Surf’s up

by Leigh Hafrey

The thrill of surfing compares to the thrill of business. Do you have it?

What does the surf ethos have to do with business? Apparently everything, as I discovered on a flight from Minneapolis to Tokyo-Narita a couple of years ago. Given the week I had ahead of me, I should have eaten and gone to sleep, but I didn’t. Instead, I watched Stacy Peralta’s big-wave documentary, Riding Giants, and was mesmerized. Presented as a short history—1950’s to today—of the relatively few people in the world for whom riding the biggest wave matters more than life itself, the film is a study in technological and commercial innovation, and the values associated with such change.

Beach bums on Wall Street, suits on the shore? One of Peralta’s early big-wave surfers offers data that catches the entrepreneurial ear. In 1959, there were fewer than 5,000 surfers in the world; by 1963, they numbered two million. As Peralta’s sources tell it, the Gidget films—the first of which appeared in 1959—made us all wannabe surfers, even when we didn’t swim; and Gidget, of course, represents just one strand of a multifarious cultural explosion including film, music—think the Beach Boys and Dick Dale clothing, language and much more.

Hollywood wasn’t alone in filming the surf scene, though. Greg Noll, the "compleat" surfer who built a board business and a brand from his passion for riding the biggest wave he could find, documented his own and his companions’ exploits. Together, with a few other like-minded individuals, Noll seems to have blended an anthropological impulse to capture a culture with his own business needs.

This film record complicates our stereotypes of surf culture. Weren’t the surfers—big-wave and recreational—devoted to living the moment? What about leaving the beaten path, turning a collective back on the mainstream and casting off material cares and restrictive social norms for their all-consuming passion? For whom did Noll and others like him preserve those fleeting moments, and why?

Since my chance encounter with Riding Giants, I have put both the film and my questions about it to business audiences. Without fail, they have embraced the film, offering quasi- mystical comments, in public, about the magic of the sport, the allure of water and nature and even the poverty embraced by those early surfers. They are, however, surprisingly disinclined to see the evangelical, public relations dimensions of the big-wave enterprise. Even when they don’t surf, the pastime captures an aspect of their lives that they choose to shield from the cynical wisdom that "business is business."

For them, it isn’t all about—perhaps isn’t even at all about—the money. Many of them live the extremes of big-wave riding every day: the thrill of scoring the deal, logging 100-hour weeks, racking up hundreds of thousands of frequent flier miles—these are the ingredients of their business practice. Whatever they do in their spare time, they have also introduced extreme sports into the office environment. In the digital age, the entrepreneurial mantra of making your millions and retiring by 35 drives those who would catch an economic rather than a liquid big wave, but the rush matters as much as the bottom line.

Watching from the shore of his own enterprise at Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau would be proud of their spirit, if perhaps troubled by the degree to which material considerations entwine with the nobler, more metaphysical dimensions of this quest—and it is a quest. After watching Riding Giants for the fourth time, I recognized the underlying story that Peralta has chosen to tell. Through Greg Noll and his merry band, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table still pursue the Holy Grail—only now they’re chasing the biggest wave, equally elusive, equally inspiring.

History itself seems to have blessed their endeavor. For the early big-wave riders, Merlin appeared in the guise of Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku, an Olympic swimmer and medalist in the 1910’s, 20’s and 30’s, and a bearer of surf tidings to his century. The waters off Makaha, Waimea and Peahi don’t resemble Camelot, and yet, on a visit to the islands in 1962, John Kennedy lingered among the dignitaries welcoming him, to chat with Kahanamoku. That encounter is the stuff of which legends are made, not just for the individual, but for the society at large; it hallows occupations of otherwise uncertain value, and makes their meaning palpable.

Riding Giants is a case study in how we manage change and leverage technology, from the early wooden longboards to their smaller, more maneuverable composite successors; from the group line-up within easy sight of a beach (and crowds) to the small-team-based tow-in surfing that takes place miles from dry land on the outer reefs, thanks to jet-skis and, more recently still, the helicopter.

The film also tells the story, though, of how people who can’t or won’t buy into social norms still send back word of their feats and the spirit that moves them— inventing, risking, bonding with like-minded individuals who, in some cases, seem unable to do anything but continue the quest.

Meanwhile, caught in the mainstream, we beg for revelation. For all their independence of mind, the big-wave surfers do what they do for us, perhaps even at our behest; it’s a sunny take on leadership and the market, but it rings true.