Unlike all the other surf houses I’d known up until then—broken-down couch with springs that poked you in the butt; coffee table littered with surf mags, surf wax, rolling papers, maybe a bong; dishes in the sink that never got done unless some irate girlfriend happened past and couldn’t stand it another minute—Gustavo’s place had matching furniture and a polished floor swept clear of sand, and every high-end cool board you could imagine. And the boards weren’t just stacked on a weedy lawn or leaned up against whatever vertical surface available. They were hung on a rack in a spare room. He also had a pretty wife who was friendly and a gracious hostess. We’d never met anyone like them.
We smoked a lot of pot with Gustavo, but when it came to coke, he kept it away from Liam and me. He was old-school conservative that way. We were grommets, still, sixteen and fourteen, kids that, in his view, shouldn’t be corrupted.
One nothing-special day we were sitting around and he said, “Punky One, let’s me and you go check out the waves.” He called me and Liam Little Punkies.
I wasn’t an idiot. I knew that check out the waves meant getting wet. When Sunset was up—and we already knew it was up because we could hear the thundering waves through the open windows—no one went to check out the waves.
I remembered clearly the last time I was at Sunset. I was scared and horrified by my fear on my little Rozo potato-chip board. I closed my eyes and could still feel myself slipping sideways down the face, the pounding that followed. Black water, lungs close to bursting, no idea which way was up, fingers and toes, hand and feet abraded on the lava rocks, bloody nose. Also, the end of Michelle, whom I totally failed to impress.
I may have invented some homework I had to do. I may have cited a time my mom needed me home. Gustavo just laughed at my patently bogus lies. “You’re coming out with me today, Punky One. It’s time.”
He disappeared into the room where he kept his boards and came out with a 7′10″ Pat Rawson Sunset Point gun. Rawson was probably the best gun shaper in the world. Certainly on the North Shore. He’d made boards for the current crop of top pros—Michael Ho, Triple Crown champ; Tom Carroll, World Surf League Champ—and now Gustavo was placing a white one in my hands. I’d been surfing daily for five years by then. I was sixteen, maybe 5′5″, 125 pounds.
I followed him out of his house and down the road. There was a lot of traffic on Kam Highway. We stood by the side of the road. I was so nervous that every organ in my body felt like it was working overtime. Heart banging in my ears, palms are sweating, and boy howdy do I have to take a shit.
We crossed over, walked between some parked cars, and nodded to some of the Sunset boys, me with the white Rawson gun under my arm, designed specifically for Gustavo, who had a hundred pounds on me. The board was so much longer, so much thicker than anything I would have ridden, had I been in a position to buy my own Rawson, which never looked possible in this lifetime.
The wind is stiff and offshore. Navigating this shore break can be treacherous. We paddle over the West Peak, which breaks between the Bowl and Sunset Point and is generally easier to navigate, but more powerful. The rocker on the Rawson is perfect and makes paddling instantly easier, but I chalk this up to the adrenaline dump that comes from being scared out of your mind. There is no gliding forward at Sunset, no taking a paddle break, and I am relieved to have to focus on getting out and into position. Gustavo is off to my left. We see a set streaming toward us and he says, “It’s all you, Punky!” The blue peak is there, suddenly, rolling under me. Maybe it’s ten feet Hawaiian, so about eighteen to twenty feet regular, double overhead plus. It feels huge. I feel like I’m in a cartoon or a fairy tale. I rocket down the face. Wind in my face, roar of water in my ears. It’s the same flying feeling I got from riding the trees to the ground in Belize. Same as jumping off the roof into the sandy barbecue pit in Berkeley.
I am going faster than I’d ever gone and now with a blue monster chasing me. I streak across the face. The ride is so long. I hit a big chop. Boom boom. Bones getting rattled. Brains getting rattled. There was still more to go. More speed, more water, more glassy water beneath my board.
Gustavo, in his wisdom, had put me on a board that was meant for that wave. Paddling was so much easier, maneuvering into position so much easier. It was harder to make a late drop—something I didn’t do very well at the time anyway—and you couldn’t really carve, but it was perfect for speeding along, going farther, faster.
From that day on, I started living for big waves.
WE HUNG out throughout the winter, but in the summer Gustavo went back to Peru, or maybe Indonesia. His coke business was fully operational in the off-season. Guys who couldn’t afford to get off the rock occupied themselves pining for winter and getting high. Gustavo had a partner who kept things up and running, and a couple of mules who ran product up from Peru. The mules were also photographers. In the early eighties it was easy to smuggle drugs onto O’ahu in a camera case with a false bottom.
Everyone on the North Shore who could afford to go somewhere else in the summer did. It was murder being stuck there. The ocean became a lake, and Kam Highway was choked with intrepid families in their rental cars who’d driven up from town to the wild North Shore to “surf.” Liam and I nurtured our pot crop and spent hours rock-jumping at Wai-mea. A black lava rock formation juts into the Bay. Towers, the highest point, is about thirty feet up. We’d spend all afternoon smoking fatties and seeing if we could “bomb” the cliff. Aim your cannonball just right and you can splash the rock, and the tourists crowded on the top, waiting to go next. It smacked your ass pretty hard, so we wore pants with a pair of shorts over them to minimize the bruising.
Once in a while the surf would be pumping in town. The south shore got all the swells in the summer, but they’d have to be big enough to be worth the gas money and the crowds. One day late in the season the swell was in the eight-to-ten-foot range, so I got in my Toyota Celica and sped off down Highway 99 toward Waikiki. The car was used, but new to me, a dark red two-door hatchback with big tires on the back and smaller ones on the front, funny car–style. Best times in that car were roaring down Kam Highway, full moon visible through the open sunroof, cassette blasting, headed toward a party where we’d heard there would be cute girls.
Ala Moana Bowls was breaking that day, but the lineup was packed. Paddling out, three guys on longboards dropped in on the same wave, and chain reaction wipeout followed. But then the swell started dying and I ran into a guy we knew from Hale-’iwa—I can’t remember his name now, maybe it was Arty or Marty. He was only a little older than me.
Arty or Marty’s girlfriend lived in one of the high-rises near the Honolulu Zoo and was throwing a party. She’d invited a bunch of her friends, he said, and I should come hang out.
I strapped my board to the roof of the Celica and followed him to the top of a nearby high-rise. The apartment belonged to his girlfriend’s mom. It was small and basic, but with a view of the zoo parking lot, and a little sliver of Waikiki. I struck up a conversation with a girl with long brown hair and brown eyes who looked as if she had pity on me when I started trying to make my clumsy and completely humiliating moves. At sixteen, still awkward, still shy, I still couldn’t figure out how to make time with girls. I invited her out to the balcony “to look at the view.”
As we stepped outside there was the sound of brakes squealing and sheet metal crumbling. Down in the zoo parking lot a van had crashed into a barricade and flipped onto its side. The cops’ cars chasing it screeched to a halt and they leaped out, just like on TV. It was the end of the day and the parking lot was half empty. Tourists and people with families stood and gawked.
“Holy shit holy shit, this is heavy!” I was more stoned than usual, most likely. It took me a minute to realize that the van wasn’t just any old van, but the one I’d seen parked most days in Gustavo’s driveway. And just as that dawned on me, and just as everyone else at the party squeezed onto the balcony, a big brown guy with black hair squeezed hi
mself out of the passenger side window, clambered over the door, jumped down, and ran. The cops chased him out of the parking lot and onto the street. It was Gustavo.
Later I learned that Gus was picking up one of his photographer mules, who’d just arrived. Both of them went to jail, and the mule ratted out everyone else in the operation.
PIPE
THERE IS A PECKING order in the lineup, strictly enforced. At most of the heavy surf spots it’s this: hard-charging Hawaiians; any other Hawaiians who happen to be out; the biggest, meanest haoles who live on the North Shore full-time; any other haoles who live on the North Shore full-time who happen to be out; respected and respectful big-wave surfers who arrive from the mainland for the winter contests; and up-and-coming local grommets.
Nowhere is this more true than at the Banzai Pipeline, where the main wave breaks pretty much right on the beach, which is always crowded during the winter with photographers, contest organizers, sponsors, spectators, tourists, and guys like me who thought maybe they were finally good enough to give it a try.
Pipe is the most deadly break in the world. People break their backs, their arms, their legs. People get cut up, sliced, wasted. It’s claimed more lives and injuries than any other wave.
The famous main wave that you see in all the Banzai Pipeline pictures breaks in about six feet of water. Pipe looks perfect but it’s far from it. The reef is a disorganized series of jagged flats. There are caves and pinnacles and coral heads that cause big boils that can bump you right off your board, ruining an otherwise perfectly positioned ride and throwing you onto a lava spire that can impale you like a medieval torture instrument. This is the First Reef break. First Reef is maybe seventy-five yards from shore and creates the average six-to-twelve-foot Pipeline wave that arrives on a westerly swell. The ocean rolls in, hits the reef, and jacks up into the classic, glassy tube. You need to take off with absolute conviction because the wall is almost vertical and you’ve got to set your edge hard and fast. The barrel is deep and perfect and, if surfed correctly, offers a ten-second ride that drops you off on the sand so you can step off your board like you’re crossing the street. There are two other Pipeline reefs in deeper water. Bigger swells, in the twelve-foot range, break on Second Reef, maybe a hundred yards out from First Reef. Monster waves break on Third Reef, three hundred yards from shore, a few times a year. When the swell chugs in from the northwest, the regular barreling left becomes an A-frame, creating a ferocious right called Backdoor.
The wipeout here is serious business. Getting tossed off the wave and onto the reef is like falling off a tall building onto pavement. Liam, who would go on to suffer several gnarly injuries at Pipe, wore a helmet.
The first time I paddled out at Pipeline it was eight to twelve feet breaking on Second Reef. This wave is just a little slower, bigger than the main break, and doesn’t require split-second decisions. Safer. I stood on the beach and timed the waves—three to five waves in each set, three to five sets rolling in every five to ten minutes—then walked east up the beach and paddled out through the channel.
The waves exploded to my left. I paddled hard, gulping air, felt myself getting sucked down toward the next break and the beach. Once I made it through the channel I turned and paddled laterally to the lineup. The serious enforcers were all there. Gerry Lopez, Mr. Pipeline himself; Derek and Michael Ho; Johnny Boy Gomes; Ronnie Burns. They eyed me as I paddled up, said howzit. I knew I could easily sit here for hours. These guys were in charge of doling out the waves. If a good wave came, they were taking it. You had to earn their respect. If you called a wave and they let you take it, you needed to go, commit with all your heart, or you’d never get another chance. If you put your head down and went without permission, or if you dropped in on the wrong person, you risked an open hand, a crack, or being sent to the beach. It could get as bad as “get on the next plane, haole.” This was mostly for newcomers, but it could happen to anyone.
I sat with my legs dangling in the water, so clear I could see the reef twenty feet below. I watched as one perfect barreling wave after another jacked up on First Reef, closer to shore. For a half hour or so I watched guys take off. No one paid any attention to me.
Finally, a wave rolled in and I was closest to the peak. The next surfer was yards away from me and wouldn’t have been able to make it. I was in the best position to drop in. The dog pack looked over at me. No one made a move. The swell rose up beneath me. It was going to be big. If I pulled back I would lose the respect of every North Shore charger in the lineup and might never get another chance. Didn’t matter whether I ate it, didn’t matter whether I was swept over the falls or ragdolled all the way to California.
I put my head down, stroked as hard as I could, took off in the perfect spot, pulled right in, all authority, all commitment, no butterflies, but I’m too deep in the barrel, and within seconds the wave gobbles me.
Under I go for a good pounding. Had the presence of mind to take a big breath. The wave roars by overhead. My sinuses filled with water. I pull myself into a ball, bouncing along, the reef below me speeding by as I’m pulled along. I grab my leash, try to climb it. Dark blue water turned light blue and I could tell I was nearing the surface. I popped up, just as the lip of the next fifteen-footer crashed down on my head. But I was able to get a little breath, and at that moment I understood that if I could grab just a sip of air I didn’t mind the pummeling, didn’t mind the rolling around, didn’t mind the thought of all that wave energy passing by overhead, didn’t mind being held down.
I was stoked. Same as if I’d just ridden the wave of the day.
I popped up, made it back to the channel, and paddled back out to the pack. So fired up. Johnny Boy nodded as I passed by. He was my friend, but out here he’d bash in the head of anyone who took his wave. Someone, can’t remember who, said, “Wow, that was heavy. Good try, just a little too deep.” I could tell I’d gained a little respect. Another wave came my way. Dropped in, too deep again, gobbled up again, over the falls, held under, lungs bursting. I climbed my leash up to the surface, popped out.
Still stoked.
Third time’s the charm. I drop in just as I had before. Didn’t change a thing, but this time I was in the right spot and my edge held. One second, two seconds inside the glassy blue tunnel, the white water applause sound over my head. After three seconds, I shot through the perfect barrel and the wave closed out.
A Japanese photographer named Denjiro Sato was sitting on a board in the channel. He was known for his work with Gerry Lopez and had shot my very first surf-mag photo. I was standing on the beach at Velzyland late one gloomy afternoon and he came up to me and said he’d just gotten a new flash attachment for his camera, and would I help him test it out. The waves were little and mushy, the sky was getting darker, and it seemed pointless. But then a long dark ridge formed on the horizon, an unexpected swell rolling in. I paddled out, lined up, and took off into a shitty little barrel that in Denjiro’s photo appears to be a glowing, magical blue room.
On this day, at Pipeline, Denjiro’s shots of me were the best yet, and found their way into Surfing, one of the most respected magazines in the industry.
PART II
Sunset Beach, Hawaiʻi, 1989. (Tomomi Mizuguchi)
GOING PRO
THE WILLIS BROTHERS BECAME our board sponsors. Michael and Milton were identical twins who shaped boards for all the Sunset hard chargers and were the first guys I knew who loved to surf Outer Reef Sunset, where the waves were monstrous. They had assembled the heaviest surf team around—Johnny Boy Gomes, Jason Majors, Titus Kinimaka, the Moepono Brothers, and others.
Liam was a B-lister but I may have been a C-lister, there only because I was Liam’s brother. That’s pretty much who I was known as, Liam McNamara’s brother, and most people thought I was the younger one. He was gaining a reputation as a hard charger, ferocious in the lineup, never one to back down. He shot off his mouth. He didn’t care about the pecking order. I was known as being unafraid of
a bad wipeout, but more easygoing, less of a threat. Still, they gave me this 9′6″ single fin that doubled my confidence. I could catch any wave on that thing.
Michael Willis lived in a little house at Sunset Point with his wife, Bellina. Milton lived just up the hill. They would issue us proper invitations to come over for dinner—not just wait for us to show up whenever, as happened with most surf houses. They would wait for the team to arrive, then they would barbecue. Bellina also served healthy food, vegetables and salad and fruit, and I remember thinking for the first time that maybe if I ate more than just Hot Pockets and Frosted Flakes, I might be able to take my surfing to the next level.
We’d sit on a couch on their front porch and watch the sunset. Peter Davi would come by. He was a commercial fisherman in Monterey and saved all year so he could spend his winters surfing Pipeline. Bellina fed us, would take one hit off the joint going around, then disappear inside, where it always seemed as if she was working on something. Unlike most of the girls I knew, she was high-strung, a go-getter, an organizer. She made Michael and Milton’s fledgling board-shaping business work. She did the billing and made sure they sponsored surfers who might actually have a future, not just any random guy who had the wave of the day at Sunset the day before. Stoned and full of good food, feet up on the railing, trade winds blowing, red sun dropping into the sea, it still registered to me—that being high and stoked all the time was not a business model.
This was on my mind at the time. Business. Earning a living. Doing something responsible and grown-up to bring in a steady income, a real paycheck with taxes taken out. I was a senior in high school and earning a few Cs, but mostly Ds and Fs. One day my counselor called me in to her office midway through the second semester and said that if I didn’t bring those Fs up to Cs, I wouldn’t graduate. This seemed like a viable idea and I was contemplating it. My birthday was in August and I was young for my grade anyway. If I flunked senior year and had to repeat, I’d be the same age as everyone else. That would give me a full year to figure out what I wanted to do. I continued to cut school. The Cs dropped to Ds.
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