Correct usage of term 'Surf(ing)'

Under no circumstances should the word 'Surf' or any variation thereof be used to describe anything other than the actual, physical event of SURFING!

There is no correlation whatsoever between sitting in front of a computer screen or TV screen, and ripping on mac'ing a-frames! (ahh.. that means surfing on good conditions).

Thank you in advance for this consideration of my biased opinion.

(please excuse the impertinence)

A thing of tiki is a joy forever

[ Edited by: Tiki_Bong on 2002-08-27 13:00 ]

There is no correlation whatsoever between sitting in front of a computer screen or TV screen, and ripping on mac'ing a-frames!

Not anymore:

From M-W.com (Merrian Webster Dictionary site)

Main Entry: surf
Function: intransitive verb
Date: 1926
1 : to ride the surf (as on a surfboard)
2 : to scan a wide range of offerings for something of interest
transitive senses : to scan the offerings of (as television or the Internet) for something that is interesting or fills a need

~Hanford

Hanford,

I do appreciate your edification, but I would like to make 3 points:

1. of course M-W.com (emphasis on '.com') would validify the verb "surf" as to having something to do with lazily gazing at a screen.

2. I did say it was my 'biased opinion'.

3. Duke Kohanamoku turns in his grave!

Thank you, and good night!

It occurs to me, since the Hawaiians don't have the letter F in their vocabulary...and since supposedly they invented surf...that surf is not the originally supposed word for this action, just some word approximated by haoles who didn't want to learn their correct pronunciations or words...they were just too lazy...so is the case with finding a word to describe perambulating all over the web...and since it is supposedly a "WEB"...why don't we use a verb to signify what spiders do on their webs? what would that be...amble? climb? " I'm going home and climb all over the web!" sounds stupid....Well, Ducks have webbed feet...what do the do...waddle... " When I get home I'll waddle the web and check out that site you mentioned!"...No, seems to me that Surfing is going to be with us a while...hell, I'm a surfer as well...longboard... and, since everybody is always talking about surfing..I've always got a tangent to go off on in a conversation...Grey

Hey , the reason I became a body surfer and not a real surfer is because surfer's always think they own shit, like the beach, the waves, the world. When in fact most surfers don't own shit, well maybe a board, some sex wax, and a 50 dollar car. OK OK some surfers grow up and become part of the real world.
But the waves, the words, and the world belong to all of us and we will do with them what we please! Your out numbered anyway.
If you need a band wagon, figue out all the meanings of the word f--k. And why is that anyway?
Please don't hit me when you see me BONG
I still love you! (man)

If you use Sex Wax, then you are a square anyway, so who cares. On a Pop level, Surf went corporate sometime in the '60s. While the iconography still looked good through 1967, it went downhill really fast after that.

That Surfers felt/feel they own waves or territory has nothing to do with their level of ego or greed, but is more a spiritual attachment to something that they devoted themselves to wholly, only to see it uprooted by half-spirited trendy Hodads, who only appealed themselves to the waves as a means of being au courant in the early '60s.

Plus, the invectivness of guys like Miki Dora towards the onslaught of newcomers only ads to the fiendish dichotomy of the Surfer image: the waves both are dangerous and mystical at the same time, while the Surfer is also both devout and seditious.

Check it out. When it came time for Surf to be translated into Pop iconography, many instrumentals were given titles of Surf spots or surfing positions, BUT, they were also given names of vampires and other eccentric creatures. The same Pop Surf culture embraced Hot Rod lifestyle by 1964, and Ed 'Big Daddy' Roth's Rat Fink shirts were very popular and seen as part of the same carefree teenage lifestyle... they were a part of the L.A. vernacular.

These Pop examples weren't nccesarily representative of what true Surfers were like, but that is what the inexperienced believed about them and it is part of the mystique. The truth probably lies somewhere in-between.

Imagine that you had been surfing the same places for fifteen years, with less than a hundred people in the whole state doing the same. Then imagine being in your late thirties or early forties and having hundreds and thousands of young teens riding those same waves, but with little experience and even less devotion. I think the post-Gidget environment for true Surfers had to seem little confusing. At the same time, they ended up looking like heroes and exploitation their image to make loads of cash, so there is no need to over-romanticize them... only to say that I can understand their initial frustration.

Sorry to go so far off of Tiki topic.

Instead of using surf for surf (ing) the waves, try he'e nalu (in hawaiian) or aremiti fa'ahe'e (in tahitian) and leave the word "surf" to the civilized world and the computers! :)

Yes, and I have road rage because I use to drive on roads alone and now there are people on them. And I do horrible things in my life now, because I was abused as a child.
It's fun to think of things romantically.
But when you don't join in progress, it just runs you over. Everything has a past, everything changes, some good some bad.
Everybody needs an excuse to be an asshole.
I don't however, sometimes I just feel like it. Other times I need an excuse.
PS. Good thing nobody commercialized or ruined TIKI. It still just the way it was?
Right next to the concrete pond in good SoCal.

Now do see how I brought that back to TIKI!

Wow! Seemed to have touched a raw nerve.

I was just kidding around (sort of).

Words are only words the feeling will always be different!!!

While we are on words, Misstyki, can you answer me this?

I was watching a documentary one day and these guys were talking about old Maori (sp?) and other customs of Polynesia and the tiki came up. They said they wore these tiki's around their necks and they showed some old pictures.

Well, what got me was this, they said tie-kee, not tee-kee. It made me wonder if that wasn't the correct way to say it. These were scholars. So I say Tie-kee to annoy the pee out of Kiliki.

And I see how you spelled your name and it made me think you also say "tie-kee" not "teekee".

In French Polynesia, Tahiti we say tee-kee!
I put a "Y" in misstyki because TYK stand for the first letters of my family name and surname.
I don't know any polynesian people who say tie-kee for tiki... But I could be wrong...
In Tahiti, the marquesas it's tee-kee...!

We dont surf the net in the south, we "look at that there computer thingy that gets all kinds of crazy shit through the phone lines!"

You guys are way to serious about the use of words, i.e.... Tiki, surf, etc.... of course, that is just my biased opinion. Live life and dont worry about the little things, man, do I need a drink!

On 2002-08-28 00:31, BC-Da-Da wrote:
If you use Sex Wax, then you are a square anyway, so who cares.

Ok, every time I hear Sex Wax, I laugh (not because of a Beavus & Butthead mentality), but because of a little instance that happened when I was Assistant Manager of a 7-11 almost 17 years ago....

There I was behind the cash register with lots of customers in the store, and in comes a man approximately 50+ years old, glances at the box-o-Sex Wax (with various scents) on the counter, and then hangs around the store until EVERY SINGLE CUSTOMER LEAVES! I'm watching him the whole time as he checks around the store, making sure no one else is around, beelines toward the counter (scaring the crud out of me), and quickly picks a Sex Wax out.....

"Oh, you surf" I say. Looking at me with a real puzzled look on his face he says "HUH??", I say, "you surf, right?...the Sex Wax...for your surfboard". He re-reads the logo on the package 'Sex Wax, The Best For Your Stick', and THEN realizes "the Stick" means your surfboard and not...well you know, and turns beet-red, and heads out the door so fast I swear there was a smoke trail behind him. I laughed so hard at what happened, and then laughed harder to think what would have happened to him later if I never said a word in the first place. OUCH!

Sorry Tiki_Bong for taking your subject and going off the beaten path (no pun intended), but I had to share that little story.

SugarCaddyDaddy

When I was growing up we weren't allowed to wear Sex Wax t-shirts to school.

The guy who invented the stuff is now a chemistry professor at UC Davis. I don't know his name, but I know it's not Mr. Zog.

--cynner

Whats the saying "Don't sweat the petty things, pet the sweaty things" Everyone is allowed to "Vent" have a Mai Tai and a Midol and relax! :drink:

[ Edited by: sexotica on 2002-08-28 14:05 ]

Yes, and I have road rage because I use to drive on roads alone and now there are people on them. And I do horrible things in my life now, because I was abused as a child. It's fun to think of things romantically. But when you don't join in progress, it just runs you over.

How did this ever go from Surfers feeling a certain ownership of waves, to being about violence on the highways or to an analysis of abused-kid-turned-serial-killer? I'm of the mind-set that we need to be very careful before we blindly proceed with the progressive leadway. Maybe that's just the influence of MAD magazine in me speaking out. I don't fear progress, but at the same time, I'm not sure we have progressed as humans, all that much... just made things more easier and comfortable, which is not always better, per se.

Everything has a past, everything changes, some good some bad. Everybody needs an excuse to be an asshole. I don't however, sometimes I just feel like it. Other times I need an excuse.

While I don't disagree that people have a curious way of justifying their actions to themselves, I'm not sure how guys like Noll or Dora rejecting '60s Surfing for what they saw as a cheap replica, was a bad thing. They simply saw the Beach Boys and all of the Pop Surf ephemera as being less than primary, and were rejecting it on that basis (I love that stuff, but I'm coming from a different post-'60s perpective). I'dsay that they were cetainy NOT living in the past, OR getting run over by progression, but rather, just denouncing something that they felt was bogus.

In many spheres of sophistication, not "selling-out," or being abe recogiZe the Real McCoy from the sham is considered noble and respectable, and I have nothing but respect for those guys from the '40s and '50s Sufing scene. They dedicated themselves to something that was not popular and was often misunderstood, and they lived their lives FOR it and AROUND it for fifteen years, unmoved. Romantic or not, that's how it was in the '40s and '50s.

PS. Good thing nobody commercialized or ruined TIKI. It still just the way it was?
Right next to the concrete pond in good SoCal.

Tiki, as a Pop phenomenon, was commercial from day one... that's what it is! The moment it leap from the Polynesian islands and into the hands of non-natives, it was commercial. Maybe even before that. Perhaps you could say that Tiki was ruined when the gap between tradition was created by the missionaries and for two hundred years (in Hawaii, at least), many of the original practices were lost to oral institution, never to be completely comprehended in their original intent again.

Yowch! I hadn't realised that such an anti-surfer vibe existed!! My dealings with surfers have always revealed them to be a mellow crowd who are in touch with their surroundings and need to avoid the tedium of the straight world. I have to stress, these are the surfers of Cornwall, who are genuinely as hardcore as any you'd meet around the world. (You'd have to be because of the cold).

I've seen Point Break & Surf Nazis Must Die, but I assume most surfers aren't anything like that, even in the most 'local' spots!!

Getting back to the topic, though, there should be a word to describe my inept surfing technique....

Trader Woody

Trader Woody,

You are correct... Surfers are a mellow bunch, for the most part, and while Surf Nazis have always been a part of the fringe, the majority of Surfers are not violent people, and comparing their frustration/rejection of the oncoming swarm of the early '60s Surfing "trend" to road rage is just aburd.

I read my emails newest to oldest, so maybe this has been addressed already. This Surf/surfing topic has gone (and maybe always was) WAY OFF TOPIC! Any coonection to tiki is extremely light at the best.

Trader Woodey,

The surf term for inept surfing is 'Kook'.

MrSmiley,

The reason I posted 'The correct use of term 'Surf' was:

a) we are a web group, hence I made the connection to such terminology.

b) since when is everything we post tiki related (remember the death of the mom & pop hardware stores?)

c) so what!

Peace, Love and TIKI :tiki:

mrsmiley wrote:
"This Surf/surfing topic has gone (and maybe always was) WAY OFF TOPIC!"

But, surfing is done by people, and people go to tiki bars, and tiki bars are loved by tiki central members, and tiki central members surf (the internet). Wow, man, it's like all related!

I'm going to go lighten up with a Lani Honi (or 2 or 3). Or is it get lit up? Care to join me, mrsmiley?

OH YEAH!

Hello Tiki Centralites -

Allow me my two cents on this post:

The term "surfing the net" is actually an homage to one of the first pioneers of the internet. (and NO, this is not an Al Gore joke!) Dr. Vinton Cerf worked on the Department of Defense Internet project from 1976 to 1982, and is credited with being one of the true fathers of the internet. The verb "to surf" is simply a homonym of Dr. Cerf's name, and fell into popular usage during the early days of "the net". For Dr. Cerf's resume & profile check out, er, I mean "cerf" to this website:

http://www1.worldcom.com/global/resources/cerfs_up/personal_perspective/cerfprofile.xml

Parting note: They say it's not a wasted day if you learn something! ...and that wasn't so painful, was it? :)

Peace to all,
Mikey

Wasn't it Dr.Cerf who said "Can't we all get along?" :cry:

[ Edited by: Kitschy Koo on 2002-08-30 00:41 ]

I'd say surfing has a very major connection with Tiki. There isn't a surfing chapter in 'The Book' for nothing!

While the majority of people on this board may have got into Tiki through listening to lounge, then exotica, there are others who got their first taste through surfing. Certainly the crowd of British surfers I know are at least aware of Tiki if not into it, unlike the general population.

Trader Woody

Tiki and Surf go hand-in-hand. A lot of the same vibes weave their way through the history of each, be it that of tradition or of Pop.

Wow! When did surf'ing become politcs!!? Intense little argument go'in on. Just remember, when you "body surf" you are actually

A: one with the wave!