The throng of tanned spectators at the U.S. Open throbs with standard surfer chic. Except these two guys. Their dyed black hair contrasts with their pasty skin–a sheen they strive to protect with the highest SPF sunscreen.
One wears oversized sunglasses from the 1980s that say “Wild Thing” across the lenses. The other has a stud in his lip and big metal bolts in his ears. Often when they’re out in public they wear girls’ pants because they are tight and weird, they say.
But what really sets them apart is their preferred wave-riding vehicles. The boards that lay beside them in the sand are not thrusters, fish or even nose-riders. They’re bodyboards.
“Surfing is for regular people,” says Mike Rasmeussen, 19. “We’re spongers.”
In the annals of cool, there is this entry:
“Boogie board (a.k.a. ‘sponge,’ ‘bodyboard’) noun: inferior step-brother of the surfboard; popular among awkward children and the infirm; worldwide sales of approximately 3 million per year, dwarfing surfboards (250,000), skim boards (20,000) surf kayaks (fewer than 10,000) and all other wave-riding devices. One of the most popular water sports on Earth. Seriously uncool.”
But as seashores from New Jersey to New Zealand attest, the sponge has won. Bodyboarders outnumber surfers almost 6 to 1, according to a recent study. Target, Costco and even credible surf shops have capitulated to their popularity, offering various boards, fins and leashes.
When surf pioneer Tom Morey created the first bodyboard in 1971, he just wanted something new to ride. Surfing, he felt, was becoming too exclusive, too cooler-than-thou. Anyone with bad balance who was unwilling to risk a head ding was out of luck.
So in frustration he cut a 4-foot block of foam, softened the edges with an iron and hit the swells in front of his home in Hawaii.
The fundamental law of the bodyboard was soon revealed: Anyone can learn how to ride in seconds, and it promises a good time as long as you’re wet.
Morey put an ad for his “Boogie board” in a surfing magazine. Four years later, he was filling 80,000 orders annually. Demand for Morey’s boards eventually outpaced his ability to fill orders, and competitors began imitating his designs.
He sold his invention to a San Francisco company, which in turn sold out to Wham-O. By the late 1980s, Boogie boarding (a name now owned by Wham-O) was becoming almost cool.
“Bodyboarders were the first to get air by launching off waves,” says Pat Dugan, an executive at Morey Bodyboards. “When surfers started seeing bodyboarders getting air, that’s when sales went psycho.”
Suddenly, all those teams sponsored by surf product makers seemed to have at least one bodyboarder. Surf shops began fighting over particularly good spongers. And then, in the early ’90s, it ended. Sales went flat, and the cachet of 4-foot foam evaporated.
“When girls really started surfing, that’s when it began to end,” Dugan says. “When a chick paddles by you on a surfboard, all of a sudden you check yourself: Am I on the right thing here?”
But the threat of uncool was hardly enough to end sponging. The universal access to surfing’s coveted stoke is the real secret to how the sponge won.
“I wanted something that everyone could do and feel like they were cool,” Morey says.
———-
Edited by Cara DiPasquale (cdipasquale@tribune.com) and Drew Sottardi (dsottardi@tribune.com)
