ocean Beach’s surfing population possessed more graduate degrees than any other lineup in the world. And who could argue with such a statement? Given Ocean Beach’s location at the edge of the global city of San Francisco, and with Silicon Valley just down the road, San Francisco’s lineups are full of “brainiacs” – surgeons, lawyers, financial analysts, professors, tech guys—many of whom have had the good fortune to pursue an education and subsequently work in a field that interests them.
For what it’s worth (and apparently it isn’t much, based on the replies I receive to my comments on this site), I would like to revise Warshaw’s statement: For a surfing community with so many graduate degrees and white collar intellectuals, Ocean Beach is sure full of idiots.
In saying this, I am not referring to the un-educated heathen, the tradesmen, the blue collar laborers, or such types with whom we share the ocean. In fact, the “idiot” reference most likely applies to you, Mr. or Mrs. or Miss Stokereporter with a graduate degree.
Before you get defensive, please allow me to elaborate. Please listen and attempt to understand a viewpoint from a perspective other than your own—heck, it’s what we are taught to do in formal education, right?
I concede that the “Stokereporter” is a fairly harmless species, one which aims to “do good” in the name of “stoke.” And from what I can gather, the premise of this website is to “share the stoke” by posting information about surfing and the surf culture that we all love so much. The Stokereporter does this well—s/he welcomes newcomers who are like-minded; s/he engages in friendly dialogue ranging from board design to product reviews to tips and pointers on how to enhance one’s surfing abilities. Heck, the Stokereporter even uses modern technology (stokereport.com) to invite complete strangers to join him/her in the act of riding waves and in pursuing the pure yet elusive “overflow of spontaneous, powerful feelings” that result from playing directly in the sea.
Wonderful. All good. All great, actually.
Now for the idiot reference: despite his/her good intentions and vows to act in accordance with spreading goodwill and cheer (i.e. “stoke”), the Stokereporter often offends, upsets, irritates, or otherwise disturbs his/her neighbors. Now, this is no sin or flagrant foul if such an offense is committed “in ignorance”; that is, if the “offender” has no idea s/he has “offended” another, then even if there is harm done, this action can be excused. However, when the offender (Stokereporter, in this case) continues to knowingly act in ways that upset or offend his/her own neighbors, fellow human beings with whom s/he shares sacred space beyond the high tide line, well, then we have a problem.
The simple facts are that Stokereporters provide real-time reports of surfing locations and broadcast this information to an unknown public audience. Some of these reports include photos, others include video. Each report comes with a time-stamp which the audience can use to gauge exactly when the report was made and thereby infer its accuracy. Some photos and video appear on this website that publicize not-so-well known spots and tempt anyone who is “surf stoked” to go and pay these new spots a visit.
Now, here is the rub: behind his/her façade of good intentions, the Stokereporter continues to provide such reports even when numerous critics have argued against it. “It’s a free country!” some claim; “###### isn’t a secret spot!!” others chide. “You don’t own this ocean!”
Rather than stop, listen, and acknowledge the feelings and messages of others, the Stokereporter becomes defensive, perhaps because s/he realizes that s/he has committed a foul and grows defensive accordingly, but more likely due to the fact that s/he has been publicly reprimanded for committing an act of sin in the surfing world, thereby tarnishing his/her Stokereport reputation and cyber-persona. Thus, the naysayer/renegade (s/he who criticizes the Stokereport), despite his efforts to reason with Stokereporters and engage in dialogue using the very medium the Stokereporter uses to articulate wave reports, is chastised for being “negative” and antipodal to the mission of the Stokereporter species. Many such villains voice their concerns to the Stokereport community respectfully, yet these naysayers are ridiculed or become banned from the site for offering perspectives that differ from those of the masses, the general Stokereport community.
Interestingly enough, many Stokereporters are newcomers to surfing and to the surfing lifestyle; most if not all are not from San Francisco. So what we have here then is a newer population coming into a territory and ignoring the pleas of the indigenous people. But I digress…
Back to my “idiot” reference—to knowingly offend others, to refuse to acknowledge the concerns of his neighbors, and to be blind to the fact that the Stokereport—while it may spread cheer to some—upsets many others, the Stokereporter is both incongruous and asinine. Rather than spreading the peace and love s/he advocates, the Stokereporter is abusing public space with little regard for how s/he affects others within that space.
To close, I’d like to quote a well known local, overheard changing out of his wetsuit on the side of the road, location not-to-be-disclosed except for zip 94122:
“For so many ‘well educated’ people in San Francisco, there sure are a lot of idiots here.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
