A letter to Surfer Magazine

Concerning their recent article on Dean Randazzo.

Would be surprised if they publish it, but I guess we'll see.

In what, to many, may be one of the most important and poignant features (Survivor: the Dean Randazzo Story) you published as of late, you present a photo of Funtown Pier in Seaside Heights, and captioned it as Dean’s stomping grounds of Ocean City, NJ. The structures are located nowhere near each other geographically, look nothing alike, and host completely disjunct surf communities and dissimilar surf cultures. To not bother to make the effort to get such basic facts correct is an insult to Dean, his story of comeuppance, and his current battle. To put in in Cali-centric terms with which you might identify, it is akin to taking a picture of Rincon and dubbing it Steamer Lane; both breaks have quality surfers and quality waves, but for a professional magazine to mix up the two is not justifiable.

I could be wrong, but one can not help but jump to the conclusion that this blatant error is the result of pure laziness or unprofessionalism on the part of the person responsible for assigning the images to the story; did he or she just grab some stock image from some neglected and forgotten “New Jersey” file folder, slap the “Ocean City” caption on it, declare “good enough” and call it a day? It is not the first time I have seen such mixed-up captioning or downright wrong information about the Garden State, its surf, and its surfers, but this one stings a bit more because, quite frankly, it was important to get it correct, dammit. The break where one learns the ropes, forges ties, and makes one’s mark means a lot to us; such cavalier misidentification can easily be interpreted as an insult to the man, the crew, and the locale itself.

Sorry if this all sounds a bit harsh, but as the article says, we tend to get “up in your face around here” and call screw-ups for what they are.

Sak
Lavallette, NJ