Great surfers just surf, average surfers stand around and talk about surfing, small minded surfers hate everything.
I just saw a post on the Surfer Magazine forum. Classic. Titled something like, "Everybody hates SUP" or something like that (by the way, go to that link and check out the hot photos of the SUP guy getting seriously barrelled). There was a reference to a battle between some entitled dingy sailors back east somewhere and the stand up paddlers who were bobbing in the water around their launch/land site. Evidently, a dinghy under sail, coming in for a beach landing with rudder up is eventually going to kill a stand up paddler so the sailors are trying to get SUPs banned from the water. Nice. Would hate to get some SUP blood on Chip's topsiders or tweak a pinky finger in a drastic, full rudder, avoidance maneuver.
In the forum, you can read all the other posts as the SUP hate circle jerk winds up. These guys crack me up- in a sport where individuality is supposed to be admired (if that wasn't the case, Ozzie Wright's style would have had him banned from all surfing ten years ago) they can't stand to hear that one of their very own has gone over to the dark side. I have to salute the contribution by a longtime Oxnard local, talking about his friend, an acknowledged local shortboard ripper who's been dabbling in SUP:
You know what I like about all this? I like thinking about the mindset of the stando/surf guy, who one day decided to give SUP surfing a shot. What do you want to bet that the results of his actions, the unbridled derision of his local Oxnard ripper brothers, NEVER ONCE CROSSED HIS MIND. Ironic in that in a sport and region where the punk rock anthem of, "fuck all of you because I ain't you." was nurtured and germinated ('Nardcore anyone?) - these guys are all confused and don't know what to think about a guy who truly separated himself from the 6'4" thruster flock. For small minds, the world is a much easier place to comprehend when you're, "different, just like everybody else."