SURFCORE MAKES PICTURE MOVE

@surfcore2001 three time consecutive winner of World’s Best Instagram Account (a competition I hold annually in my mind) has just entered the world of surf video production. This first masterpiece features shred head @robbierickard ripping his Dad’s 6’5 Dahlberg through some real good wedges, in a wonderfully low-tech way. If you’re yet to experience the power of @surfcore2001 then what have you been doing with your life? Turn your life around by having a read of Vaughan Blakey’s piece on the mystery man from the SW’s 50 Most Intriguing issue:

GRAND CHRONICLER OF THE NOUGHTIES

“I didn’t grow up thinking surf magazines were better in the old days, because the mags I was buying at that time were everything to me,” says the anonymous genius who’s somehow made surfing at the turn of millennium cool again. “A three-page ad of Parko in ankle-length boardshorts, mate, that was the sickest thing I’d ever seen.” Surfcore2001 grew up in Old Bar, a somewhat isolated coastal town near Taree in NSW and he counts passing Phil Macdonald on the highway as one of his early grommethood highlights. “I told everyone at school the next day, I was so stoked. I was such an impressionable kid and those guys were giants to me. That’s kind of what the account is all about, re-embracing that grom froth and celebrating the core legends of a time that a lot of my generation are embarrassed about.” It’s true that, until recently, history has not looked back kindly on the early 2000s, though Surfcore2001 believes everything winds up going full-circle eventually. “The fashion and the boards were not the coolest and the division between art and surfing was at an all-time high. The closing of Hot Tuna and then Mambo going corpo-reptilian… it all felt lost. Surfing wasn’t cool. Look at a guy like Trent Munro. There was nothing fashionable about him but he was full power and full core. It’s all about the lords of core for me. Margo, and Purcho before he grew a beard and started riding weird boards, even Parko and Mick, all the big names in the Y2K era.” But more than just celebrate the era Surfcore2001 also captures the language of surfing in a way that has drawn high praise from punters and pros alike. “The caption thing snowballed I guess. I’m not a professional writer in any sense. I have a mate doing his Masters in Creative Writing and he thinks surf writing is the biggest joke in the world, but I think the surf mag language is written in the voice of the guys involved. How it reads, the colloquialisms and the in-language of the culture, Jed Smith once said it’s like Irvine Welsh, it’s written in a native tongue and to me that tongue is blue collar rural surf bogan. The voice of carpark story teller is how we communicate and how our message is shared.”

The popularity and engagement of Surfcore2001 speaks volumes of the way people want to consume their surfing. It’s lighthearted and sentimental and it makes you feel good about things that for near on a decade now we’ve culturally cringed about. Best of all, it’s not mean. “I have the highest of respect for the era and what it is worth to surfing. People think I’m taking the piss but these were the guys and the posters on my walls. It’s nice that the page gets attention from not just the common surfer but the people of that era because no matter how untrendy the boards or fashion, or the flaming dice ankle tattoos are. Those guys are still apex predators in the lineup and probably surf better than all of us. And none of it is meant to be serious. If you’re not getting that message then you’re not reading deep enough.”