new surf dialogue

February 19^th 2010.

Urenui, Taranaki, New Zealand:

Before leaving Opunake, I went in to the local surf shop and had a chat with the owner and employee. Typical surf shop with boards and all the needed accessories, and it also serves as a coffee shop with internet. The small community of Opunake really embraces surfing. Buildings have giant surf inspired murals painted on their fronts and sides as well as surf inspired names for their businesses, and the surf/ coffee shop seems to be a hot spot for everyone in town. At the local pub the night before, Christine and I were talking to a local woman – probably in her late sixties, non-surfer and local as – about our travels here and hoping that the weather and wave conditions were on the mend. She found a piece of scrap paper and pulled a pen out of her purse, and wrote down the name and number of a local surfer. “This is the man to call. Been surfing here all his life. Keen as to all the places to go. Give him a call.”

Talking with the shops employee between his pouring of espresso shots, he told me how people here recognize the tourist potential that surfing offers, especially to such a rural and sparsely populated township. We discussed the local weather patterns, swell forecasts, localism in the area or lack there of, and the struggle to keep the younger local population in the water.

Scott Rowley, a well respected board shaper in the Pacific Northwest and Kiwi expat is from this area too. I happen to have a 6’6’’ egg of his and totally stoked the guys at the shop when they asked me if I had ever heard of him. He had helped the owner build his shaping bay, and also shaped a few boards in it for the guys on his last visit home. A few blue hairs came in for lattes and I took off to find Christine down the street at the library. The wind was still howling. The sun was out though, and Mt Taranaki kept an eye on us all. We motored back up north to Urenui, to Maria and Simon’s homestead with the chooks and the cows and the kale and the Molly.