Best seat in the house. Surf Expo 2007. Photo: Hill

In This Issue

As a magazine, this time of year makes it particularly hard to stay on our toes. From mid-August to sometime around the third week of October, we have no less than 18 surfing competitions to cover. That's right -- 18 comps, in a nine-week period, for a mag that works under a six-week publishing cycle. And those are just the major events happening here, on this coast. That's not even including what transpires on the ASP World Tour (which we also cover, from an East Coast angle). 

So why even bother reporting on all these contests? By the time this issue hits the shops, the East Coast Wahine Championships will be almost two months old. The results and pictures will have already been posted on their website. As for all the other WQS's, pro/ams, charity functions, and specialty series... well, if you didn't catch every heat online via live streaming video, there are certainly enough press releases, Surfline reports, and digital photos circulating around cyberspace to get the gist of things. So it would make sense for us to lay off, right? 

Wrong. We cover East Coast surfing, and last time I checked, surfing was a sport. How could we not plug these contests, spawned on our shores by our people, in the pages of ESM? Now exactly how much page space we devote to each event is an imperfect science in itself, and my colleagues and I wrestle with the equation every time the photos and e-mails start filtering in: 

"The ECSC is a no-brainer. I mean, it's only the biggest event that happens in Virginia Beach all year long." 

"What about the Dean Randazzo Surf For A Cause? We gotta do that one. It's for cancer, dude!" 

"No one even contacted us about the Typhoon Lagoon Classic. Let's just squeeze it in the Blah Blahs somewhere." 

"The Unsound Pro's serving up $11 grand for 1st-place. That's, like, the most money ever! Let's give it two pages, at least." 

Whatever your views on competition, you can't debate how important these events are to the livelihood of the East Coast surfing community. For some towns, that rinky-dink pro/am might very well be the biggest thing that happens there all year long. While a place like Buxton, NC, all but depends on the annual influx of ESA Easterns competitors, directors, sponsors, and media to help sustain the local economy heading into a tourist-less winter. And all the various memorial comps and benefit events, while quieter than a WQS 3-star, are every bit as relevant to those involved, from the finalists to the tabulators. Seeing as this nine-week contest barrage falls during the peak of the Atlantic Tropical Season, we're not exactly selling our souls to provide page space. After all, if the waves are there, the photos will kill. Bring on the Fight Club! 

But not this year, Jack. Pretty much every contest we had on our docket this issue suffered through the same swell drought as the rest of us, which put Photo Editor Jimmy Wilson and myself in an interesting predicament: how to polish a turd.  

"So Pruett, do we go with Matt Keenan's one-foot bunny hop on a knee-high wave or Jesse Heilman's two o'clock backside pivot?" 

"I dunno, Jimbo, maybe we can run a lifestyle shot. How about a guy's buddies carrying him on their shoulders to the awards stage? No one's seen that before." 

So yeah, sometimes it can get a bit tedious. And as the information superhighway continues to expand and split and branch into all kinds of digital feeder roads, I'm sure we'll be required to find new ways to reconfigure and present our contest material. But we'll never stop giving them the attention they deserve. Because that's what the collective surfing audience wants. This September's Orlando Surf Expo proved that when several hundred spellbound fans gathered near the Hurley booth -- ignoring all the flesh, surfwear, and gimmicks clogging the aisles to instead focus on CJ Hobgood obliterating Dane Reynolds at the Boost Mobile Pro, which Hurley was broadcasting live directly across from the Eastern Surf booth. Dane's supporters took one corner, while diehard Right Coasters swarmed the ESM side, presenting a stadium-like atmosphere that could only be rivaled by the following afternoon's Jaguars game.  

In this day and age, when every mainstream visual medium fails miserably in its attempt to accurately portray our sport (the HBO dud John From Cincinnati and any number of motion picture abominations come to mind), the professional surfing event still manages to nail it on the head every... single... time. Bottom line -- if you're watching a WCT contest, you're watching what is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the best surfing in the world. Guys can bark all day long about their favorite punk rock aerialist down the street, that random feral tube dweller in the newest video, or some underground psycho who only surfs twice a year when it gets 50-feet or whatever... stop kidding yourself. The pros -- that's right, contest surfers -- ride waves better than anybody. 

And on the other side of the coliseum, those of you out there who still choose to abhor competition in all its alpha male, killer instinct-provoking ugliness -- well, have fun trying to perpetuate that soulguy, earthchild cliché, Hemp Boy. 

Because the way I see it, if you don't like to watch surfing at its finest, then maybe you're in the wrong sport.

By Matt Pruett