Thad Ziolkowski's article on John from Cincinnati inadvertently captures the grade-school clannishness and social anxiety that ruins surfing for so many.

Long board vs short board. Labels vs no labels. Worrying about what you drive. Laughing at people who are less skilled than you are. Adding menace to these childish debates by creating social cliques out of these beliefs, then insulting the outsiders, or threatening them out on the line.

There may be too many people and too few good waves out there, but the self-appointed representatives of surf culture ruin what they have with their bad attitudes and selfishness. Yuppie surfers and the self-confident old-timers are often the only civil people on a break - all the rest should be grateful that these newcomers are too 'dumb' not to buy the new lightweight boards and improved wetsuits, so 'selfish' that they organize to protect coastlines and improve beach access for all.

Interesting rejoinder to Ziok's article, which I found interesting as a non-surfer. But even as a non-surfer, I take your point about clannishness. It will be interesting to see if JFC explores this tendency, since "Deadwood" was ultimately about the social contract.

•Having been surfing for almost (gulp!) forty years now (I'm 47) and having been in the "surf industry" for for about 30 years, I am a little surprised that I hadn't heard about this show before reading about it in both today's LATimes and NYTimes (yes, surfers read newspapers- I even sometimes read the Wall Street Journal and the Economist). •Anyway, the show sounds like something I might get around to watching if it makes it to DVD. Why the hesitation? Probably the potential cringe-factor (I actually kind of liked "Blue Crush" because it was so unrealistic and silly and had cute girls and nice water shots- what's not to like?) but the "reality" of a surfer's life (especially a "lifer") is so utterly incomprehensible to a non-surfer that I wouldn't even attempt to explain it.

I agree with pcorning. I started surfing about 10 years ago while a junior in college, out on the west coast from new york. Clearly, this marked me as an outsider: started surfing at 19 years old, rather than 6 or 7; not a native californian; longboarder (not a shortboarder); had to drive an hour to the beach (instead of living next to it). These are subtle things, but in the surfing social hierarchy they mark you as lame. But I didn't know about all that -- I had heard about this kind of flower child life style, a kind of spirituality with a tan -- and I thought it would be fun. And it was fun. Surfing is great, but it never lived up to its promise. It's just a sport, not a religion. There is a lot of animosity and putting others down in surfing, and I think the reason is this: surfers are disappointed. they thought they were getting a transcendental life by devoting themselves to surfing, but instead they just got the usual stuff like everybody else.

I live in new jersey now, and don't get in the water very much. I miss it a little, but there are other things in life that are just as good.

I think it would be very interesting to see surfing explored from this point of view in this new show -- the promise of spirituality, the disappointment of the promise unfulfilled, the ensuing finger pointing ("soul surfer" vs "sell out"), the struggle between an "authenticity" and purity of the sport which is pragmatically unworkable and unrealistic, and crass commercialism, and the uneasy marriage of the two that is the only honest way out.

Probablist: I don't know if you were replying to me or not (this new format makes it hard to determine who's replying to who). Interesting comment about disappointment. I grew up in Hawaii in the sixties and early seventies, and going to the beach and going surfing was a part of everyday life, like playing baseball or basketball. It wasn't until my family moved to California (in '73) that I found out that surfing had this kind of outlaw reputation. The groovy sixties were ancient history by then. It was a pretty dark period. But for me, and I think for a lot of my friends, surfing was a refuge and a source of a strong sense of brotherhood and, frankly, tribal identification. It was kind of a rough world, and outsiders were treated harshly, but most of us came out of pretty fucked-up family situations (ever see "Dogtown and Z-Boys"? my friends and I were exact peers of those guys, just 100 miles north). A lot of my friends who drifted away from surfing fell into much rougher waters and eventually died. So by now, in my mid-late forties, I can be grateful that alive and healthy and active. In fact, yesterday I was in LA, and stopped off for a surf on the way home. It took the edge off, relaxed me and generally put a nice glow on an otherwise stressful day. To address your last paragraph (how are you breaking up your text, by the way?) I still enjoy surfing, and I make my living because of it, and have never really had a problem with that. Any pursuit is as "spiritual" as you find it to be.