Surf Like Nobody's Watching

Can anyone really be an original in surfing anymore?

- Justin Housman

We called him “Crazy Craig.” He was, or, presumably still is, a surfer in the Central California beach town where I surfed growing up. I don’t remember if his name actually was Craig, come to think of it. Maybe it was Carl. Might have just been a fun bit of nickname alliteration we assigned to him. Nor do I remember if he behaved like a crazy person out of the water. Actually, he seemed like every other middle-aged surfer in the ‘90s when you’d see him at the taqueria after a session. Battered two-wheel drive Toyota pickup splattered with paint and ladders, he must have been a house painter or contractor or something, just like pretty much every other guy was back then on the Central Coast. But Crazy Craig surfed, uh, differently than most—rode old, stubby, oddly-finned boards way, way before they were even a twinkle in surf culture’s collective eye. Surfed with a super low, squatting stance like his boards were finless. Hell, maybe some of them were. If you picture Derek Hynd at J-Bay, that was sorta in Crazy Craig’s same neighborhood, style-wise.

Also, Crazy Craig surfed with a freaking rope glassed to the nose of his board.

Not a leg rope. An honest-to-god, braided fiber rope like you’d use to tie a mattress to the roof of your car. He held it firmly wrapped around the fist of his leading hand and would kinda whip the front of the board around with the rope on turns. Or, he’d hold on, rope stretched taut, through tricky sections for extra balance. I have many memories of Crazy Craig locked into an early-morning tube, bathed in a shimmering golden light reflected off the wave face, that weird rope clenched firmly in his hand, leading the way, with his shouts echoing in the barrel.