Have you noticed the amount of pros who’ve been snapped enjoying the guilty pleasure of riding a bodyboard lately? Maybe it’s just a Byron thing, or a passing trend like front grips, but whatever the case things have certainly come a long way from the spiteful days of yore when the two groups hated each other with a special kind of malice.
Byron-based pro Garrett Parkes admits that the whole surfers jumping on boogs thing is probably just a fad, but that didn’t stop him from going on a recent trip to South Oz with a bunch of bodyboarding mates and then, as you can see from the clip above, putting on a pretty exemplary display of dick-dragging.
‘That wave is a wedgy little reef,’ says Garrett, picking up the story. ‘I surfed it all day with Beau Foster and Shaun Manners and a bunch of booger mates. We had a few beers in the cars and there were still some fun ones, but I couldn’t be stuffed surfing it again so me and Shaun went out on the boogs. When I pulled the flip all the car horns went bonkers, the boys were frothing.’
But where did Garrett pick up his skills? Surely he’s not so talented that he was throwing down ARS’s on his first time riding a lid.
‘I only jump on the boog from time to time when conditions call for it,’ laughs Garrett. ‘Most of the other pros doing it suck on them so it’s pretty funny actually doing something half-decent.’
And it turns out that that’s not the only hidden talent Garrett’s got up his sleeve. With his father being legendary kneeboarder (and kneeboard shaper) Dave Parkes, the kid can also put the moves together on a kneeboard.
‘Yeah, I used to kneeboard a bit back in the day,’ says Garrett. ‘I went to a lot of comps with dad. The Phillip Island Kneeboard Classic was always fun. I might have to get back into it … I’m not competing, though (laughs).’
Ah diversity, ain’t it beautiful? Just stay away from the goatboats.
