Back in the late 1950's, throughout the 60's after Surfing had become the thing to do with numerous documentaries that swept theatres all around America... the term Beach Bum was coined in the pop culture movie "Gidget" which means one of leisure where you spoke surfer lingo, listened to surf music, dressed down in baggies, Hawaiian print shorts, t-shirts with surf logos and bikinis. Your whole existence was about the lifestyle and chasing waves to eventually creating a surf business.
Surf Bum Lifestyle
There was an article in Life Magazine called 1950's Surf, Sand and Sun: Life's Ode to Beach Bums... it talked about how they would spend their days skiing in the mountains during wintertime and in the spring, head to the beach with brightly colored, 15ft long surfboards. It became apart of the Counterculture Movement when other youth were rejecting mainstream, societal (conventional) and musical norms (enter the God Father of Rock n Roll, Chuck Berry here). They were fed up with war, consumerism, dressing and speaking a certain way, women only being seen as homemakers taking care of children and segregation.
History of America
To add historical context to this topic of "Can Black Surfers afford to live a beach bum lifestyle here in the US?, which is a fairly new concept that only began with my generation "Gen X" being the first BIPOC recipients of getting to enjoy a normal recreational and leisure lifestyle. This public access to all Beaches only started in the mid-70's. The challenges stim from a not too long ago reality of sundown towns and segregation.
Political Movements that changed America
See what happened was the Civil Rights Movement had begun to pick up in 1954 to stop widespread lynching's in addition to Jim Crow laws like institutional racial segregation, discrimination and disenfranchisement throughout the US.
It paved the way for the Women's rights Movement that kicked off in June of 1966, promoting equal rights for women. The Anti-War Movement that disapproved of the war in Vietnam. The Black Power movement that emphasized racial pride, economic empowerment, and the creation of political and cultural institutions.
Counter Culture birthed Hippie Culture
This birthed the Hippie Revolution which was made up different kinds. There were the Visionaries (anti-war advocating for Peace, adopted a more utopian environment of young rebels similar to the beatniks) Love-Children (who advocated for peace and love aka as the flower children) Freaks and Heads (were more drug orientated hippies), Midnight hippies (were the older generation over 30 who were sympathizers of the movement but couldn't adopt the hippie lifestyle) and Plastics (were the ones who entered it as a fad for the fashion, superficially but not the ideology).
The sub-cultures that were just as prominent then, were the Beatniks (aka the hipsters focused on topics that clashed with mainstream society, were into jazz and beat poetry), Diggers and Yippies' (radical leftists that had anarchist and anti-war socialism supporters) and Greasers (were into excitement and self-expression who road motorcycles and street gangs), the Black Panther Party originally the Black Panther Party for Self Defense was a Marxist-Leninist and Black power organization.
Segregation at Beaches
During that era Black Americans were not typically welcomed, nor allowed to be at Coastal Beaches or in most recreational places here in Los Angeles along with the rest of the Country which started the wade-ins everywhere. The most notable that caught national attention were the 1959 Biloxi wade-ins also known as Bloody Sunday.
The protest staged by activists were fighting against segregated beaches that they were paying taxes for but could not be apart of. The protesters were trained in non-violent passive resistance and knew they would be arrested but the angry whites choose violence and beat the Black Americans who were mostly teenagers bloody. The last wade-in they had was in 1963 that resulted in the founding of the NAACP local Chapter.
In other places when they did open up access, it was usually by a former dumping ground located downstream from a sewage plant as what they called an appropriate location for the city's "coloreds" bathing beach. Health officials described the waters offshore as "grossly contaminated" and wholly unfit for humans in New Orleans.
Other places, black children were allowed to go swimming, did not get the safety of lifeguards that others got and were left to drown if swept up by currents in places like Port Chester, NY or and killed like a boy at Lake Michigan who got swept across the colored line into a white area and was beaten to death because of it.
A violent past of trauma
They left his bloody residue on the coloreds beach side which traumatized anyone who went so most Black Parents would tell their children to stay away from the water. That perpetuated the stereotype through the years that Black People were afraid of water and couldn't swim including a history of lynching's that were done in the same manner near rivers and lakes.
All access to the Beaches opened for everyone
By the mid-seventies after the Gays were accepted publicly, they allowed Black Americans to officially go to any public beach and actually get in the Ocean. Here in California, a rave of Black Surfers were emerging, sometimes running into each other at the beach and formed a group by the 1990's called Black Surfers Association after the founder, Tony Corley and Co-Founder Dedon Kamathi put out an ad in a local surfers magazine to find others. There began a group of revolutionary Brotha's and Sista's who had regular meet-ups, contest, cookouts, surf lessons and started to document their events with film.
Black Surfers in the US
Fast forward to the present where there are at least 20 groups, I've personally counted as of 2022 that have funded their own organizations to help this new generations feel like they have accessibility to the water as well as a safe environment with People who have broken the generational trauma's of our parents, grandparents and ancestors around water.
Can Black Surfers live the Surf Bum Lifestyle financially?
The questions we would have to ask: is there the same financial stability that the Beach Bums of the 50's had? is there enough generational wealth, savings or the access to capital to fun their surfboard collection business, surf apparel, equipment, photographers, contest and documentary film companies? The average beach bum back then had a nice car, lived in suburbia or near the beach and could work or surf anywhere they wanted.
Beach bums if applied for a job at a local restaurant or as a lifeguard typically did it to surf but also had aspirations to start a company. During that time, on past interviews they talked of someone giving them the money to try it out and that's how they became successful.
Other countless Documentaries show Surfers looking at the surf report, packing up their gear and collectively traveling with their Bro's to the surf spot that was firing. How were they always able to do that?
Statically Speaking
Presently, the Global Surfing market has reached 3.88 Billion in 2020 and estimated to rise to 5.47 Billion by 2028. So the industry as a whole is undoubtedly sustainable. There are categories of free surfers sponsored by brands to try out new surfboards, test the latest gadgets, travel to cool places and surf outside of competitions.
There are culture content creators like myself who also surf (waiting for my brand ambassadorship here but if doesn't happen, please support a Sista by purchasing one of my books or digital products so that I can continue creating insightful blogs and vlogs. Thank you very much), there are contest surfers who travel the main competition circuit all over the world who get brand deals and sponsorship also.
My thoughts on the present day Surf Culture
So in my opinion, at this particular time, is it possible? Absolutely yes but certainly an anomaly for the majority because the economic gap with Black and Hispanic households earning only about 15 to 20 percent of the net wealth here. The average surfboard costing around $500 to 2000, wetsuits around $200, parking, transportation, travel expenses, etc., I'm also considering the lingering residue of the past of systemic oppression and the lack of access to beach front property that would support a lifestyle like that. It's getting better but I could only see this being a thing in another Country outside of the US...
Healing from Colonialism
Also, in some ways, we are still defining what surfing means to us; healing, growing, processing, expanding and learning the traditional origins of surfing from West Africa, the Polynesian Pacific and Peru. So there is a lot to dissect here with even adapting or adopting to what is now called surf culture or even the surf lingo.
In conclusion, as an evolving black culture/black people, I'm sure we would come up with a much better term than beach bum, we are too stylish, colorful and creative. Also, we wouldn't necessarily want to be associated with any more derogatory, insinuating stereotypes that depicts us as less than, it's been too much saturation of that in past media. So as for now, We are Black Surfers.
Here's another Blog you might also enjoy. https://www.creativelycultured.com/2022/08/are-black-women-who-surf-trend-or-here.html
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