Parko is the surfer we all wish we could be. Smooth, polished, understated, clean and refined and effortless almost to a fault. But he is not the future. Not even if he wins this year. It would just be a mercy fuck tribute title for the old school. Parko is Stevie Ray Vaughn. He has the chops, he has the licks, he drips soul. When he plays, we feel it in our souls but this is partly because it is already familiar. Parko is no Hendrix.

Kelly has a nasty habit of being able to reinvent himself to suit the times regardless of his current revival of cory lopez in 5′5″ X 19 1/4″ and his feeble effort to brand it “visionary”. Please. But no one else in the old crew has the staying power mentally or competitively nor do they have the flexibility and depth of technique to match the new crew coming on.

Whether Dane truly doesn’t give a shit or whether he has taken a cue from the KS school of ultimate sandbaggery doesn’t matter. His surfing, like that of Jordy (mercurial and often done in by his own head like a modern day AI) or Julian (confidence not there yet but building) or Clay (fatally flawed by genetics for competition purposes but a true virtuoso none the less), is the future. And the future is coming on fast.

Average wankers (like all of us who post here) always take a while to get comfortable with the new sound. That’s why we aren’t the next Jordys and or Danes (well, that and the fact that we are old and we just were never good enough)

It’s a vision thing.

Like the Hobgoods etc, Parko never had the vision to move the sport forward. Taj oddly enough had the vision and commitment but maybe not quite the natural ability needed.

Strange world.