Scratching the Horizon

by Izzy Paskowitz

  The following year, we went at them again, only this time we were operating from a position of real strength. There’d been a bunch of high-profile newspaper and magazine articles about me, about the Paskowitz family, about our camp … and in each case you could spot the Tommy Hilfiger logo on one of our boards or somewhere in the background. It was pretty prominent, so they’d definitely gotten a lot of bang for their few bucks. I knew what ads in these publications tended to run, so I was able to attach a value to the exposure—and at fifteen thousand dollars it was a huge bargain. My thinking, as we looked to roll over this first sponsorship deal into a second, was to ask for way more money this time around—maybe as much as one hundred thousand dollars—but at this level I was starting to feel like I was in over my head. I’d never been a good negotiator. I was never comfortable talking dollars and cents, so I thought about taking Jeff along to help me out, but then I had another idea; my brother Jonathan had started doing some work for us and he was a natural salesman, so I sent him to meet with the Hilfiger folks instead.

  Best-case scenario, I thought, was we’d re-up at some number in between the previous year’s fifteen thousand and our pie-in-the-sky figure of one hundred thousand, so I wasn’t prepared for the deal Jonathan brought back—three years, one million dollars. I heard those numbers and had to sit down. Then I had to scream. One million dollars! It was so far off the map of my thinking, I had no frame of reference for it. Take all of us Paskowitz kids, add up everything we’d earned on our own since we left the camper, all the prize money we’d won, the sponsorship deals we’d signed, the record deals, the sunglass deals … and I don’t think we’d have gotten anywhere close to one million dollars.

  It’s not like the Hilfiger folks were planning to cut us a check and leave it at that. It was a complicated deal, with all kinds of bonuses and out clauses and the formation of a sub-division of our own line of Paskowitz-branded apparel, but I didn’t pay attention to any of that stuff at first. I just saw those seven figures. In my head, it’s like the numbers were lit with neon, like a sign on the Vegas Strip. Like a fantasy. I’d never even considered that kind of money, but there it was. Not yet, mind you … but still.

  * * *

  The initial check was for $115,000, but we couldn’t cash it. This was the first I knew that our deal was going off the rails, the first whiff of the mess I mentioned earlier. The news of our sponsorship and licensing deal made such a splash in the industry, it almost derailed our partnership with Tommy Hilfiger before it got going; it also caused a rift in my own family, and for a while it appeared it might even cost me the camp.

  On the industry front, the deal created a stir among traditional surf companies, because they knew they couldn’t compete with the big-name designers. The Tommy Hilfigers of the fashion industry were making billions, while the Quiksilvers and Hurleys and Billabongs were making only millions, so the little guys started to think the big guys would swallow up their sliver of the surf market. They worried that if Tommy Hilfiger got any kind of traction with its Paskowitz Apparel line, they’d be followed by Nike and Adidas and any number of giant action sportswear companies and they’d be squeezed out. And the thing of it is, I’d come to know a lot of these guys over the years, guys like Bob Hurley and Dick Baker of Ocean Pacific. They were talking shit about our deal; a bunch of them had thrown in together and formed a group called SIMA—the Surf Industry Manufacturers Association—just to get a firmer toehold in the marketplace. I was broken up about this, but not too, too broken up, because these guys had all had their shot with us. I went to them first, but they laughed at me; they didn’t want anything to do with Paskowitz Surf Camp. They didn’t want to sponsor us for five, or ten, or fifteen thousand … so they certainly didn’t want to sponsor us for one million dollars.

  What this meant, for us Paskowitzes, was that for the first time in our lives our name had a bit of a stain on it in some parts of the surf world. For forty years, whenever a surfer came across my dad, or his name came up in connection to the sport, it was always attached to a positive vibe. Same for the rest of us, as we made our own way, on our own waves. Folks would hear the Paskowitz name and spark to it, but now there were some influential people within the surf industry—guys who’d sponsored me or Jonathan over the years, guys who used to surf with Doc—who were probably thinking, Aw, that Paskowitz kid is such a greedy motherfucker!

  It would all shake out to the good, over time, but for a while there wasn’t a whole lot of aloha spirit coming our way.

  The Hilfiger folks, they took us in with open arms. Sent us a whole bunch of gear. Had us looking like a real professional outfit, instead of the ragtag group we’d always been. They sent a box of promotional goodies for each instructor, filled with gear and swag worth about one thousand dollars. And they overloaded us with banners and stickers and signage, which we plastered all over camp, all over the beach, wherever we went. We ended up getting so much attention for Hilfiger, and becoming so closely associated with their brand, that my brother David couldn’t help but notice. He hadn’t been a part of Surf Camp since he handed over those few scraps of legal pad paper and I guess he started thinking he was missing out, so he started maneuvering to claw his way back in.

  He had some encouragement in this, we later learned. He’d been hanging with a group of aggressive MBA types, who kept filling his head with talk about turning Paskowitz Surf Camp into a thriving national entity, convincing David he’d been squeezed from his birthright as Doc’s oldest son, telling him they could make him rich if he’d throw in with them on a kind of hostile takeover—and even making the case that there’d be enough profits to spread among the other eight siblings, in such a way that all of us would be rich and fat and happy. These suits had David thinking he could take care of all of us, if only he’d step up and take control.

  The first I heard of David’s renewed interest was when I went to deposit that first check. I took it to the bank and asked for seventy-five thousand dollars back in cash. My idea was to distribute a little something to my father and then to put the rest of it to work on equipment and various improvements we were hoping to make that summer. I even brought an empty briefcase with me, to help me carry all those bills. I was like Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners, counting the money in my head.

  But then the teller came back and told me there was a stop payment on the check.

  “Excuse me,” I said. Wasn’t sure I’d heard right.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Paskowitz,” the teller said, “but these funds are not available. There’s been a stop payment order placed on your check.”

  Here I’d never seen that kind of money in my life, never even contemplated that kind of money, and it was gone before I had it in hand.

  Apparently, David and his team of “advisors” had pulled an end-around move and gone to New York to meet with Tommy Hilfiger himself—presumably to demonstrate that he was the rightful owner of the Paskowitz Surf Camp and to show that he was the Paskowitz named under our current permit with San Onofre State Beach. This last was in fact true, because we were operating under a long-term permit David had signed while he was still running the camp. I guess it didn’t matter to David that he was no longer involved with the camp or that he’d stepped away from it on his own. It wasn’t even his deal; he hadn’t negotiated it; he hadn’t been a part of it in any way.

  I was devastated, floored. And out-of-my-mind mad. I couldn’t believe that my own brother would be behind such a despicable act. And it wasn’t only an attack on me; I saw it as an attack on the whole family, so I switched into desperation mode. I rallied the troops, in what ways I could. I scrambled to secure space for the camp at Campland, an RV park and campgrounds where my family used to park the rig when we were kids, and to obtain permits with the City of San Diego to allow us to run the camp at Mission Beach. Then I flew to Hawaii and laid it all out for my father. He knew about the Hilfiger deal, of course, but he had no idea of the infighting going on with his sons, so I fi
lled him in. Told him what David was trying to do. Told him how Jonathan and Abraham had been working with me and how Joshua and Salvador were on board to help with the designs. Told him there was even room in what we were doing for David in our apparel deal, if he wanted in, and if he backed off on this grubby-ass move to take back the camp. Spent a couple hours going through the whole sad ordeal, and at the other end Doc formally signed the camp over to me, and then I had those documents notarized.

  What was mine on a handshake was now mine on paper.

  Within two weeks, we were back in business—but not until Jeff and I attended a meeting with my siblings and our various advisors. David actually called the meeting, to explain his actions and to offer what he thought was an olive branch, to smooth things over. He wanted peace in the family, he said. He wanted all of us to do well. Then he showed us this slick document he’d prepared, which talked about his background as a world-renowned surfer and the standard-bearer of the Paskowitz family legacy as the oldest son; he’d made himself sound like he’d been touched by Tahitian royalty, and blessed by the Hawaiian surf gods, and somehow anointed as a kind of surf whisperer. It was total crap, and nobody was buying it.

  Out of that meeting, our mess got even messier … and I came away thinking our entire Hilfiger deal was about to collapse. Going in, I’d thought we could somehow salvage that relationship, but there was so much poison in that room, I couldn’t see how these guys would want to stay in business with us, even if we could find a way to settle our differences. Plus, my other brothers had been running up all kinds of expenses, which they were charging to Hilfiger’s Paskowitz Apparel clothing line—limos, flights, bar tabs, hotel rooms … whatever they could justify in their own cockaroaching heads. Don’t know what the hell they were thinking, but this was how we were wired; this was what we knew. We’d read in the papers that Hilfiger stock was at an all-time high; we’d see the company’s urban line all over the place, the preppy line all over the place, the business casual line all over the place. The company was hot, hot, hot, so it must have seemed to my brothers that we’d tapped into this bottomless well of money.

  Ah, but that’s not exactly how it shook out.

  How it shook out was this: David attempted to operate his own version of the Paskowitz Surf Camp. He took out ads in Surfer magazine, but hardly anybody responded to them. Nobody cared, I guess. I was eventually able to win back the camp name with the help of a camper who just happened to be a trademark attorney, and after that David had to call his operation the David Paskowitz Surf Camp, which made it even tougher for him to generate any business. We went from an average of sixty or seventy student weeks each summer when David was running the camp to over three hundred student weeks once we got going, so we were really able to invigorate the business in just a few years, while David’s camp fizzled.

  The bank finally released that $115,000 check, but by the time I paid off all of our legal bills and reimbursed the Hilfiger folks for the bogus expenses they identified on our account there wasn’t a whole lot left—just enough to give my brothers and sister a few thousand dollars apiece, as a kind of goodwill gesture, and to throw a few thousand more at my parents, to help set them up for the next while.

  That was the end of our sponsorship deal, but by some miracle of blind faith the Paskowitz Apparel line lived on for another couple months. The way the contracts were written, it was treated as a separate entity from our Surf Camp deal, and I guess the company wasn’t entirely put off by our backstabbing nonsense. Yeah, they were put off enough to pay good and close attention to our expenses, but they must have had a lot invested in their surf line and wanted to see it through, so we installed Jeff Antoci as CEO of Paskowitz Apparel and got Hilfiger to hire Jonathan to lead the sales effort, and Abraham, Salvador, and Joshua were put on salary, too. We really wanted to make this thing work, and ended up producing a sweet line of merchandise—beautiful stuff, really, made with high-end, vintage fabrics. But that was as far as it ever went. Most of the line sat in a warehouse and was never distributed, although some of it was dumped into the discount bins at low-end outlets like Ross and Filene’s.

  Guess us Paskowitzes were a little more trouble than we were worth, after all.

  * * *

  A final few words on the Paskowitz Surf Camp—which, after all, was at the heart of this heartless landgrab that nearly tore my family apart. After forty years, we still run it the way my father imagined it in 1972: good surf, good folks, good food, good times. We remain a small, family-run operation, totally committed to capturing the warmth and good feeling that seem to find us on the beach, in the water, at the campsite at the end of a long, magical day.

  It’s the longest-running surf camp in the United States and the first of its kind, and what sets us apart from other surf schools and clinics is that we live with our campers for the full week and help them soak up the whole of surf culture. Any experienced surfer can teach a beginner how to get up on a board, how to paddle out, how to time a wave, but our goal is a bit bigger. We’re out for something more. We’re out to create surfers. It’s like our version of that old give a man a fish adage. You know, Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for one day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime. That’s how we look at surfing. Get a student up on a board, put him into a wave, and he’ll ride it into shore. But create a true surfer, expose him to the rich history of the sport, share the aloha spirit that attaches to it, and he’ll surf for a lifetime.

  That’s our thing, and folks seem to respond to it—some have been coming back for years and years. Hey, we’ve been at it so long, we’re seeing the second and third generations of the same family come back each summer, giving these next generations a chance to build on what we started with their parents and grandparents.

  It doesn’t hurt that we bring in some of the world’s best surfers as instructors and that each one seems to find a piece of joy in passing on the sport. And it doesn’t suck that we’ve created a welcoming, nourishing camp environment, where we can sit around the campfire at night and swap surf stories and strum our ukuleles and look ahead to the next day’s adventures.

  Learning to surf can be an intimidating, daunting experience for a lot of folks, but our instructors keep this in mind. They consider it a profound gift, to be able to share what they know, to invite our campers into their world.

  In a way, it’s like a mini-, weeklong version of the way we lived in the family camper, for most of our growing up. We spill out of our sleeping bags and hit the beach. We break for lunch. We surf until the sun hangs low and we can hardly move, we’re so sore from all that paddling. We light a great bonfire and sing and eat and drink our fill. Some nights, maybe Doc Paskowitz himself will stop by for a visit, to share some insight or other. Then we wake up the next morning and do it all over again.

  No, it doesn’t suck. Not at all.

  EPILOGUE

  Another Good Day

  (Only This One Didn’t Start Out So Hot)

  May 18, 2003.

  It was meant to be a celebration for my fortieth birthday. Danielle was actually at San Onofre with friends and a great big cake, but I never made it back from Mexico, where I’d been running a couple weeks of Surf Camp.

  In my head, I almost didn’t make it back it all.

  Since taking over Surf Camp, I’d gotten into the habit of holding two weeklong sessions in Cabo to start the season in the Spring and then another two to close it out in the Fall. It meant three days driving down and another three driving back, so I was usually gone about three weeks at a stretch, but it was a good moneymaker for us. We were able to keep costs to a minimum and still do it up right for our campers, with a nice place to camp and good, authentic food. Really, we gave a ton of value on these trips; we were able to introduce our campers to a bunch of off-the-beaten-path surf spots and offer a real taste of Mexico; the only hassle was the back-and-forth, because we had to haul absolutely everything we’d need from California. It meant loading up all our b
oards and wet suits and other supplies in the truck, which was packed tight, and then a bunch of spillover gear into the van we’d need to ferry our campers to all these great waves we’d line up for them in and around Cabo. It was a bit of a grind for us, but we always had a blast—and the campers did, too. Most sessions were filled with repeat customers, guys who kept coming back year after year, so we all kind of looked forward to it.

  This one year, second session of the camp had been a bust. There was a sick tropical storm, unusual for that time of year in that part of the world. It rained for days and days, hard. Still managed to show our campers a good time, out of the water; we were down there to surf, but we tried to make the best of it. Turned out the best of it ate away at our bottom line, because we had to scrap our usual digs on the beach and spring for hotel rooms, to keep safe and dry. It was just one of those things, nothing we could do about it, so I decided not to let it stress me out or bring me down. Told myself I’d never been good at making money, anyway, so this week would be no different.

  Another one of those things: during this washout storm week, more than half our campers were named Bob. Weird, how it worked out. I had my buddies Nick Hernandez and Caleb Wilborn with me, working the camp, and we had some trouble telling all these Bobs apart, so we came up with handles for them. There was Big Bob and Little Bob, natch. There was Little Big Bob. There was one Bob who looked like Tony from The Sopranos, so he was Tony Bob. There was Religious Bob and Gay Bob—not exactly the most politically correct nicknames, but they got the job done. Basically, there were a whole lot of Bobs, and a couple non-Bobs, and everybody got along great.