I last left Kolohe at the Target house as the growing swell thundered as his father and his coach discussed strategy. Kolohe, angelically blonde with defined features and straight teeth and blue eyes and well-developed muscles. Kolohe, sponsored by Target. Alongside Target he is also sponsored by Nike, Red Bull, and Oakley. His slate of sponsors is as moneyed as anyone’s in surfing. Most professionals ride for endemic brands only. The brands that were begun by surfers themselves, printing T-shirts and hand-stitching canvas boardshorts in their parents’ garages and selling them from the backs of their parents’ station wagons.
Quiksilver has the best story of all. Missing-toothed Australian Alan Green saw that surfers needed surf-specific trunks and so, in 1970, started making them from double-twisted poplin, a material used mostly for raincoats. They sold well in the beach towns around Melbourne and Sydney and he had a nice, growing business, and then Jeff Hakman arrived.
Hakman was born in California but moved with his family to Oahu when he was twelve. He was a natural, paddling out to giant Waimea at thirteen years old, and soon became the best surfer in the world. Surf historian Matt Warshaw writes in the Encyclopedia of Surfing, “His mastery was complete and he could ride for hours—sometimes days—without falling off his board.” He also became a total drug addict. Talent often trumps addiction, especially for the young, and Hakman won contest after contest even when loaded. He would travel around the world and met a very young Bob McKnight in Indonesia. They became fast friends. McKnight would later go over to G-Land to surf and would meet Mike Boyum and the other lost boys.
Hakman, meanwhile, glassed three ounces of cocaine inside the hollowed-out fins of his surfboard that he planned to trade for heroin, and flew to Australia to compete in the Rip Curl Bells Beach Pro. He won (while loaded), becoming the first non-Australian to accomplish that feat but the only thing in his head was Quiksilver. He had stolen a pair of Quik trunks on an earlier trip to Australia and thought they were the best things on earth (except maybe heroin).
After the event wrapped, everyone went to the victory party. Hakman found Alan Green’s table and begged for the license to sell Quiksilver trunks in America. He is quoted in the book The Mountain and the Wave: The Quiksilver Story as saying, “Greeny, what do I have to do to make you understand how much I want this license?” Green, drunk, pointed to a cloth doily on the table and responded, “Eat the doily.” Hakman did, washing it down with wine, and the license was his.
Hakman called his fast friend Bob McKnight and Quiksilver USA soon dwarfed Australia, and other brands followed suit. Brands that were for surfers and by surfers.
Quiksilver, and Billabong too, have grown into billion-dollar empires and are publicly traded but they are still considered core. They are still considered to sprout from surfing’s hallowed spring. But Target is not core. Nike is not core. They are interlopers and often disparaged for sticking a dirty corporate finger into surfing’s hallowed spring.
Surfers are very temperamental about “core.” If anything smacks of opportunism, of getting involved in surfing to make a dollar, then surfers recoil—even when the endemic brands do it. Maybe especially when the endemic brands do it. Every so often Costco will get its hands on a brand’s goods and put them on the tables amidst the beanbag chairs and tater tot samples and then the brand will be, officially, dead. The brand will be accused of “selling out” and be totally finished.
Nike was so worried about entering the temperamental surf market that it first, very quietly, purchased the core brand Hurley and tested the waters before launching 6.0, which was a hideous mutant and had no visible “swoosh” or any connection to Nike, before launching Nike Surf, which is semiaccepted by surf culture and even semiaccepted on the North Shore. They sponsor Hawaiian Kai Barger.
But Kolohe doesn’t care about core. And so his peers call him Corpo—short for corporate—behind his back. Corpo Andino. But he doesn’t care at all. He is proud of his blue chips. He is proud to be corpo and even brags about it. Brags that the stickers on his surfboard, representing his sponsors, look like the New York Stock Exchange. He is the future of surfing. He is where surfing is going.
And his surf style is impeccable. Groomed in San Clemente, child of a professional, he learned how to surf to the times. He learned to surf like a modern child throwing all the complicated newfangled airs, the slobs and the mutes and the stalefishes, and he lands them all with amazing consistency. He knows how to surf and he knows how to surf for the magazines and he knows how to surf for the judges. He is a competitive machine and his father, Dino, has been by his side the whole time.
Kolohe’s dad’s Christian name is Reinol but he is known only as Dino in the surf community. Dino’s father was an emigrant from Moldova who moved his family to the suburban Southern California town of Anaheim. Dino was raised near enough to the beach to hitch rides after school. Through pure hard work and perseverance, he became a decent pro in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, with an exceptionally powerful carve. He would paddle into the wave, long hair flowing behind him, and fly down the line before changing directions on a dime. He had the longest hair. It was his trademark. He would bury the rail of his board beneath the water and send spray toward the heavens before redirecting and continuing on down the line. His powerful style was also, along with luxuriant flowing hair, his trademark and he won a handful of contests on the tour. Enough to make a living. He was fearless as well. He had to be in order to get respect as a middle-class kid from Anaheim. So he’d surf big waves and fight and never back down.
He met a pretty blonde beach girl, married young, had Kolohe in his early twenties, and moved his own family to the Southern California beachside hamlet of San Clemente, which is the location of Trestles, the best wave in California and a World Tour stop.
Trestles is referred to as a “high-performance wave.” It breaks over a cobblestoned bottom and forms perfect ramps, ramps like the waves at Rocky Point. Waves that keep a consistent shape with a steeper section at the lip that beg to be danced upon. It never gets over six feet in height and the transition section is perfect for speed, carving, hacks, gouges, and airs. High-performance.
Young Kolohe would follow his dad to Trestles for daily surfs and contests. He remembers walking around the competitor’s area as a four-year-old and being awed by what he saw. He says, “I would just see all these pros and I thought they were gods. I never really thought of becoming a professional surfer myself but I never thought about becoming anything else either. These guys were my heroes and they were all my dad’s friends. I’d just walk around and I was probably pretty annoying but it was cool. I was cool.”
Kolohe followed the trajectory of most beachy Southern California groms (surf slang for “kids”), getting on a bodyboard as soon as he could walk but soon begging for a surfboard. “My dad gave me one of his and I would go froth around in the shore break. I’d go kill it out there,” he says with a mischievous grin. Dino saw the potential and coached and encouraged Kolohe, waking up at the break of day for his own dawn-patrol surf sessions and always bringing Kolohe for a paddle. The two would bob in the water and Dino would give him pointers on how to attack this section of the wave or what to do on that section. Kolohe progressed quickly.
He entered Kolohe in some local National Scholastic Surfing Association contests and soon Kolohe was beating kids in competition over twice his age. And word started to spread about Dino’s kid.
Dino, too, began to develop a reputation for being a soccer dad. A pejorative in the perpetually rebellious and ruggedly individual surf world. He’d stand on the beach with Kolohe’s extra competition boards and continue to give him pointers and tips between heats. He’d bark at the judges if he felt Kolohe had been robbed of a score. And if Kolohe made a mental error he would bury his head in his hands and say, “What the fuck is he thinking?” He’d deal personally with the surf industry interest in his young son, getting Kolohe his first sponsorship deals, which happened to be Billabong, which happened to be where Dino worked. And he worked at Billabong because they wanted Kolohe so they gave him a job. He homeschooled him so that he could travel and compete overseas as well as at home. The two would travel everywhere together and they still do even though Kolohe has, just this year, qualified for the World Championship Tour (WCT) and even though Kolohe now also has a personal coach.
Kolohe qualified in record speed. He won WQS competitions in all the little and junky waves because his style and his flair and his ability lent themselves to the judging criteria at those junky waves. He could flair with the best of them in Brazilian beach break.
But this is Kolohe’s first full season on the North Shore. Unlike other exceptionally talented groms his age he was kept from the prototypical parental ship-off. Parents trust their exceptional youth to the brands. They send them to the North Shore with team managers and the children are stacked in bunk beds and made to sweep floors and slapped and are pointed out to the water when the waves are biggest and forced to take sets on the head. But Kolohe was sheltered from the brutal dog-eat-dog North Shore because he was a prodigy and his dad never left his side. The hazing, and the slaps, and the choke outs, and the sets on the head were foreign and he was, instead, groomed in Southern California beach break and safer Indonesian reef breaks. Kolohe’s own reputation began to develop in the surf community. He is soft. He is a media creation. He can surf fine in safe little waves and do progressive tricks and get his picture in the magazines but there is no way he’ll be able to handle North Shore power. There is no way.
Kolohe, vice grip tightening around his throat, has chosen his board and is getting last-minute pointers from his coach and his dad on the steps of the Target house. His face is grey. I have moved down to the Target house too, through the “Billabong Presents the Pipe Masters in Memory of Andy Irons” scaffolding, down the slope of dead and dying grass to the beach, past the photographers poised to capture every wave, past the Volcom house with a full deck of angry mokes, and past Jamie O’Brien’s house, which is, inexplicably, pumping out dubstep, past the Billabong house where Graham Stapelberg got slapped, and up the stairs into the Nike house yard, moving across the Oakley house, where angry Hawaiians are hanging on the rail, glaring, and up to the steps of the Target house deck. The thunder of Pipeline has shaken me during the whole walk. I have never seen it this big. Ever.
Kolohe’s face is grey and he is waxing a new pintailed surfboard in the yard and listening, halfheartedly, to the advice from his coach and feeling the same thunder. His face is so grey.
Twelve houses up the beach, back toward Pipeline, John John Florence is sitting on his porch laughing with a surf photographer about a poor Australian World Championship Tour bottom-feeder, Daniel Ross, who only got a 2.84 total score in his early morning heat (2.84 is embarrassingly bad). Pipe is totally massive, but the tide is a bit high and so the waves are hard to judge. Many surfers are getting slammed, free-falling into cavernous barrels that pinch around them and then try to drown them. Those who don’t surf Pipe regularly are scratching around the water’s surface trying not to look foolish, but even more so, trying not to drown. Or get dredged across the reef. But John John Florence isn’t scared. His face isn’t grey. He is laughing.
Kolohe Andino, down the beach, is the future of surfing and John John Florence, up the beach, is also the future of surfing but they are two different futures. They are a fork in the road. Kolohe is blue chip, corpo. He is million-dollar Super Bowl television commercials. He is kids in Nebraska buying Nike Surf trunks and wearing them to their local swimming pool. And John John is core. Super core. He is the first explorers who tackled towering waves at Waimea, Sunset, and Pipeline. He is dingy kids fearlessly paddling out at waves that will crush them because that is what it means to be a surfer.
John John was born on the North Shore and, although he is even whiter than Kolohe and although he was named after John F. Kennedy Jr., he is completely accepted here. He is theirs. He was born in the very house in front of which he now sits, in fact, four lots down from Pipeline itself, and has lived here his entire eighteen years of life. He is blonde too, like Kolohe, but instead of straight hair in a stylish cut he sports a curly mop, which he hides underneath a Monster Energy Drink baseball hat. He is blue-eyed and near six feet tall as well, but their physical similarities end there. John John’s features are not fine, his skin not uniform. His face is, in fact, squishy with puffy eyes that droop, smashy nose, and snaggly smile. When he was young he was dreamy. A little grom with a shoulder-length sandy mane and a fearless disposition. He would stand in Pipeline beasts, even as an eight-year-old, but today he looks strange. The island sun has a way of aging those who toil under its glare.
He tugs on his hat with one hand, attempting to block the mid-morning sun from his puffy eyes, while rubbing the salty residue around the seam of his O’Neill boardshorts with the other. His main sponsor is O’Neill and could not be more core. O’Neill was started by a bearded one-eyed surfer in Santa Cruz in the early 1960s. Jack O’Neill reconstituted bulky scuba-diving wetsuits, making them flexible enough to surf Northern California’s freezing cold water. T-shirts, jackets, and a full assortment of sportswear soon followed but O’Neill’s mission remains as simple as their tagline. First In, Last Out. It is only ever about the surf.
John John is no longer laughing about Daniel Ross’s low score but has gotten up, languidly, and is shuffling toward the sliding door on the side of the house. Getting ready to prepare his own pintails for battle. Kids who have grown up on the islands always seem to move with a sort of defiant slowness. John John, particularly, seems as if he is perpetually fighting sleep. He slides the door and enters the cool interior. His younger brothers Ivan and Nathan are on the couch struggling over a box of skateboard bearings and his mom, Alexandra, is in the kitchen making breakfast. She is a petite blonde with chestnut skin and a fine figure. She has the look of a pretty woman digging her heels in as she slides toward an uncertain future. Island sun is so vicious. She is a strong woman, a successful woman, and calls herself Alex but almost everyone else calls her Mom John.
Alex was born in New Jersey, raised two blocks from the beach. She was the youngest in the family and her two older brothers insisted on watching surf movies and paddling out, when they could, when there wasn’t snow on the ground, and emulating what they saw on the screen. “I’d watch too,” she says. “I was like, I want to be a girl charging those waves.”
And New Jersey surf would never satisfy what she wanted to do so at sixteen she packed up and moved herself to the North Shore. Like Dino, she became a professional, surfing in the handful of contests held across the Hawaiian Islands during the years that were carved out for the women, but unlike Dino’s trajectory there is no real money in professional women’s surfing like there is no real money in the WNBA. So she settled down with a tradesman in a ramshackle house on the sand at Pipeline and birthed three sons.
Her husband left soon after the third was born, seeking his fortunes back in town but Alex wasn’t about to leave. She loved the country lifestyle too much. She and her boys would spend their entire days splashing in the Pacific in front of the house and skateboarding the cement bowl behind the house. And she would supplement her income by shooting photographs of island beauty.
But surfing took precedence to all. It is claimed, apocryphally perhaps, that John John first stood on a surfboard at six months of age wearing a life vest and riding on his father’s board. By five he was surfing alone and by eight he was dropping into throaty barrels at Pipeline. He was treated like a mascot in the lineup. All the older Pipe surfers would hoot him into waves and congratulate him when he’d break a board or bounce off the reef and come up bloody. Alex would watch him, happy that he was having fun but also nervous. She trusted the islands, though. She trusted that the braddahs in the lineup would keep her boy safe. It was around this time that the surf media took notice and pictures of John John, of the little towheaded Monchichi with hair down his back and an almost too mature stance on a board, began appearing in magazines. Nobody could believe this kid could thread the barrel the way he did. Nobody could believe he wasn’t afraid of Pipeline and that he surfed with so much style.
Alex will claim that this attention on her eldest son was fine but that she didn’t really care either way. She insisted that he and his brothers went to school every day, even when the surf was pumping, even when they begged her to let them paddle out instead of catching the bus to Pupukea Elementary School. She didn’t let them watch television and family was the only thing that mattered and as long as her boys were safe and happy and having fun then she was perfectly content. “Yeah, my biggest dream for my kids is that they are happy, healthy, and successful in whatever it is that they choose to do,” she often says.
But nothing is ever so simple when prodigious talent displays itself in a youth, and there are stories of Alex working herself into deals with the brands, demanding that included in the price of sponsoring young John John was a stipend for her, insisting she be paid to travel with him.
She will also claim that she never pushed John John to compete or to be a professional in any way, saying in a recent Freesurf magazine interview, “I think that nowadays, a lot of kids are getting pushed to be good at surfing, getting hired coaches and stuff like that, which is lame. My philosophy is that kids should just have fun.” But again, nothing is ever so simple and she put a very young John John with the right people. Surfers that were better than mere coaches. Professionals who would paddle John John out to the outer-reef breaks and tutor him, personally, in the arts.
There are always pros hanging about the Florence household. Alex is warm, inviting, and, again, still pretty. Nathan Fletcher is the latest to drink his after-surf beers in the Florence kitchen and also have a relationship with her. Nathan is a legend from a legendary family of surfers. Four generations long, on both maternal and paternal side. He is younger thirties, handsome, amazingly skilled, but a little loopy.
Whatever the case, whether pushed firmly or subtly or not at all, whether helped by Alex’s friendly suitors or only driven by his own passion, John John excelled in the competitive landscape, which is rare for those born and raised in Hawaii. Most Hawaiians loathe leaving the islands and therefore refuse the rigorous travel schedule demanded of those who qualify for the WCT. They have perfect waves at home. Why should they leave? John John’s loathe of the mainland is no different. He mocks Southern California, is openly derisive of its surfers, who insist on wearing skinny jeans and other accouterments of style, calling them “California barns.” Being called a “barn” or “barney” is the same as being called “totally completely uncool” and is almost as bad as being called a “kook” in surf parlance. But still, through all, he has excelled and, like Kolohe, has qualified for the WCT.
But excellence at a young age in surfing guarantees nothing, except possibly a rehab-worthy drug problem. Being a prodigy is as much a strike against as it is a way forward. And Kolohe and John John are both prodigies.
Both have been in the spotlight since they were children and both are dealing with the shoulder-stooping pressure of being prodigies on the brink of adulthood. The speculation about what they may become is now meaningless. They will either become great, today in the biggest opening day of the Pipeline Masters ever, literally not figuratively, or sink into the annals of surfing’s folk history.
The surf industry hedges by betting on both Kolohe and John John. It speaks highly of both. But, truthfully, the surf industry doesn’t know shit. By and large, its last good idea was turning cocaine profits into boardshorts. By and large, it has become entirely reactionary, conservative, and petty. There are still some brands that maintain a fine image and make fine products that are both stylistically hip and true to the space. But it is hard when everyone has gone public and boards and chairmen from equity groups have the final say. So most industry brands pull advertisements from magazines for controversial pieces and the most stupidly tame pieces alike. They complain, bitterly, about virtually everything just like a senile old grandpa. An article about sunglasses ran recently on Surfing Magazine’s website, for instance, and a small company from Encinitas, California, was not included. A hundred and ten people looked at the story but the company felt so totally shattered that they sent nasty emails to Tony Perez about how unfair everything is and that they buy ads and expect to be included and blah blah blah. Blah. That is the surf industry. And even betting on both Kolohe and John John may bring only more hurt old feelings.
There was once a surfer named Dave Eggers, like the author. He was likewise a towheaded youth of exceptional talent and as a child he won every competition in his age group. He crushed all. The magazines and media praised him and wondered about the sorts of greatness he would achieve. Would he be the best surfer of all time? Would he become a pop culture icon? He made covers of magazines standing in his bedroom surrounded by a pile of trophies.
Then he started to drink. Then he became addicted to drugs and stopped surfing competitively, later getting diagnosed with schizophrenia. Today Dave Eggers works in a bar in Bombay Beach, a small town on the shores of the Salton Sea in the middle of Southern California’s Palm Springs desert. The Salton Sea was created through an accident of engineering. When damning the Colorado River, a breach occurred and the water flooded a below-sea-level portion of the desert. Early real estate tycoons and prospectors felt the lake would become a destination and built resorts around it. But it was unnatural and became saline and everything in and around it died. The tycoons and prospectors moved away, leaving only a shell community living in rusted trailer homes that dream, someday, the Salton Sea will return to its former glory, and Dave Eggers plies them with whiskey.
Kolohe and John John. The California prodigy with the Hawaiian name and the Hawaiian prodigy named after the most Eastern-Seaboard-establishment celebrity ever. They have surfed against each other in various National Scholastic Surfing Association and junior events around the world as they grew, with Kolohe winning more often than not. His polished flare built in Southern California perfectly fit the judging criteria of the minor leagues. He always knew which tricks would score the highest, knew when to throw them, and also has a competitive instinct like none other. He loves to win. He loves to compete. And the waves in the minor leagues are often subpar. Not the sort of heavy that John John grew up surfing.
John John would agitate at each Kolohe win, at each Kolohe magazine spread, a growing disdain taking root in his heart. He would salve the sting of losses by knowing that, soon, both of them would be on the WCT and waves on the WCT are something else entirely. The WCT is macking Pipeline. The WCT is what is happening this morning.
John John’s disdain of Kolohe, in my opinion, is visceral. His smashy face shows discomfort when Kolohe’s name is even mentioned in his company. His uneven skin becomes an equal shade of red. He will not say, directly, that he dislikes him but I think he does.
Kolohe, on the other hand, feels neither this way nor that about John John. He thinks his island fashion is amusing. He thinks he surfs decently, though a bit hunched over on his board. He thinks he is quiet. He thinks of John John the way that the New York Yankees think of the Kansas City Royals, which is to say he does not think of him very much at all. He will dismissively say they are “like brothers” but I know Kolohe, better than he knows himself, and I know that he is as competitive as anyone. Kolohe has the arrogance born of preternatural gifts and the bright sun of surf industry prophecy shining on his back. John John is also arrogant but in a different, more Hawaiian way. He slowly and methodically does exactly what it is that he wants to do. He doesn’t care when surf industry executives tell him this or that. The disdain for “California barns” is ever present.
And, right now, John John, in his home, has chosen the board he will ride today and is waxing it sluggishly, without worry. And Kolohe is standing on the beach, looking ashen.
I am standing next to Kolohe, on the beach, at the water’s edge, and joke with him that he doesn’t have to paddle out. That I will put on his contest singlet and take the heat for him. Both of us would maybe fare the same. And Pipeline is standing before both of us, hulking. I have never seen it this big. I have never seen it this powerful. He is ready to paddle, trying to time it so that he doesn’t get smashed on the way out, and he just looks at me, grey-faced, and says, “Huh?” He doesn’t understand. He is in a state of shock.
The moment he is ready to go, the biggest set of the day washes up and even though we are standing well back it washes over Kolohe’s bare feet and over my red Vans. If he hasn’t already vomited he will probably do it right now. But like a proper warrior he takes a deep breath and sprints toward Armageddon and jumps on his board and begins the frantic paddle.
When Pipeline is big there is a swift current that sucks along the shore. A rock outcropping near shore, just to the left of Backdoor, marks where most surfers begin the paddle out. And they get sucked down the beach so quickly that it is ridiculous. It looks like they are only going sideways and will never make it out. But then they hit a rip current sucking out near the Ehukai Beach Park and are sucked out to sea and then they paddle back to their left to get in position.
Kolohe follows this pattern and is in the lineup with four minutes to go until the beginning of his heat. Jamie O’Brien is currently in the water, in a heat, and his heat will overlap into Kolohe’s. They will be in the water, at the same time, for twenty minutes of Kolohe’s forty-minute heat.
And Pipeline is pumping. It is massive and the sand is shaking, everything is shaking, with each wave that detonates. Jamie, having grown up here, is making it look simple. He is sliding down waves four times taller than him. Waves as big as a three-story building. Waves that are breaking onto reef three feet deep. And he is making it look easy and fun. He catches one, air-drops to the bottom section, stalls, stalls, stalls, is covered up by a huge lip, and is spit back into the morning sunshine to roaring applause from the beach. It is his playground. And he is dominating his competition, Dane Reynolds.
Dane, like Kolohe, is a California media darling. He is from Ventura, California, and loves progressive aerial surfing, mustaches, arty doodles, obscure music, analog photography, and beat literature. His favorite book is The Road to Los Angeles and his favorite author is John Fante. In the water, though, he is getting embarrassed by Jamie O’Brien. And the North Shore beach is loving the punishment of this cuffed-panted, mustachioed, Mexican-beer-drinking hipster. The night before, at the Surfer Poll awards, Dane begged for Jamie to go easy on him but Jamie is not going easy at all. He is embarrassing him badly.
Kolohe sits on the shoulder, waiting for the horn for his own heat to sound, watching Dane get embarrassed. He himself is lucky not to be surfing against a North Shore local, but his lot is not much better. He is surfing against Laurie Towner, a fearless Australian hellman. “Hellman” is a nomenclature given to any surfer willing to throw himself into any wave at any time. Sharks and currents and reefs and rocks and decapitation and death be damned. Laurie is a hellman. He has dislocated his arm many times, being pounded by giant western and southern Australia surf. And he has put his time in on the North Shore as well. One of his most famous barrel pictures, a giant green mutant covering him up at Off the Wall, right next to Pipeline right next to Backdoor right next to Ain’ts, was snapped by water photographer Hilton Dawe. It was the same swell, the same day, almost the same minute that Pipeline killed Malik Joyeux.
Malik, floating twenty yards away from Laurie that fateful day, was a French Polynesian known for being one of the most fearless and accomplished big-wave riders ever. He charged Teahupo’o, a bone-crushing slab in Tahiti. He won the Billabong XXL Barrel of the Year award in 2003 on, many believe, to be one of the largest waves ever surfed. But Pipeline cares not for pedigree. It cares not for skill. And on a December day in 2005, Malik paddled out and surfed. It was only an eight-foot day, not massive by North Shore standards, and Malik took off deep. He was a goofy foot, and so he was facing the wave, going left. He tried to make the section but the nose of his board sank, right after he popped to his feet, and he lost speed. He tried to make up for it but was too late and the lip pounded him in the head and sent him underwater. The force of the wipeout was so great that it pulled his leash, the strand of rubber that connects a surfer to his board, clean out. And Malik was lost under the water. It took more than fifteen minutes for surfers and lifeguards to find his body down at Pupukea beach break, to the right of Pipeline if standing on the beach and looking out at the ocean. They dragged his limp torso to shore and tried to bring him back to life but their attempts were unsuccessful. A later autopsy revealed that Malik hit his head on his board after he fell, knocking him out. And then he drowned. Malik was no kook. He was good, even great. But Pipeline cares not.
And Kolohe bobs on the shoulder, floating over mountains, watching Jamie O’Brien, who has broken both his legs out here, and looking over at Laurie Towner, who knows, intimately, what Pipeline can do. Then the horn sounds. It is his turn. It is his time.
Laurie scratches, almost immediately, for the first wave. It is a thick Pipeline beast. It would be a classic with a little less water, a little less thickness. But nevertheless, Laurie scratches, paddles with all his might, and he pops to his feet. It is solid twelve foot, Hawaiian. He drops, backside, facing the beach and grabbing the rail of his board with his right arm and feeling for the wall of the wave with his left. His back (right) leg is cocked and he is centered. Textbook. Kolohe can’t see what is happening because he is behind the wave swimming in his own sea of gut-wrenching adrenaline. He is looking for his own wave. Laurie drops to the bottom and tries to dig the inside (left) rail of his board but something happens. He digs too hard and spins out, slightly, and his back foot becomes unstuck and suddenly there he is. At the bottom of a twelve-foot, Hawaiian, Pipe wave lying on top of his board. He slides for a minute and he knows that he is fucked and he is fucked. Then the lip comes down on his back. It smashes through him and he disappears behind an avalanche of white. The water patrol on Jet Skis scramble, looking desperately for him. He pops to the surface and waves them over and they help hoist him onto the sled that hangs off the back of the skis. He slowly gets to his knees and then violently punches the sled with his right arm. His left arm dangles sickly at his side. Pipeline has dislocated it and it swings lifelessly.
The Jet Ski spins around and rushes him toward the beach and he walks, hobbles, toward the competitors tent, angry, cradling his sickly, lifeless arm. The event doctors take a look and take it in their hands and pull it away from his body and it slides back into place. He moves it around a bit, gives them a thumbs-up, grabs his board, and rushes back toward the mayhem.
I am close enough to see the grimace on Laurie’s face and know, quite personally, the hell of dislocation. I dislocated my arm, first snowboarding and second fighting a mixed-martial-arts bout against an Australian champion for Stab. I do anything for a story. My dangling arm totally grossed out both the champion and his training staff but I popped it back in with a smirk. And third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth all on one passionate night with my woman in Beverly Hills. It was a hot night, and, like Laurie, I gave a thumbs-up and kept going. I intimately appreciate his verve.
Kolohe wouldn’t have known what was happening, exactly, but he must have known it was something bad. Pipeline breaks close enough to shore where surfers in the water can see the events on the sand. If he happened to be looking he would have seen Laurie hobbling. And the doctors milling.
Laurie paddles back out to the lineup, getting worked by the waves on the way out, and then catches another beast and falters and gets pounded. He is washed in and his leg is bloody and his other arm dangles sickly. In two waves he has dislocated both of his shoulders and hit the reef.
Kolohe is alone now, not in the water but in his heat, and he will win it no matter what he does because the competition has been punched out of the arena. But this is no consolation because now all eyes are on him, even more so, and there is no place for him to hide. But he also doesn’t want to hide because underneath it all he is a competitor. And he pushes down the fear, swallows it deep into his belly, and sees a set feather out over Third Reef. Coming directly for him.
Jamie is still in the water, punishing Dane, embarrassing Dane, and he sees the set and he watches Kolohe turn around and start to dig. Kolohe is going. He is going. It is a giant. The biggest wave of the day, so far, and it swells up behind Kolohe ready to eat him like it ate Laurie. His head is down. Digging. And right when he is about to drop down the skyscraper—fifteen foot, Hawaiian—Jamie screams, “Stall!” This is Jamie’s playground. This is his backyard and he has fun out here and he knows that if Kolohe stalls down the face it will be the barrel of his young life and he will silence every detractor. Stalling is when a surfer slows his momentum, letting the wave overtake him and barrel over him as thickly as possible. Jamie is an expert. And when he stalls he can also instantly speed up and make it out of sections that he has no business making it out of.
Kolohe hears him and tries to stall but this wave is a beast and it crushes him. It buries him in rolling thunder but he escapes without bodily harm, popping to the surface shaking his head and pulling his board back toward him. He has taken a beating and he has survived.
And he paddles back out to the lineup, surfing his heat alone. He takes off on another behemoth and tries to stall and races down the line, getting covered up at the end section and then pinched. But it is enough for a score. And then, before he knows it, his heat is over and he has gotten through and he is alive. This is a mixed blessing because it means he will have to surf again today and the swell is rising.
On the beach he is visibly relieved to be out of the water, and in his post-heat interview he says, “I’m gonna be honest, I was hearing about this swell about four or five days before and I was like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I hope it doesn’t happen. I hope something goes wrong where they won’t run it cuz I’m not too experienced out there, and I have never surfed really-too-big waves and . . . yeah, I was pretty scared and, ummm, I’m stoked to be here and bad luck to Laurie . . . but, also stoked to make it.” His two-wave heat total is a 5.27, which is not good but also not the worst of the morning. And he is not that stoked to have made it. He will have to surf again. And the swell is rising.
The day finds its own rhythm and the beach fills as the sun climbs toward noon. I have been awake since dawn and am starting to tire but Pipe is like coffee and everyone on Oahu knows that epic Pipe is happening. Everyone is coming. And as the tide drops, the swell cleans up. It gains size and its quality improves. The barrels stay open longer. They don’t close down and surfers ride the full length of the wave, getting spit out furiously at the end. It is an unreal show and the beach hoots and hollers with every giant barrel, with every head-spinning wipeout. Those watching from the surf house decks speak authoritatively of who is excelling and who is looking foolish. I move up to the Billabong house and Kolohe’s performance has mixed reviews. Some are proud that he even paddled into anything. Others, Hawaiians, feel that he got showed up in front of God and Canadians. It is their apocalypse, after all, and they know best.
Then John John is on the beach ready to paddle out for his first heat. He looks free and easy. He hunches down and watches for a moment, taking it in before sprinting into the water and getting sucked down the beach, sucked out to the lineup.
This is not the first event this winter that Kolohe and John John have surfed against each other on the North Shore. They were both in the Reef Hawaiian Pro at Hale’iwa, the first jewel in the Triple Crown, but it was not a good gauge. The surf didn’t turn on the way it was supposed to and so the waves were fat under a puffy, fat, clouded sky. But it was good for airs and both Kolohe and John John excelled, though John John made it further than Kolohe. He threw an impressively high, hands-free, full rotation on the inside section and the beach erupted.
They also surfed against each other in the second jewel of the Triple Crown, the Vans World Cup of Surfing at Sunset Beach. The surf turned on for Sunset but it was a maxing swell coming from multiple directions and filled the ocean with chaos. Even Sunset veterans said it was virtually impossible to pick the proper takeoff spot. Kolohe fared poorly but almost anyone would have fared poorly. Except John John. In his first heat he found two barrels and had the highest heat total of the day. He kept surfing, heat after heat, and kept winning and he eventually won the entire contest, getting chaired up the beach and hoisting the large silver cup with a pink lei around his neck and a pink lei on his head. It was a fine win. And Kolohe watched it from the couch of the Target house not caring because Sunset is a strange wave.
Now it is Pipeline and there are no excuses because this is the Billabong Pipe Masters and the surf is on, it is full and perfect, and when John John reaches the lineup it is an equal test on the biggest stage.
He is surfing against Kai Barger, a Hawaiian wildcard from Maui, and he looks calm in the water. He moves into the same spot where he always sits, lining up with the same tree and same reef head that he always uses. And he sits. Calmly. Before whipping around and catching a bomb. He pops to his feet so languidly and slides down the face, sliding his ass down the face to slow his momentum. He is stalling perfectly. Jamie O’Brien would be proud. Both John John and Kolohe are regular footed so they both ride Pipeline backside, facing the beach. And John John slows his momentum and waits and waits and gets covered up by a thick lip. He is deep in the barrel. Very deep. Lost from sight. In his own world. And then the end of the wave pinches shut. Those on the beach feel, for sure, that he will not make it, but then he shoots through and squeezes into the light, standing tall. The beach loses it. He is their hometown hero. On his second wave he gets equally barreled, standing straight up. This is the mark of a Pipeline specialist, standing straight and tall in the tube. Standing still. Not crouching or grabbing or trying to speed through it but setting a clean line and standing as tall as possible. And John John stands as tall as possible and then comes racing out after the spit. This is also the mark of a Pipeline specialist. Coming out of the barrel even after the vapor has been shot out like a cannon. On his third wave he gets the longest barrel. He is lost from sight for an eternity. And when he finally reemerges he pumps his fist twice toward the shore. Boom boom. More losing it. He receives a ten, a perfect score, and his heat total of 18.07 is the highest of the day so far. Afterward, on the beach, he says, “Yeah, it was really sketchy until I got up into the barrel and then it was fun.” It was fun. That is a difference between John John and Kolohe, and Hawaiians and mainlanders, for that matter. They have fun in the maw of death.
I had moved back and forth during the morning from beach to house to beach, trading conversation with various friends and colleagues who had passed my way, but now I want to go to the Billabong house again and maybe see Graham Stapelberg huddled in a corner. I want to see his face in order to more fully understand Eddie and the whole violent North Shore’s story. A victim’s face speaks volumes. And so I walk down the sand and turn into its yard. I see various Billabong groms milling about and ask if G. is still around. Some say he is. Others say he has left. “But this is his home,” I respond. “Wouldn’t you know if he was here?” And they shrug their shoulders and then ask if I have heard that Eddie slapped him last night before skulking off. The whole house is still on edge. It has been put off of its typically cocky game.
I walk over to the Nike house to see if Kolohe or Dino are there. This is life on the North Shore. Incremental movements between surf houses, Lei Lei’s, Hale’iwa Joe’s, Foodland, the Chevron, and back. There can only be so much movement within seven miles. There can only be so much movement on an island.
In the Nike house more young groms are spread out on the leather couch playing Call of Duty on the large television. They have turned off Pipeline coverage for a moment and are enthralled with throwing grenades at each other. I ask them if Kolohe is around and they shrug. Damned shrugging. Always damned shrugging. Why doesn’t anyone get to the bottom of anything here? And so I move back over to the Target house. Incremental movements.
On the porch J.D. is sitting and talking with Michael Ho, a North Shore legend. I interrupt and tell J.D. that Target will be sponsoring the Backdoor Shootout next year and he gives me a monologue about how it is not in Target’s interest to sponsor events here. They only have one store, in Honolulu, and don’t need whatever it is that sponsoring events gives a brand and the only reason they are here is to provide help for Kolohe and Carissa and this and that. I tell him it is fine and well, but Eddie asked if they would be interested and Eddie asking means Eddie telling them they are interested. He doesn’t know what to say. Michael guffaws and says, “Ehhhhhhhh, Eddie. He used to haaaaate me. When he was first building his house, the house where he is at now, I used to shoot out his lights with a pellet gun. I live right across the street and would sit on my deck at night after all the construction workers went away and pow pow pow. I would shoot them all. One time Eddie wanted to fight me in the street but I told him he’d have to teach me some moves because I don’t know any. Hahahahahaha. Eddie . . .” Michael Ho is untouchable. He is Hawaiian royalty. His cousin is Don Ho, who sang “Tiny Bubbles” on a ukulele.
I finally find Dino inside, kneeling on a couch with his face pressed to the window, alternating between the live action on television and the live action in the ocean. He is talking a mile a minute about strategy and where to sit and which waves to go on and which waves look best bending over the horizon. I don’t see Kolohe. I ask Dino when Kolohe is surfing next and without looking away from the television or the window says, “Soon, Chas. Rough, yeah?” And I tell him that I thought Kolohe did all right. That he took a barbarian set on the head and that he got barreled even though he got pinched at the end. I don’t say anything about John John or his 18.07. Dino nods and says “Yeah yeah yeah yeah” without thinking. Looking at the television and then out the window.
The swell had grown all morning. It had come in and exploded on the reefs in bigger and bigger sets. Off the Wall was a reign of close-out terror. Third Reef constantly feathered. Backdoor was working, sometimes, but surfers brave enough to charge through the Backdoor were met with nature’s sadism on the return paddle to the lineup. When surfers ride Pipe waves they are, again, spit into the channel and their return paddle is relatively easy. But when surfers ride Backdoor they are, again, spit out in front of Ain’ts, next to Off the Wall’s reign of closeout terror, and there is no channel. They end on the inside and must try to duck-dive under twenty feet of whitewash mash in three feet of water. Three feet to the reef. And the surfers flail and let their boards shoot toward the sky and try to swim under and often give up, letting themselves be washed in so they can paddle back around the way they started. Into the side-sucking current and into the out-sucking current. Nasty.
Dino asks me about the Billabong house situation and we trade Eddie stories while Kolohe scoots by us on the way to the beach, preparing for his next heat. Dino gives him a word of encouragement. Kolohe’s face is not grey anymore but it doesn’t look easy. He is surfing next against Dusty Payne. The redhead with a Mormon father. Dusty is already on the sand and Kolohe comes over, standing next him, before kicking at the sand, jumping into the water, and paddling furiously.
Dusty catches the first wave. A Backdoor gem. And gets scored decently for his brazen skill. Kolohe catches the second and gets dumped on his head, certainly getting rag-dolled before emerging, shaking his head, and paddling back into position. Except he is not in the right position and Dino is screaming at the window, “What are you doing, brother? Fuck! Get over! Get over!” Dino calls Kolohe “brother” but Kolohe can’t hear him. Dino may as well be screaming from the moon.
Dusty and Kolohe trade waves and Dusty’s are always better. He is deeper, on the takeoffs, and gets barreled more deeply and his scores reflect his commitment.
Kolohe gets a nice Pipe wave but doesn’t get deep enough. He could have had the barrel of his life but just barely gets covered up instead. Dino keeps screaming, “What the fuck are you thinking, brother? What the fuck. Are. You. Thinking?” And then the final horn sounds. Kolohe’s two-wave heat total is 6.57 to Dusty’s 9.20 and with the loss he is ejected from the Pipeline Masters. His North Shore season is finished.
In instant retrospect it is a mixed bag. He performed well in bad waves at Hale’iwa’s Reef Hawaiian Pro. He performed poorly, along with everyone besides John John, at Sunset’s Vans World Cup of Surfing. And he performed as expected at Billabong’s Pipe Masters, which is to say he performed poorly. The Hawaiians, particularly, trusted that Pipe would show Kolohe up. That it would spotlight the gaping holes in his overall game. It would show that he can surf slop amazingly, but that he can’t ride big barrels, heavy barrels, well enough. And the Hawaiians will feel happy that, no matter the hype or the sponsors or the money or the pedigree, Pipeline equalizes. Pipeline distributes the wealth. It will hack down the greatest and the only way the greatest will excel is if they put in the time like everyone else. Like every other grubby Hawaiian kid with big dreams. The greatest have to be willing to come, every season, and sit on the shoulder and then move over and, if they are lucky, get called into deathly closeout bombs by the Pipe locals. And if they do that enough they will get called into a good one. And if they ride that well enough they can exist at the bottom of the Pipeline pack and get scraps for many, many, many winters in a row.
Kelly Slater, for example, the world’s best surfer ever, gets scraps at Pipeline. But he has also put his time in, willing himself to learn its nuances and characteristics and peculiarities. He has purchased a house in Pupukea Heights, above Foodland, and his girlfriend is partially Hawaiian. He has put his time in and so if he is out in the water for a heat, and there are no locals to take all of his waves, he will surf it as well as anyone. But he willed himself there.
Kolohe comes back into the house undaunted. He shakes his head good-naturedly, still dripping wet, and says “Fuck, that’s heavy” with a smile on his face. The grey is gone and so is the uneasy and it is replaced with his typical mischievous grin. He is Kolohe Andino. He is so arrogant and his arrogance, if he can hold on to it, if it is not slapped from him by either wave or North Shore local, then he will someday do fine at Pipeline. He will have to do fine. No surfer ever becomes a legend without surfing Pipe well.
Then it is John John’s turn again. His initial heat performance set the bar for the day and, in between whispering about Eddie and the Billabong house, surfers and surf industry types say, “Did you see the John John heat? Did you see that barrel where he came out behind the spit? Fucking amazing. That kid rides Pipe so good.” He has. He, all eighteen years old, surfed it better than anyone. He surfed the biggest opening day on record like it was easy, like it was fun. Moreover, due to early losses by some of the other competitors, John John has a chance to win the entire Triple Crown. His decent showing at Hale’iwa and his win at Sunset put him in control of his own destiny. All he has to do is win his next heat and he wins the Triple Crown. And if this happens certain corners of the North Shore will explode with party. The heavy corners. The localized corners.
He gathers his red competitor’s singlet from the beach-marshal tent and wanders so slowly down to the shoreline. A crazy Japanese woman who sells beer from a stand in the bushes runs toward him and extends her hand. They bump knuckles. And then she throws him a very loose shaka.
He will be surfing against Damien Hobgood, who is from Florida. Damien has a twin brother, C.J., also on tour. The Hobgoods are two of the greatest people on earth. They are good ol’ boys, Southern gents, who love huntin’, fishin’, drivin’ their trucks in the mud— called muddin’—and generally whoopin’ it up. Surf mixed in with a Deep South redneck sensibility seems strange, on the surface. But it somehow makes sense. It somehow works and works well on the Hobgoods.
Damien is also fearless and on the first wave of the heat he takes off ridiculously deep and gets guillotined by the lip. It hits him in the head and drives him straight into the reef but he comes up laughing because he hunts crocodile in his off time. His second wave is a double barrel. He pulls in, facing the wave since he is a goofy foot, and crouches low, getting completely covered up and spit into another smaller barreling section. He crouches lower and gets spit out of that section as well. The beach politely whistles.
And Damien catches another wave sitting too far inside, too close to the beach, and is launched from his board and takes the full energy of a Pacific storm on his back. And he catches another wave, getting a solid barrel, adding a meaty cutback onto the end section as an exclamation. It looks like John John will be bettered by a more experienced competitor.
But then John John comes alive. He takes a Backdoor wave, a solid wave, and drags both his hands in the wave’s wall to slow his momentum as much as possible. To get barreled as deeply as possible. When Kolohe, and most other competitors today, catch waves they speed through as quickly as they can, trying to make it to the shoulder. Trying to make it to safety. Trying to live. John John is trying to get barreled. He is not trying to live. And he gets spit out to roars from the beach and high scores from the judges.
He takes off on a second Pipe wave, one that stands up so suddenly and fiercely that it looks as if it will pitch him down the face before he has a chance to do anything. But he takes the air-drop in stride, grabs his rail, slows himself down with his ass, and gets barreled, deeply, again. At the end of the wave, where Damien added a meaty cutback as an exclamation, John John launches into a hands-free, full-rotation air. He doesn’t land it but the message is clear. This is his wave.
He takes off on a third Pipe wave and the lip pitches over well in front of him. It appears that he has no hope, but he crouches low, pumps his board by pressing down with his feet and then releasing to gain speed, and comes shooting out the barrel moments later to pandemonium on the beach. To, “Did you see that? Wild!” And he wins the heat with a 19.10 two-wave score. Nine-tenths away from perfection.
On the beach, afterward, his already puffy visage appears even more swollen and it is. During a noncompetitive free surf down the beach, in between his heats, he had been sucked over the falls and had smashed his face on the reef. He smashes his face on the reef and then paddles out into giant Pipe and throws hands-free, full-rotation airs and tries to slow himself as much as possible to get barreled as much as possible and succeeds. He is on a tear. He is fearless in his element. He is a vision in his element.
To top everything off, he has just won the Triple Crown. In winning his heat, in beating Damien Hobgood, he has locked himself into North Shore lore. He is the youngest winner ever. The Pipe Masters is still running. It will finish tomorrow because the swell is still strong and he has a chance to win that too, but for now, for this moment, he is the best surfer on the North Shore. He reacts to the news on the beach in typical, laconic island style, nodding his head slowly while a smile spreads across his face. Slowly. In his heart he must be thinking about Kolohe Andino and all the hype and fuck him. Fuck the hype. Fuck California. This is the North Shore and this is what matters.
Kolohe Andino hears the news that John John just won the Triple Crown in the Target house while he is packing his bags. Shoving surfboards and dirty Nike boardshorts and Red Bull hats into his board coffin. He and Dino will be on the first flight they can get out. They will be going home to Southern California to catch this same swell in friendlier waters. The swells that hit the North Shore, depending on exact direction, keep moving across the Pacific until they end in California. And Kolohe will have a week of good surf to practice in before leaving at the start of February for Australia’s Gold Coast. He is also planning a quick run to Aspen, Colorado, for the X Games. Target puts together a very fancy chalet and Kolohe will get to rub shoulders with other action-sports stars.
When he hears the news that John John has won the Triple Crown and the beach is all atwitter over it he shouldn’t care. John John Florence can have the North Shore, for now. He will punish him around the world, starting in February, starting in Australia. That is what Kolohe Andino would be thinking. He will be more consistent than John John and his airs will have a higher level of difficulty and his surfing will be flawless. He knows that he has to improve here on the North Shore. He knows that he will have to, one of these days, put on a memorable performance at Pipeline but it is not going to be today and it is not going to be tomorrow because he will fly to California instead of waking at the break of dawn and paddling out to Pipe before the event and taking some scraps on the head and starting to establish himself. In his heart he should be thinking fuck John John. Fuck the North Shore. Fuck the aggressive, chest-pounding, fighty, slappy, intimidating bullshit. And he will fly home to Southern California.
In late January, Kolohe will go to Aspen and rub shoulders in the chalet and have two drivers and seven butlers and three chefs at his beck and call. It will be the same time that the six-star Volcom Pipeline Pro is running on the North Shore. The surf will be huge, again, and the event will even be called off the first day because it is too big to surf with even a semblance of safety. John John will win. He will beat Jamie O’Brien on a last-second Backdoor wave and many will call it the best heat, ever, in professional surfing.
Two futures. One is corpo and the other is core. The corporate future means more money and more visibility but also giant cultural missteps. Any time Ford, for example, puts surfing in a commercial it is completely embarrassing. All the subtle cues, like the way a board is waxed, or when the leash is applied, are totally off. The core future means surfing stays where it is. An insular activity for a privileged few with no real people paying attention.
I don’t know which future is better but I love Kolohe Andino and his style very, very much, and John John Florence surfs without fear, which is awe-inspiring. Maybe the future will be a mash of stylish and fearless. Who knows? Maybe Ford will hire proper consultants and get the cues right and maybe the big, core surf brands will all have to file Chapter 11. Quiksilver is being investigated by its own investors for waste of corporate assets. Billabong is in a world of leveraged hurt. Maybe that is the mash right there. Ford, Coke, Pepto-Bismol getting the look of surf right and Quiksilver, Billabong, Rip Curl getting mired in traditional American business scandal.