Future Shock was a work on global futurism by Alvin Toffler, published the same year as USA Union was released. Tapping social tumult if not revolution, it spent the longest run of any book on the New York Times Best Seller list in the 1970s. This particular statistic counted. Here, the surfer was lauded in avoiding ‘future shock’ by dropping out to defeat the rise of technological displacement and form alternative pathways. It was over-simplistic. Daves of the early 1970s abounded, achieving alternative lifestyle sustainability, even if a fair percentage were dodging government and urban issues only to farm weed to success. It took an American émigré, Marsha Connor, to introduce ultimate daily pragmatism to their world. She pioneered one-hit daily sustainability via her crunchy granola, never before seen in Australia. Not only did she capture time, place, mood and need, but packaged it waterproof. Surfers simply added milk and carried the bag for a full surfing day.
Rightly or wrongly the surfer was the signpost to the future, beacon of a nervous Western world. Just as surfers’ opt-out lifestyles were brewing to influence non-surfer demography, Toffler’s call was blindsided. The smallest ratio of the global surfing tribe struck the biggest blow. There was irony. The most freewheeling intellectual surfer of all time, Fred Van Dyke of Punahoe College, Oahu, engineered the Smirnoff Pro Am event at Sunset Beach, along with mainstream mainland US coverage. It was the metaphorical rolling stone that put prototype pro surfer against predominant soul surfer. The two surfers best representative of the phenomenon between 1969 and 1978 were those with the clean understated lines. The same moniker, barrels from behind the axe—Gerry Lopez and Wayne Lynch. They did not preach futurism as competitive pro surfing and at least swayed part of the silent majority. Even if veering towards surfers being paid to play, what could go wrong?