Save our spots.
Surfline, which until recently was the largest surf-based website in the world, has long enjoyed the relatively stable support from its subscribers. For a fee, the faithful are served up sensible stories about surfing and surf travel, tide charts and cameras recording the current conditions of favorite breaks.
The only flair has been comically exaggerated wave heights.
The only flair, that is, until yesterday.
For yesterday, Surfline’s top brass decided to follow the radically woke San Francisco School Board’s lead in renaming offensive breaks.
You certainly recall, nearly two years ago, when the powers that be in the City by the Bay scrubbed naughtiness from schools in its districts.
Per The Atlantic:
On January 26, the San Francisco school board announced that dozens of public schools must be renamed. The figures that do not meet the board’s standards include Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, Robert Louis Stevenson, Paul Revere, and Dianne Feinstein. A panel had determined that the 44 schools—more than one-third of the city’s total—were named after figures guilty of being, variously, colonizers; slave owners; exploiters of workers; oppressors of women, children, or queer and transgender people; people connected to human rights or environmental abuses; and espousers of racist beliefs.
The “School Names Advisory Committee” had done its research, discovered that “the majority of Lincoln’s policies proved detrimental to Native Americans,” Washington had owned slaves etc. and their names were instantly vanished from school walls.
In a similar vein, Surfline sent out an email last evening reading:
We’re updating some spot names to better describe their locations, which may affect spots in your Favorites, Surf Alert preferences, and Sessions clips. One example of a spot name that changed is Ponto, San Diego CA.
Previously, we had three spots here: Ponto Jetties, Ponto North and Ponto South. They are now combined as one spot and cameras viewable as multiple angles. Because these three peaks are in the same location, they’ll have the same forecast, and you can view all the information you need in one place.
Generations of North County, San Diego surfers have grown up calling Ponto Jetties Point Jetties, Ponto North Ponto North and Ponto South Ponto South. They will now be forced to call them all just “Ponto” or be faced with cancellation.
It is unclear how many other spots have been sanitized but protests are already being organized on Oahu’s famed North Shore to keep Backdoor Backdoor.
If your local spot name has fallen afoul of the times, please complain to Surfline or organize a social media campaign in support.
