Contemplating Tom Curren over Coffee

After a recent morning surf, I was sitting in a coffee shop reading Drew Kampion's The Way of the Surfer, and I came across a great article on Tom Curren with an even better title: Still Waters Run Deep. That's right on the money. It got me thinking about Curren's contribution to the sport. It wasn't a Duke thing or a Hobie thing, a Brown thing, or even a Slater thing, but something completely different. It wasn't just a big moment. Curren's moment in the surfing continuum was like a shift in perspective. His full commitment to professional surfing changed surfing's economic paradigm. Then his abandonment of it jolted surfing's collective consciousness. With his back foot firmly planted in the past and his front placed in the future, Tom Curren buried the rail of surf culture, dragged his hand across the creative face of music and surfboard design, and carved a line all his own.

Even cooler, I got a chance to surf and hang a bit with the mystic himself back in Hawaii. He probably wouldn't remember our sessions at V-Land, Haleiwa, Kammieland (Tom Carroll dropped in on me that day), maxed-out Freddies, or even latenight jam sessions at Che's house, but it was a great time for a kid who just graduated high school and had Curren posters all over his room and spent hours each session emulating his cutback and headsnap.

That was the cool thing about Curren. He didn't seem to get it...his place in surfing. He wasn't aware or maybe that was his shtick. Every thing he did seemed calculated in terms of his career, but it came off natural. But that's how he surfs...calculated but unconscious. Smooth but aggressive. His legacy is one that won't be soon left behind because any kid trying to surf like Slater is, by proxy, trying to surf like Curren.