Has anyone found a good way to promote foiling? Sponsored events? Beach cleanups? Demo days? Charity foil setups given out to young kids?
What is the best thing we can do as foilers to change the prevailing attitude towards foiling?
It’s wait for all the old surfers to die isn’t it. I was hoping that wasn’t the answer.
I pulled two tourists out the water that were struggling to paddle against a rip while trying to surf in winter with no beach safety. Made the case to the lifeguards that it was because I had 3m vantage point and travelling around at 10-15kph that I noticed them in a bad spot and saw them again on the next wave had started to bob under while swimming.
In summer I think keeping a low profile is probably the way to go, already looking busy this year.
Giving waves, hooting at the longboarders rides. Staying out of the way. I agree that’s going to do the most good. Just wondering if anyone had any other ideas.
\\
free cocaine
\\
Are we talking about the surfers? The usual strategy to break in to a local is “interact outside of the water”.
Continue ro have more fun than everyone else?
Teach others. Understanding is gained so often by experience. I used to hate SUPs, then I tried it and realized they were just accessing the ocean in a different.
I’m curious what the “prevailing attitude towards foiling” is at your location? I’m a new foiler in the Jacksonville FL area and in the rare cases where we’re foiling near surfers, they seem fine with it. We try to stay away from them and do not foil at the few standout spots. I faced way more negative vibes when SUP’ing in the early 2010’s.
I’m in Los Angeles, CA. I think you can correctly assume what the attitude towards foils is here. New soft top riders, random people on the beach? That’s so cool, how does that work! Shortboard surfers who never travel, thousand yard stare and yelling at you. Entitled rich surfers who have keys to private beaches are the worst obviously.
Teaching others does seem like the best plan. I’m always down to answer new people’s earnest questions. There are to many choices to this sport. It doesn’t have to be super expensive anymore to start which is nice.
Finding good boards is still an issue though.
Not sure that there’s a need to change the prevailing attitude towards foiling. Steep learning curve means that only the folks who actually want to learn stick with it. I think that has contributed significantly to the awesome vibe within the foiling community since we all have an appreciation for what each other went through to figure it out.
As far as dealing with the grumpy surf crowd in California, good luck. You figure out how to solve that problem and I’ll nominate you for a Nobel prize!
As already discussed, shortboarding has a sunk cost fallacy and tribal mentality which will limit acceptance of alternative craft. E foils aren’t helping our cause either with (mostly) tools plowing around the ocean like jetskiers in the 90’s.
I have shortboarded extensively in ocean beach and sunset cliffs san diego, even though the swell is always foilable there basically isn’t space for foilers in the lineup in much of southern california. The OB pier is already loaded with longboarders and SUPs that steal the outside waves and annoy everyone.
Big jetty could be epic if you got a chip and pumped out to the tip and rode the grinding right all the way in though…
Stay away from crowded lineups, and show surfers mr bennets’ videos
I thought we are the “Old Surfers”
Out here on Kauai a lot of the old legends are foiling. Proning, Winging. Sup’ing… so the attitude in the water is fine. Plus when we are proning its mostly around beginner surfers and longbarders because most shortboarders are somewhere else. Longboarders can get a little testy when you lightspeed around them. Its almost like where we are on the wave is another quantum dimension and you forget how slow they are going. Believe me…always preaching to my shortboarder friends though. Like @Hdip did to me. Or yes blasting them with Mr Bennett clips. The humble ones will come around. They have to be ready to suck for a while and that’s what they are afraid of. Just listened to “art of manliness” podcast about being stuck with life… and the importance of failing. called it the “woodshed” as in going to the woodshed and practicing… So to answer your question I would say someone needs to find the crappy-est beach where only beginner surfers go and woodshed it for a year.
I actually just had one of my shortboard friends dm me a mrbennetts clip… and I was like yea! captain obvious!
Watched a few guys tow foil today. I think that if I had a jetski I wouldn’t think that foiling was so crowded.