Wave goodbye to surfing stereotypes
These middle-aged professionals don't fit stoner profile
Published: Sunday, March 1, 2009 at 4:35 p.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, March 1, 2009 at 4:46 p.m.
Stereotypes, like eggs and vacuum cleaners, are made to be broken, just waiting to be broken you might say, creating a mess for those unprepared for it. The surfer dude is one of those eggs.
Get ready to break an egg, brah.
A self-proclaimed surfer dude, Dr. Conrad Block of Santa Rosa, leans over one of his patients, drill spinning in hand, and because he is a surfer dude, he should say, “Dude, that is an epic cavity! I am so stoked, brah, for what I am about to do to your mouth!”
Instead Block acts like a dentist, a true professional, even though he might be wearing a Hawaiian shirt, even though he has three surfboards on display in his dental office, along with eight miniature Woody car models and seven paintings on the walls depicting the Woody, surfers and beach life. Dr. Block even has a Woody of his own.
“If I won the Lotto, I would set up my practice close to the beach so I could surf in the morning, or at lunch, or after work,” he said.
But the image of a surfer, Doctor Drill!
And you, too, Oded Shakked of Healdsburg, and Mike Casey of Santa Rosa! You guys know the image of the surfer dude. Hollywood has branded it on us with a hot iron. A surfer dude is 18 years old, blond hair, a stoner who parks cars at night for spending money while spending his days looking for babes and even more attractive waves.
You know, a guy who lives on the margins. Who would be hospitalized with an irregular heartbeat if told he had to work for a living. Who hasn’t spoken a complete, understandable sentence since he was 5. Who sleeps on the beach. Or in the backseat of his Woody.
So what’s up with this lawyer riding a bodyboard?
“Every day I am at work,” said Casey, an assistant city attorney, “I am thinking about the waves for the upcoming weekend, hoping they are good.”
So what’s up with this vintner treating surfing like a religion?
“It probably is my church,” said Shakked, who owns Longboard Vineyards. “I definitely get stoked out there.”
These three guys have had plenty of time to grow up and pass the stereotype. Block is 45. Shakked is 49. Casey is 54. They have seven kids among them. Casey is even — cowabunga, dude — a grandfather. They all are college educated. They all speak in complete, literate sentences. They are as far away from the surf bum as vinegar is to a doughnut.
The iconic and wayward surfer dude may be alive and well and ever-present on every beach in a Hollywood movie, but he is more of a rare bird to these three men.
“About 20 percent,” said Block of the estimated percentage of surfers he sees that conform to Jeff Spicoli, the Sean Penn surfer-dude character in the 1982 movie “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” “The image is weakly valid.”
“About half the people I see in the water are over 40,” Casey said. “Now, if you were in Southern California, you might see more truth to that.”
If these guys break the stereotype, it may be only slightly less significant that they thumb their noses at conventional living. As people age, the tendency oftentimes is to limit or eliminate altogether the things of youth that might put the mortgage or the family or the career in jeopardy. Taking a chance at 18 might be hang gliding off the TransAmerica Pyramid in San Francisco.
Taking a chance at 48 might be staying up an extra hour to finish a book while knowing the alarm clock will ring at 5:30 a.m.
“There is something about the image of being a rebel,” Shakked said. “Maybe surfing does connect you to your youth. Maybe you want to feel young again. But you probably have heard that old saying: There are great pilots and there are old pilots but there aren’t great, old pilots. So, yes, I don’t surf all day like when I was 16, on the water at 6 a.m. and out at 6 p.m. And I’m not out there to impress anyone anymore.”
So if wisdom does come with age, then what’s the wise thing to say about sharks, great whites in particular? Nothing quite says “pushing the envelope” than surfing off the Sonoma County coast where the toothy predator roams.
“When I get to the beach and see good waves,” Block said, “I don’t think about sharks. All I think about is how fast I can get on my wetsuit.”
“I’m way more concerned about a drunk driver on the road to the beach,” Shakked said, “than a great white shark.”
And then there’s the simplest, least troubled view of them all: “For the most part,” Casey said, “I don’t even think about it.”
It’s surfing, it’s not a stoner’s holiday to these guys, or to the other 40-somethings in the water. It’s a sport, it’s an art, it’s a meditation, it’s not a mindless, soulless and vapid way to spend time.
“Nobody can get ahold of you when you are on the surfboard,” said Block, who otherwise makes himself available 24/7 to this patients. “It is a mini-adventure. If you never have competed in a sport, you won’t get what surfing is: You’re totally in love with what you are doing because you are so much in the moment with it.”
Barry Bonds used to say the one thing he loved about baseball was that no one could touch him when he was between the white lines of a baseball field. Same with surfers on a wave. Especially surfers who are over 18, clear-headed, have jobs, a life, a family and responsibility. The surf is their sanctuary. Phrased like that, it is not a bum’s life they lead but rather something quite the opposite.
“The thing is,” Casey said, “that when someone finds something they love to do, he doesn’t look for a reason not to do it.”
You just do it, like the shoe manufacturer says. Just do it. Break the egg. Break the stereotype and don’t get lost along the way because I just called you “brah.”
For more on North Bay high school sports go to Bob Padecky’s blog at padecky@pressdemocrat.com. You can reach Staff Columnist Bob Padecky at 521-5490 or bob.padecky@pressdemocrat.com.
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