Another post on changes to surfing over the past 50 years.

My son has an iPhone.  When he gets to talking about going for a surf he hits his phone to see what the tide is at that moment, maybe he’ll view a surf cam, and or look at a forecast.

50 years ago if you were planning to go surfing tomorrow and knew of a friend that went to the beach yesterday or today you called them to get a report on how the surf was.  But, you didn’t call him on his cell…. He didn’t have one.  You called him on a land line.  If he was home he’d pick up and you’d talk.  If he wasn’t home you didn’t leave him a message…. There were no answering machines.  If he was on the phone talking to someone else the line didn’t beep him for call waiting… you got a busy signal, there was no call waiting.  One way or another you may or may not have gotten a surf report. 

If you didn’t get a report and you went to the beach anyway it was going to be a trip to the beach to check the surf and surf if it was there.  If it wasn’t there then you looked somewhere else, or just hung out for awhile then called it a day.

Gas back then was about twenty cents a gallon… so if you drove to the beach for nothing it wasn’t that big a deal.  I guess it’s a good thing we’ve got all this technology now… with gas at $4.25 a gallon who can afford at trip to the beach nothing?

D.R. 

 Tim Nesbit on a D.R. Stubbie Quad

Matt Riley on a D.R. Fish