If you hate booties, why not give ’em another try? Photo: Dylan Heyden Love them, hate them, wear them with a leash, without a leash, for traction, warmth, or both, if you surf anywhere other than the tropics, chances are you’ve needed to resort to booties at some point. Every fall it seems there’s a chorus of moans as the water temp dips just low enough to warrant digging out the wetsuit booties from where they’ve been hiding all summer, and a collective rush on all the surf shops when everyone realizes how full of holes last season’s pair of booties have become. Booties get a pretty bad rap as far as surf equipment goes. Surfers complain that they look kooky, make it harder to grip your board, and are uncomfortable, and while the first is definitely true, the second two don’t have to be. Wetsuit manufacturers have responded to the general dislike of booties among surfers by investing time and effort to make booties totally awesome and well worth the investment with different materials and useful features.