A message from Peter Zipf
20 Years Strong!
Team Tim Disco Divers
Written by New Jersey Surfer Jim Earle:
“Winter is upon us. The gray specter of smelly wetsuits haunts me. Fall has faded. But the surf doesn't fade, and there remains the memory of days in September and October when the beach was deserted, the air warm, the surf hot. Now the wind is whistling through my bargain-base-ment storm-windows and there is a curious pile of white stuff accumulating in the corner. Before me sits a case of warm beer, to drive away the cold. In the background Shelley Mann is working over a flute, Hot. I'm looking at some pictures —surfing pictures. Taken this fall and summer. In Taffytown.
Taffytown. Innocuous, foreboding-a town reveling in its past glory. Yet, a town firmly dedicated to the future. Always building, bustling, entertaining millions of visitors every year. The heart of this city is the beach, skirting the mass of tourists. And the sea. The sea, always beckoning, omnipresent, dominating. And the surf. The surf that rarely appeared last summer. The surf that meant nothing to the vacationing tourist, who hardly noticed it in his consummate ignorance. The surf that meant nothing to the traveling surfer, who frequently missed it, who departed with unfulfilled expectations.
The surf did come eventually. It skulked in one night at the end of the summer, consistent, sizable. And it remained all Fall when the impatient and apathetic had left.
Today in Taffytown, surfing is power, and creativity. To create, the surfer needs waves, and Taffytown had the waves. Chickenbone, as in days of yore, was everywhere with its endless wall. A wall that gives the surfer time to think and do Things. Gas Chamber again crushed the unwary, as it hadn't done in months. Drowned him, sucked him up, and spat him back over the falls to be crushed again. And the surf went on.
My brain, now numbed by the closing cold, remembers. My eyelids are heavy but I must remember. Suddenly, questions that assalt the surfing world ring in my ears. What is trim and noseriding? Power? What limit can a surfer go to at Gas Chamber on an overhead day before he gets annihilated. Where have I heard this? Stop at Ozzie's Bar at 2 A.M. and listen to the talk bantered back and forth. Serious talk. Surfing talk. Taffytown is a surfing town.
Aha, out damned frost. Eyeballs really icing over now, and here goes the last beer. Will spring never come? A thought strikes me and I run madly outside and down to the beach. A chill off-shore wind bites into my neck, and through the snowflakes I can see Chickenbone, six foot, empty. Bitchin. It might not be a bad winter after all. In Taffytown.”
