Everything Bad Goes Down in Parking Lots

Following my friend George Sakamoto as we thread the bowl section at Ala Moana. Photo: Steve Wilkings

In the 1970s and 1980s, I traveled with a terrific surfer named Roy Mesker. He had the smoothest style of anyone I’ve seen before or since. ‘Big Roy’ riding a wave, any wave—big, small, perfectly peeling, or blown-out slop—looked as natural as a palm tree swaying in the wind, or water running down a stream.

We surfed both south and north shores of all the Hawaiian islands; took surf trips to California, Australia, the South Pacific, and Indonesia. Still the wave dearest to our hearts was always Ala Moana. Any hint of south swell would find us perched in the parking lot of the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor. At the right moment of tide, wind, and swell, we would paddle out and turn the dial up loud.

Roy had an uncle we both admired. Not only was he a great guy, he was a veteran FBI Special Agent with lots of good stories to tell. Uncle Chuck ended every tale with the admonition, “Stay away from parking lots. Everything bad goes down in parking lots.”

We didn’t have the heart to tell him that most of our adult lives up to that point were spent in parking lots. By the sum of our cumulative experience to that time, Roy and I both knew that the only place to be during the summertime south swell season was the parking lot at Ala Moana.

That parking lot was, in my opinion, the staging area for some of the most progressive surfing on the planet during the early days of the shortboard revolution. This is not to suggest that the surfing of the 1960s longboard era was less than progressive. It was spectacularly so. Ala Moana drew the best of Hawai’i’s small-wave surfers and made them better.

The 1970s, however, formed into a special and unique period of surfing history. Our hot, flat, little concrete and asphalt spike into the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor was the epicenter of a swiftly developing lifestyle and culture that was attractive for its uniquely individualistic values. That lifestyle would play a key role in what would eventually become a multi-billion-dollar industry.

Uncle Chuck ended every tale with the admonition, “Stay away from parking lots. Everything bad goes down in parking lots.” We didn’t have the heart to tell him that most of our adult lives up to that point were spent in parking lots.

The lure of the great surfing conditions at Ala Moana produced a generation who understood that being there to ride those gracious waves required its own set of rules. They understood this not so much by conscious thought than by internalizing the experience of the vagaries of wind, tide, and swell. A regular life of employment and relationships was a difficult fit with the fickle surf schedule. We put off growing up as long as possible. Life is what happened in the process.

If a surfer didn’t work because he was always down at the beach waiting for the surf to come up, people who didn’t understand called him a beach bum. That was fine as long as Mom and Dad fed and housed the bum. When, inevitably, the bum burned that bridge by not showing up for a family gathering because a set was picking up momentum down the line at Kaisers, getting creative quickly was mandatory. At some point an actual adult emerged, maintaining some position as a functioning member of society, while simultaneously maintaining flexibility to pursue the surf on a full-time schedule.

This phenomenon would ultimately change the way the rest of society regarded people who at first were seen as merely selfish and irresponsible. Kerouac and Dylan’s “straight” world, the man in the grey suit, came at last to see surfers as dedicated athletes with superb physical conditioning and a clearly defined goal in life. When an individual tries to change commonly held opinions and perceptions on his own, he is labeled a freak. But when everyone’s children are doing the same thing at the same time, parents find this activity more difficult to condemn. At some point parents stopped asking the “What are you going to do when you grow up?” question. They realized that their sons had grown up and were already doing it. Parents heaved a great collective shrug and accepted it.

The 1960s and 1970s were times of great change across all barriers of Western society. In a significant way, Ala Moana parking lot consciousness embodied changes that were taking hold everywhere in the West. No one among us had any idea that we might be any kind of avant-garde for changing mores in the larger society. We were just there for the waves. But somehow, in the ignorance of youth and in the bliss of those moments of magical ocean energy, our behavior must have managed to transmit some kind of folk wisdom we had acquired, because life around us seemed to alter ever so slightly for the better.

The first time I surfed at Ala Moana, I was still a kook. The first thing I learned was that until I learned to surf a lot better, I had no business being out there. The caliber of surfing was at an expert level.

Located in front of the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor, Ala Moana is a great wave from two to ten feet. There are several different breaks within Ala Moana. Paddling out from the break wall beyond the cars, a surfer passes through the first spot, the inside break.

This break within the break was made popular by a great surfer back in the 1960s named Benjamin ‘Buzzy’ Kneubuhl, a smooth goofy-foot who was the consummate “soul surfer” before the phrase was even coined.

Paddling past the inside break, straight ahead there is a pole that marks the east side of the harbor channel. The pole there today is a new one. It replaced the original pole put in when the channel was dredged back in the early 1950s.

The original pole was washed away by a big swell sometime in the 1980s. The new one was relocated further outside to prevent the waves from taking it away again. When the surf was at least six feet, the sets would come in right at the old pole and we would use it for our lineup. Those were the fabled “Pole Sets” at Ala Moana.

Further over toward Diamond Head is Middles, which is the main break at Ala Mo. From two to six feet this is the premier left slide on the entire south shore of O’ahu.

The case can even be made that it is the best summer left on any of the Hawaiian Islands, although Pakala on Kaua’i and Mala Wharf on Maui must be considered. Apart from the waves themselves, Ala Moana Middles has been home to the majority of the best of Hawai’i’s summer surfers.

The Middles wave is a long, fast-peeling left that when ridden properly can be connected through the entire inside break for a long ride. To do that requires negotiating the inside bowl section directly inside from the pole. A shallow reef there causes this section to peak and break ahead of the curl from Middles. To make it through requires speed and swooping down around the soup, or climbing up on the whitewater and floating over the section without losing momentum. Either way, it was a troublesome section to get beyond, so there was always a group of surfers sitting there to take any unmade waves.

On the far side of Middles is Ala Moana Rights. There was another whole group of guys who came out just to surf this unpredictable and seldom productive wave.

There remain a variety of other breaks at Ala Moana proper. Further down from Ala Moana Rights is Rockpiles Lefts, and then Rockpiles Rights. Beyond those is Kaisers Bowl, which has a decent left and a short right. The right at Kaisers breaks into a channel and is a mini version of Ala Moana Bowl, a hollow, hooking wave that can completely bury a rider, then spit him out again.

Ala Moana is a man-made surf spot created by the Army Corps of Engineers. This fact compels interest because of the remarkable quality of the wave, which no one even considered at the time the project was begun. The channel at Ala Moana was made for boats. There is no evidence that surfers participated in planning the project. One wonders what might be possible if the Corps, or some similar entity, actually set out to create a wave in Hawai’i.

The Corps dredged out the mouth of the Ala Wai Canal in the early 1950s. The Ala Wai Canal was built in 1928 to drain the swamp and floodwaters behind Waikiki. The Canal’s dual purpose was to make more room for development, as well as to alleviate the chronic problems caused by standing water. To make a safer passage through the natural break in the reef, and to create more space for boats, the Corps dredged the harbor inside the reef and the channel out through it. This wide channel generated the left at Ala Moana. It also made a great little right peak on the other side that eventually was named Garbage Hole because all the crap from the canal and the small boat harbor collected there. The Army Corps of Engineers made friends by creating Ala Moana. Unfortunately, they would lose those friends in later years by destroying Garbage Hole when they built Magic ‘Tragic’ Island and by destroying the famous Maile Cloudbreak surf spot on the West Side by building a questionable drainage canal.

They are still not making any friends among surfers with their latest endeavor to expand the harbor at Ma’alaea on Maui. Any plans that will ruin the famous Freight Trains break there can, and should, be averted.

The cast of characters who have frequented Ala Moana rivals the great waves in colorful splendor. As far back as I can remember, it was always the gathering place for the best surfers on the island—a group populated by folks who were a show even on land. From the early days, guys like Donald Takayama, Paul Strauch, Fred Hemmings, Peter Cole, Fred Van Dyke, and Joey Cabell were regular faces in the lineup.

The real masters, however, were not quite as well known outside of Hawai’i. Conrad Cunha and Sammy Lee were two of the best surfers in the water on any given day. Both were experts at shooting the tube, as tuberiding was called back then. From my earliest memories of surfing come images of one or the other of these great riders. They would stall themselves back into the curl, disappear from sight into the inner bowels of the wave, then fly back out into the light in a burst of spray.

Other great Ala Moana regulars of the time included Shoyu, Toku, Tony ‘Grapevine’ Irvine, Robbie Rath, Roy Mesker, Freddy Fong, Ivan Vanatta, Ivan Harada, Franny Lum-King, Michael McPherson, Dynamite, and Jack ‘Ganzi’ Gonzales. Joseph ‘Joe Kolohe’ Kaohe, also known as ‘Buddyboy,’ was on a planet all by himself, the essence of Ala Moana smooth.

Those were the days when all the surfboards were long and heavy, a far cry from the sleek, lightweight longboards of today. To be an adept surfer back then took a lot of skill, strength, and practice. The Ala Moana surfers of the early 1960s also had an innate understanding of, and close relationship with, the ocean. Surfers then were more complete watermen. Most of them spent time paddling outrigger canoes or paddleboards and fishing in all its forms.

An ordinary sight back then was one of these guys spearfishing outside the lineup on a small day to fill the grill. There was always a hibachi going in the parking lot for the after-surf feed. As much time as was spent out in the surf, perhaps even more was spent in the parking lot talking about it or waiting for it to happen. A lot of beer drinking and other activities went on at all times whether there was surf or not. Any news of interest, as well as a lot of gossip, was passed around and the parking lot became a clearinghouse of information on any and all subjects.

I was only a little kid hanging around on the edges of this great happening, but the tradition continued as I got older and eventually took a place in the lineup. Unless there was something else to do, everyone in the group always had it in mind to end up at the parking lot at some point in his day, if not for most of it.

Later on when I had passed through my Ala Moana phase and had the opportunity to look back on that period, I was amazed at how all-consuming the whole surf experience was at that point in time. As the Ala Moana consciousness got left behind, it seemed that the surfing part happened more in the water and less while out of it.

During the Ala Mo period, that place was a full-time passion. Even if I was doing something else entirely—school, work, family, girlfriends, whatever—Ala Moana was always an open window in my mind that never went away. If there were any hints of surf, or especially word on the grapevine about “Pole Sets,” I could forget about getting anything constructive done until after a trip down to the parking lot for a mingle with the crew and a surf session.

Even then, the “talking about it with all the boys afterward” part was sometimes harder to break away from than the waves, regardless of how important any other thing was supposed to be. It was quite a crew too: my brother Victor, Reno ‘Hamajanga’ Abellira, Wayne ‘Ultralizard’ Santos, Lionel ‘Pudgy’ Judd, Roy ‘Mr. Hollywood’ Mesker, Ben Aipa, Rick and Keone Hoopii, the Mahelona brothers, Alden Kaikaka, the Dumphy brothers, Hoku Keawe, Les Wong, Calvin ‘Naka’ Takara, Roger Hayashi, ‘Turtle,’ the Ham-Young brothers, Davey Smith, Mike Smith, Rusty Starr, Tommy Winkler, the Bradley brothers, the Titcomb brothers, the Ho brothers—the list went on endlessly.

In 1970, Jack Shipley (also an Ala Mo regular) and I started our own surf shop. Before that, we had both worked for Fred Schwartz at Surf Line Hawai’i, the premier surf shop on the island. We named our new shop Lightning Bolt. This was a problem at first when people phoned then hung up before they heard the “surfboards” part of the name. But both shops were in close proximity to Ala Moana and our connection there was unbreakable. Anytime there was any hint of surf, we were on it. The short surfboard designs had begun to stabilize at that point in time and, more than at any previous time in surfing’s history, surfboard designs began to get specialized for each wave type.

The designs for Ala Moana and other south shore breaks were the focus of most of our efforts. With a huge surf team and extensive rider feedback, the shapes improved rapidly, and with it, so did the level of performance. I traveled internationally a bit at the time. I remember thinking every time I surfed another spot that the overall level of surfing at Ala Moana was dramatically higher than anywhere else. That was a function of both the advanced surfboard designs and the competitive nature of guys who surfed there. Being part of Ala Moana drove everyone to want to improve his surfing. To hold a place in that lineup required effort.

Ironically, the Ala Moana style of surfing always was very smooth relative to the rip and tear styles of today. Even when Larry Bertlemann on his Aipa Stingers started his run, his style, though quite a bit more energetic than the others, was still smooth and flowing. The original Ala Moana style, maybe most clearly personified in Buddyboy Kaohe, was a postwar adaptation of the Beamer Brothers’ “real old” Waikiki style, its roots nourished all the way back to Duke himself.

That contrasted with the cruise-oriented California styles of surfing; at Ala Moana no one was willing to let his level of surfing cruise along. Overall, everyone was elevating his own surfing performance in order to stay in the lineup. Generally speaking, a surfer can reach a certain level of surfing relative to the board he rides. To progress beyond that requires a better surfboard. If the number of surfboards we built at Lightning Bolt was any indication, the level of surfing was elevating at a very rapid pace.

It was a grand time and I wouldn’t have traded it for anything, nor changed any of it for something else. The people were terrific, the times were great and the surf was outstanding. Every man was a King.

Ala Moana was all about small-wave, high-performance surfing, and it drove surfboard design to new heights every day of the summer. Photos: Steve Wilkings