Surfing is not really surfing without the Rasta element. Peaceful and nature loving, adventurous and musical, kind and humanitarian, dreads or not, pot or not. Courageous as a Lion. Those who feels it knows it. Jah Guide and Protect.
Surfing is often viewed as less of a sports activity, and more of a lifestyle. Popularised in the United States during the 1950s, surf culture found increasing expression with mass-production of surf fashion, music and, later, with the booming surf magazine and movie industries in the 1960s. Surfing culture can be seen in their slang: hang ten, gremmies, the Big Kahuna, the woody, waxing my stick, the green room, etc, though many of these terms are now archaic.
Partially due to the obsessive tendency of its participants, and partly to the predominantly stylised media representation of the sport's participants, surfing became embedded in the popular imagination as synonymous with either a naive, pseudo-spiritual hippie idealism or a drug-addled, lazy, 'beach-bum' apathy. Neither of these is probably accurate.
Though today such stereotypes have long since lost whatever relevance they may have had, surfing has still failed to completely divest itself of negative social connotations, despite the best attempts of various commercial marketing strategies. (Aside: One famous Australian surfer, Nat Young, once tried to register the sport as a religion, but to no avail.) |
