I stumbled across this today. Pretty cool to see the way people surfed in the 60s and 70s and how its changed, especially in our local area. If anyone has any other older footage from NJ, post it here. I'd like to check it out. [video=youtube;E1I4rbkH4Cc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=E1I4rbkH4Cc#![/video]
Awesome! Thanks for posting. Some funny observations... No hoods in 38 degree water. Ouch! Those chicks in bikini's are my mom's age now. Ouch! They even called 'em BENNY's back then. Ouch! Manasquan looked better back then. Ouch!
The cool thing about this video is it gives an idea of the style that guys my age were copying. These guys are the ones I watched as a kid and thought "wow someday". My style evolved from this and the younger people had better and better examples especially now with the number of visual examples available on the net. Back then If you saw a picture of a guy doing a floater in a mag you would try and figure out how it was done by trial and error. There were no moving examples or slow-mo to break the moves down and it could take years to do it. Looking at this now with all the talented surfers around It really shows how far the equipment and skills have advanced. At the time it was cutting edge, lol.
Agreed, of course, that surfers are much "better" today than they were back then, but I also really like the way some of these guys surf. Carving up the waves juuuust enough, super smooth, lots of speed.
Yeah I agree I like it to. Until 5 years ago I surfed a lot like these guys with a few more turns thrown in. I surfed like that because that's how everyone surfed who had any skill back then. Even though I am much older I have recently been influenced more by the younger surfers than that older style. It's funny to be caught between the two generations and be pumping down the line only to go into an arched back stall over a fast section hoping for a cover up (one that rarely happens btw). I guess I was saying that the equipment today is so much less clunky than those old boards and the younger guys need to understand that the surfers back then surfed like they did not because of lack of skill but because the equipment just wasn't refined enough to allow the manuevers that are possible today. It was these guys just out of the sixties that were at the vanguard of the style that we see today.
