The EOS bodyboarding page just posted. Working on this one, it occurred to me that I was inoculated against internet haters way back in 1990, as the editor at SURFER, after writer Bruce Jenkins turned in a great profile on bodyboarding legend Mike Stewart and I somewhat cheekily titled it "Is Mike Stewart the Best Surfer in the World?" A totally legit point of view at that time—Stewart was riding deeper in the tube than Derek Ho, and launching all manner of freaky air moves. Dude absolutely owned Pipe on the triple-gnarly maxed-out days. Smart, funny, nice guy as well. The "best surfer" bit was something I stole from Nat Young, who said George Greenough was the world's best in 1967. Nobody said a word against Nat, but SURFER daring to call a bodyboarder the world's best? The USPS had to call in reinforcements to deliver all the hate mail. "To answer your question: No, Mike Stewart is not the best surfer in the world. He's a boogie fag." That was one. Another guy (it's always a guy; is there even such thing as a female hater in surfing?) just sent us his Top Ten list of derogatory names for bodyboarders, which included "homoprone," "flatman," and "foamette."

Of course, as Nick Carroll pointed out a few years later, bodyboarders were "incredibly easy to hate." Unlike the small number of Greenough-inspired kneeboarders in the late '60s and '70s, bodyboarders arrived in swarms. They devoured Off-the-Wall. They clogged any number of lineups in and around Sydney. Beyond the sheer numbers, the craft itself was so aggressively unlikable. Unlike the surfboard, which may be the finest-looking piece of sports equipment ever devised, a sexy speed-promising parabolic gift to the eye, the bodyboard does indeed look like an oversized sponge. That famous early '70s Alby Falzon photo of the two guys standing on the reef at Uluwatu, boards at the ready, about to leap into the great Balinese unknown? Imagine those surfers holding Morey Boogies instead of pinned-out single-fins. Goodbye cool. Hello satire. Just the word "boogie," for that matter! "Boogie," as I recall, was hip for six months before it went disco: "Boogie Fever," "Jungle Boogie," etc.

Working on this EOS entry, however, 25 years into bodyboarding's Great American Decline, it struck me that in some ways bodyboarders have in fact become cooler than traditional surfers. Doing what you love to do, never mind the fact that everybody around you looks down on it. Sound familiar? Right, that's what surfing was for so many decades, back before it was a lifestyle industry. Hardcore bodyboarders (like 

, for one) strike me as having a lot more in common with Tarzan Smith, Walter Hoffman, Keith "Spaz" Hurst, and any number of other fringe-dwelling titans from the sport's Golden Age than any of our current well-fed ASP stars.

Not caring about cool is a great way to be cool. Maybe the best way.

BODYBOARDING THROWS OFF THE SHACKLES OF COOL, RUNS FREE

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