The thruster looked like revolution. Sounded like revolution. Threw fire around with a ‘fuck you’ kind of third fin. It was Curren on Black Beauty, Occy on Rusty ‘84, Tom Carroll on Byrnes, Kong on ‘Hot Stuff’. It arrived in the early 1980s, under the arm of a beer-loving natural-footer from Narrabeen and was embraced by neon, tank-topped alpha types with habits for car park punch-ups and cocaine.

By 2020, it was high time for the pot to get stirred again in the way that we ride surfboards. The world had changed enough so that the craft would have to follow suit in some way. We braced for stronger, faster, sharper — a new weapon to stake its claim. But what we got was an egg. A round, smooth, perfectly medium-sized elongated gumdrop that, if it could speak, would sound more like Mr. Rogers than it would Miki Dora. The egg, now referred to as the mid length, smiles at you whether or not you smile back, and it wouldn’t be a true revolution if that didn’t piss a bunch of people off. You either love them or hate them.

Shortboard purists will say that mid lengths are for out-of-shape or delusional surfers who take all the set waves and believe they’re ripping. This is true for some. The pandemic saw an influx of adult learners skipping the necessary rites of passage, paddling into the lineup with more foam than skill.

But this sub-group of people would not have a powerful enough influence on surfing to create and sustain a legitimate movement as enduring as this one has been. There’s a reason why there has never been a Wavestorm revolution. The mid length is subtle. It doesn’t ask that we pay attention to it, but we should at least take ...