| vagabondsurf.com It's about life - not "lifestyle" |
| WHAT IS KILLING BODYBOARDING PAGE 2 |
| One of the downsides of pandering to a 12 to 19 year old age demographic is the fact that content targeted exclusively to this group is devoid of much material beyond the have fun/get laid mindset. "Going Pro" is the main target, but why this is a valuable target is never explained beyond the good times and good waves. One can only wonder what the thousands of bodyboarders in other countries might think about this. The lower aquisition costs of bodyboards, and their realitive higher durability when compared to contemporary disposable surfboards, has made bodyboarding extremely popular in many countries which people in Orange County might consider Third World. With the plethora of surf magazines presenting surfing and bodyboarding adventure as being catered to at a luxury surf camp or surf yacht, even realistic escape isn't being offered to readers. Yet there may be a reason why this 12-19 year old age thing is in place. Without having any kind of bodyboarding culture in place, bodyboarding has a kind of "Logan's Run" self-destruct built into it. "Logan's Run", for todays youth, was a sci-fi movie about a world where turning 30 was a death sentence. It was easy to live with, until that 30th birthday came up. The magazines present bodyboarding as having no past, and no future. What happens to the typical non-pro bodyboarder? Assuming he learned how to read, one day he will perhaps graduate from high school. This is a great feeling, no matter how you ride waves. This also presents a fork in the road. College beckons in one direction, and the beach in another. Some hit the road for a while, and then return to academics. Others make the move to full-time beach life, which is just like real life with damaging solar radiation. When the guy goes to college he gets thrown in with all kinds of people, most of whom don't surf. Everybody knows about surfing, though, including all the girls. Kelly Slater, right? Well, no, the guy rides a bodyboard. A Boogie? Well, no, a freakin' two-hundred fifty dollar state of the art bodyboard, not the little twenty-buck raw open cell piece of foam you see at a beach-side liquor store. Oh, the girl says. Ted over there rides a Channel Islands just like Kelly. The guy could have bodyboarded the best waves on earth but would be less interesting than a total poser with a name brand surfboard. The girls, if they don't surf themselves, don't know or care about the difference. And if the girls do surf standing up, the bodyboarder becomes even more invisible. Time for the bodyboarder to move "up" (surfboard) or out. So why start anyway under circumstances like those? Perceptions only get worse as years pile up, because nobody shows anything different. The guy who doesn't go to college may get to string it out a little longer, but by the time he hits age 24 or so he'll have greybeard status - which in a 12-19 year old world means nothing. He's just in the way of "the youth." |
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