Surfing Ruined My Life

Looks like a good one eh? Nope, its a left close-out at Hammonds, a right hand reef break. I could have taken the right but decided otherwise and broke my board.

This is the last UCB of the Spring Quarter.  I know it has been a bit of bullshit quarter, but what the fuck do you want from me.  It’s been the worst few months of my entire life.  Sorry if I missed a few weeks.  At this point 2011 may go down as the shittiest year in the history of Lisanti Land.  God I hate fucking Lisanti Land.  Why can’t I get a vacation from it?

Everyone else gets to visit and leave.  What sucks about being Chris Lisanti is that it’s always Lisanti Land 24/7.  I can’t leave. It’s like being on the fucking Truman Show.  All things considered I guess I should not complain.  I am still alive after all, have my physical health (my mental health went out the window a few weeks ago), there is a roof over my head and I get enough to eat.  Things could be worse I suppose.  They say no one dies from a broken heart, although I would beg to differ.

John Mauriello wins this UCB with the topic PGCB.  I know more then a few readers when they saw his request were thinking “What the fuck does that mean”.  Well PGCB is a term that Scotty B and I coined back in the first round blow out days of our almost “pro” carreers.  The whole movement started courtesy of Ventura Professional Surfer Sean Hayes and his segment in “The Decline of Surfing Civilization: Lost Across America II”.

If you have not seen any of the early 2000 …Lost surf films you are missing out and I highly recommend watching them.    They are some of the gnarliest surf films out there both in surfing and lifestyle.  …Lost single handedly defined the punk rock, “I don’t give a fuck” surfing movement of the mid 2000’s with the production of these films.  I know I personally thrived on them.

There is a segment mid way through the film just about completely filmed in both Ventura and Santa Barbara.  The bulk of it is at some pretty flawless yet excruciatingly crowded Rincon.   Towards the end the segment shows a brief clip of Hayes surfing triple overhead maxed out Ventura Beach break.  He is just pulling into these massive closeout tubes and getting destroyed.

Finally the segment ends with him pulling into a bomb, saluting the beach before getting completely owned.  Watching that as a kid I just thought what a crazy motherfucker, now that I have surfed that spot in the film I have a new respect for his feat.  That place packs a punch when it’s four feet let alone fifteen!  As he is walking back up the beach to the parking lot he says “I don’t know why none one else is out here; there is nothing but Perfectly Good Closed-out Barrels”.  Thus the term PGCB was born, which if you are dense and have not figured it out yet stands for Perfectly Good Closed-out Barrels.

Then I realized that the majority of my favorite surf spots and conditions were nothing more then gnarly, heavy closed-out beach break.  In NJ that was very understandable because that was the case with the bulk of our swells.  Since then I have moved to the land of the right point breaks, Santa Barbara California. Even in such an environment I still have some of my most fun in perfectly good closed out barrels.

I guess there is a certain kind of rush one gets out of pulling into a stupid barrel he knows he is not going to even come close to coming out of.  I know I do.  Plus close outs just have so much more power then regular waves.  All those huge airs and crazy flips you see being done are pulled mostly on heaving closeouts.  That is just the way it is.  I suppose the surfer in me loves point breaks more then any other type of wave in the world, but my heart will always be for the heaviest, most angry, gnarly, back washy stupid close out there is.  Long live the PGCB!

My favorite part about closeouts, airs!

This is the infamous spot where the term and life long search for the PGCB began,on another day that was nothing more then Perfectly Good Closed Out Barrles 🙂