Happy birthday Surfer magazine, purveyors of the world’s best enhanced escapism

Surfer magazine, the so-called “Bible of the sport,” turns 60 this year. Strange to think of the ultimate encapsulation of carefree youth culture knocking on for retirement age, but there you go: time and tide wait for no mag.

Issue One of Surfer wasn’t really conceived as a magazine as such, back in 1960, more a booklet to promote a series of screenings of a new film called Surf Fever by California filmmaker John Severson. However, demand for it in surf shops was so ferocious that Severson quickly realised he was onto something and turned it into a regular publication. Fast-forward six decades, and while various rivals have come and gone, Surfer retains its place as the sport’s preeminent title. (Fans of certain Australian titles may beg to differ, but somehow they lack the gravitas of Severson’s creation.)

That said, Surfer has by no means been immune to the effects of the digital revolution, which has roiled the entire media industry in recent years. In its heyday, it was an enormous monthly publication, stuffed with ads, overflowing with features and – judging by the frequency with which it dispatched surfers and staff photographers to exotic locations – able to draw on a ridiculously generous travel budget. These days its print edition only appears on a quarterly basis, and while the editorial standards are as high as they have been at any time in the last 25 years and the photography continues to sing, there’s no disguising the fact that, these days, Surfer doesn’t quite have the heft it used to.

Not that I’m really in a position to talk about the physical feel of the mag: I cancelled my print subscription several years ago and began subscribing to the ipad edition instead. Is it as good as the paper and ink version? No, of course not. Leaving aside all the well-rehearsed arguments about the benefits of reading words on paper vs words on a screen, there are certain practical considerations that the app fails to overcome, the most notable of which is that, when a mind-blowing image is reproduced over two pages it’s only possible to view half of it at a time, leaving your mind only 50 per cent blown. Still, the ipad version is a fraction of the price of print.

So far in its 60th year, Surfer has produced two special anniversary editions. The Spring 2020 issue was a blast, having much fun, in its opening feature, at the expense of some of the more unusual fronts of yesteryear. Particularly noteworthy was the selection of “Too High To Feel My Face Covers,” which included one from the 1980s that looked a lot like an Iron Maiden album cover, with an armour-clad surfer riding deep in the barrel while wielding a blood-stained sword, and an acid green-and-yellow effort from the mid-1990s, guestedited by Rob Machado, that looked like it might have been designed by 3 Feet High and Rising-era De La Soul.

Produced after the Covid-19 pandemic had taken hold, the Summer issue did a nimble job of acknowledging the scale of the crisis while at the same time offering readers some much-needed escape from it. A double-page spread near the front was given over to a mosaic of photographs of members of the surfing tribe who, as healthcare workers, now found themselves on the coronavirus front line. Most of the mag’s centre well, though, was taken up with words and pictures carefully calibrated to transport readers to dreamy locations, and the front cover, which bore the tagline “60 years of escape!”, was a clever riff on a classic cover from the 1980s, showing a surfer leaping from the bow of a boat towards perfect waves breaking in the distance. As editor Todd Prodanovic wrote in his introduction: “Escapism is something Surfer is pretty good at – we’ve been doing it for 60 years now, after all... ‘Insert Self Here,’ would have probably worked fine as the cover blurb on every single issue.”

To suggest that printed media in general and surf magazines in particular face an uncertain future is to state the blindingly obvious. However, by focusing on escapism, Prodanovic has perhaps hit upon a way in which his publication and others like it can fulfil a new need in the age of Covid-19 – a time when long-haul travel is mostly off the menu. Yes, of course, the internet is now full of billions of images of people surfing in exotic locations, but these only offer a few seconds of imaginary travel. By contrast, a 2,000-word travel story spread out over ten or 12 pages and lavishly illustrated provides a far superior mental holiday – enhanced escapism if you will. And, as Prodanovic rightly points out, nobody does escapism quite like the folks at Surfer.■

Surfer has by no means been immune to the effects of the digital revolution