DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED
As Tracks turns 50 in these strange and uncertain times, there is a buzz phrase doing the rounds: we are faced with a scenario future.
What that means is you can write a five-year plan today and rip it up tomorrow, nothing is certain. Flexibility is the key to survival, in life, business, and in surfing, where the difference is it always has been. If the scenario isn’t working, come up with another one, quick. If you can’t rethink your line for that little warble up ahead, you’re not going to make the section, so in addressing the present and planning the future, we should be ahead of the pack, right? Wrong. Surfers are incurable romantics, always believing there’s a better lineup around the next bend. For us reality checks are inconvenient and best avoided.
Perhaps this is why so many of our soul surfing gurus have become overnight experts in the scientific, medical and political sciences, and the intersection of them that we are living through, or perhaps they are just fools on their respective hills, looking at line-ups down below rather than realities dead ahead. But we cling to whatever we can find in this raging sea, so good luck to those who seek solace by sticking their heads in the sand.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, this article itself is the perfect example of the scenario future.
I started writing an overview of the curious and fascinating development of the surf industry over the 50 years of the existence of Tracks almost a year ago. Then when COVID-19 became a thing in February/March, I had to rethink the whole piece for a new scenario because suddenly the sky was falling – by October there might not even be a surf industry.
But the last time
