Skaters On Surfers: Thoughts On Dion’s Former Sponsor Me Tape
Watching surfing, hearing about surfing - it’s always seemed to me like a bunch of dudes with white noses doing turns.
Turns are the trick. Just fucking turns. Kick turns, we say in my culture. That shit wouldn’t fly in skateboarding. When my homie stops me from taking a turn on the box because he wants to show me a sick clip, if he pulled out his phone and showed me a fucking fast kick turn, he wouldn’t be the homie anymore. Imagine an X Games or SLS or whatever Mike Mo is doing where there were a kick turn section. Nah, man. That’s not a trick.
Sometimes I watch surfing and they aren’t even turning. Granted, the wave is huge, it’s like twenty feet tall or whatever - it’s vert wall sized - but they aren’t doing anything at all. They’re just riding. They’re just going straight, in a straight line. At that point, is it sick by virtue of the surfer’s skill or is it sick because of the behemoth that the surfer is on. At the Eddie, I’m not looking at the surfer, I’m looking at the wave. There is no trick, there is no action.
“I do not understand the notion of ‘getting barreled’, because who gives a shit if you’re in a cone of ocean? ”
My biggest criticism of surfing is that the bar is too low. You fools get hyped on a guy riding in a straight fucking line. You deserve more than that. You deserve style and substance. You deserve movement. Lift your head up, king, you deserve the (wet) world.
I follow Former on YouTube and was notified of a new video. Another surf video. They sponsor two and a half (Myles is still a child, not yet a full rider) skaters, but something like nine surfers? It’s a surf company. But the name, Dion, I know that name. I feel that name deep down in me. Agius, a little less so; Agius sounds like me trying to say the word ‘anus’ when I’m on ket. But Dion Agius, that is a name that I have grown up with. I’ve heard that name uttered in my older brother’s bedroom, on the beach in Honolulu, and around my friends in LA who wear leather jackets.
I gave Dion Agius a try. Immediately, I love a fisheye. I love Ventura less, but Dane makes me laugh, and a fisheye view of his left half had me hooked. Additionally, as an actor, Dane crushes. With some skepticism, I watched and listened to Dion tell me about his accomplishments, all of which sound like things I would make up if I were making fun of surfers. ‘Youth Christian Tasmania Quarter Final Qualifier First Place Second Division’ and so on.
But then I heard a voice I had not heard in years - a voice that triggered in me something primal and youthful. It was Dexter Holland. I ceased to be thirty and began to be twelve. I smiled a big fucking grin as we scan over the aquatic child prodigy.
And then Dion did a fucking back flip.
A fucking backflip. On a surfboard. I had never in my life seen a surfer do a fucking backflip. I didn’t realize that that level of maneuver was even within the surfer’s realm of possibility. Something changed in me. I felt the maneuvers. I felt the speed that I was watching, the spray, I felt in my arms the adrenaline of whipping a fucking back three bank to bank and using the lip of a wave as a kicker. I was overcome with salty brined compulsion.
The unwound strings of ‘Faint’ by Linkin Park - an absolutely insane song choice - plays over slow motion film stock. My new God, Dion, whipping a front 180 and a tuck knee in a wave pool which I’m told is wack but I’m not savvy enough to know much in the way that you film an entire skatepark part on a flip phone when you’re thirteen and send it to Jamie Thomas - blissful naivety.
In all my time watching surfing, apart from a fin to the face or a bit of coral in the leg, it was clear to me that surfers simply don’t slam. They can drown, probably, but the water is a forgiving place to eat shit. I believed this and even argued it online beneath nearly every WSL big wave recap post before being blocked by the account (cowards). I believed this thoroughly until I saw Dion get absolutely fucking denied by a slap of water to the face in black and white and literally fall from the sky like Beelzebub himself falling from heaven, unforgiven by God.
“I visit her balcony and am brought in by her confession of love, and then, so soon but not too soon after, Dion has made sweet sweet teenage love to me, and our houses become one.”
I do not understand the notion of ‘getting barreled’, because who gives a shit if you’re in a cone of ocean? I continue to not understand after watching this part, but thankfully, there is very little of that in there. What there is a lot of are fucking aerial acrobatics. It is a part that takes place mostly above the ocean rather than on or in it, and with it’s conclusion, watching Dane place the tape on a shelf next to other tapes labeled with names that I do not recognize but I’m sure are hilarious, I feel a shift in the seat of my pants.
The adrenaline wears off, but the strings and the Offspring and the spray off of Dion’s fluorescent green fins is still felt deep in the emotional side of my tiny little brain. Something had changed in me; something fundamental about my understanding of the two cultures at bitter war with each other like two families in fair Verona where we lay our scene. I, a skater of the house of Montague, and Dion, a surfer of the house of Capulet. I visit her balcony and am brought in by her confession of love, and then, so soon but not too soon after, Dion has made sweet sweet teenage love to me, and our houses become one.
Perhaps because most of the surfing media that I consume is either second hand, commercialized, or more about a vibe than excitement - more like a surfing mood board than actual surfing - I, and I expect most landlocked skaters are confused by surfing. In our minds, it is a thing done to connect with nature and unwind, and not necessarily a thing done with the same vigor, force, or intensity as our relationship with skating. Dion Agius appears to me at least, through this compilation of what I’m sure is a highlight reel spanning decades, to be a skater’s surfer; a pusher and a doer. Less of a ‘chill out man look at my dinosaur arms doing a really long frontside turn on this wave and the little splash it makes,’ and more of a, ‘I am going to either do the sickest air or I am going to literally die trying’, much in the way that skaters pull up to spots with a tension in their jaw and an eagerness in their legs that scream ‘let me out of the car I cannot wait for you to park I need to board slide this fucking rail or I will tear my fucking eyes out.’
What I mean to say is, Dion Agius, you have converted me. I understand surfing. I understand why you do it. I have watched your part four or five times. I have sent it to my friends. I still think the culture is fucking wack, but the silliness of the soundtrack and the format of a sponsor me tape has disarmed me just enough for me to shit my pants at you, the angel who fell from heaven and did a big spin on the sea.