I will always remember that first trip. Any child raised on surfing has also been raised on the North Shore, metaphorically. Stories of waves bigger than mountains. Of the men who conquer them. Of adventure. Of wild times and wild women. It is Shangri-la. It is Mecca. It is the place. The only place in all of surfing that truly matters. But there are also strained whispers of fights and slaps and men also bigger than mountains who take scrawny Caucasians by the neck and strangle them until they see stars. Of drugs being funneled through the dimly lit tropical paths and gangsters who control that trade. Of people being dragged to golf courses and filled full of buckshot. Of non-Hawaiians paddling out at any of the breaks and getting pounded for being where they don’t belong. The North Shore has a reputation that far far exceeds its spatial parameters. It is mystical. Terrifying. Legendary.
The terrifying elements are, again, only ever whispered and, before going myself, I felt they were exaggerated. How can a corner of the United States of America be so lawless? So radical? Impossible. The North Shore is not Yemen. It is not Somalia. And so I boarded a Qantas flight in Sydney with my arrogance intact. It was summer in Australia but winter on the North Shore. Winter is when the waves arrive from swells created far away in the Gulf of Alaska and it is the only time to go.
I felt very fine in Helmut Lang and skinny jeans and sockless Vans smashed at the heel. I wedged between the window and a chunky man in an aloha shirt. His chunky girlfriend sat next to him in a matching aloha shirt. I watched Burn After Reading, which was such a massive disappointment. Brad Pitt and George Clooney and the Coen brothers—how could it go wrong? But it went so wrong. I ate a Salisbury steak. I slept. And when I opened my eyes the chunky couple were making out. Ugh! The plane was descending into Honolulu and I wanted to feel gorgeous and alive but instead I felt the swirl of depression and madness. I looked out of the small coffin-shaped plane window at suburban Honolulu and the rising hills that separate “town” from “country” and felt depressed. I felt dark.
The North Shore is generally referred to as “country” when in Hawaii and Honolulu is “town.” I had been to town a handful of times previously—once when my father took a teaching job in Papua New Guinea and I was six years old. (We stayed in Waikiki, on an extended layover, and I played in the white sand and pretended to swim out in the warm Pacific. I would windmill my arms, touching the sand with each stroke, and insist to my parents that I was swimming. They usually humored me but not those days. They would tell me that I wasn’t, in fact. That I was merely crawling in the water. Rude.) Another time for Stab, when I was writing yet another story about methamphetamine, which Hawaiians call “ice.” Ice is a plague in Hawaii. It is the only state in the Union, and maybe the only municipality outside of the Arab world, where something other than alcohol attributes to the majority of emergency room visits, car accidents, and spousal abuse. Ice is everywhere, or reported to be everywhere, and so I went to Honolulu to find some and see what exactly was happening. I stayed at the Royal Hawaiian, also called the Pink Palace. I love pink in Hawaii because it feels both tropical and appropriately weird. I almost always wear a pink button-up, when I am not wearing a white one, and the Pink Palace is a dream. It was one of the original hotels built in Waikiki during the 1920s when the hope of paradise was only a steamer ride away. Its architecture is, oddly, Moorish and the rooms feel old but they maintain an air of dreaminess. There is a newer wing, which feels like Australia’s Gold Coast, but I demand not to stay in the newer wing.
I also love Waikiki in Hawaii. I love everything about it. The way it feels. The air is always scented. It smells like coconut and lotus blossoms. The Japanese tourists glow Louis Vuitton. They love luxury labels and all Hermes, Chanel, Gucci. Tiki torches shine. Palms dance and so do Polynesian babes in grass skirts. But ice hovers, theoretically, like a Mongol horde, at the fringes. And so I went.
I poked around Waikiki for two days, asking in convenience stores and boutiques and even Hermes if anyone knew where I could score some ice. The workers would either shrug their shoulders and look at me or just look at me. And then one night during a sushi dinner I scored. My effeminate waiter, a mainlander with the neatest little mustache, brightened right up when I asked him. “Ohhhhh iccceeee?” he said. “It’s everywhere. I mean, you don’t see it, but you see it. . .” I asked him to get more specific. He pointed west with a manicured pinky and said, “It’s west.” And so I went, the next morning, to Ewa Beach, which is to the west of Waikiki.
Ewa Beach is a slum. Virtually every neighborhood outside of Waikiki is a slum but Ewa Beach is worse and as I drove west, exiting on Fort Weaver Road off of the Queen Liliuokalani Freeway, I felt that it was worse. It appeared normal, or Hawaii normal, directly off the freeway. Standard, mainland-colonization style, Blockbuster video stores and Vons supermarkets punctuated by an odd malasada or local grub joint. Things started to go sour as I moved toward the water, however, which is counterintuitive since nice usually sits on the ocean. Gated communities gave way to boarded-up hellholes with bizarre accouterment strewn about. In one front yard, two battle-cocks in cages waited for their next big fight. Another garage was open, revealing a partially assembled prison-style gym.
The streets were strangely ghost-town silent and so I parked, got out of my car, and started wandering around until I heard, “Haole boy . . . you wan’ beef?” behind me.
I turned around and saw three tubby Hawaiians posturing shoeless in ugly tank tops.
“No, I want ice,” I replied. They gave me a long, hard look. “Whachu said, haole boy?” “I want ice.” One of them reached down to pick up a handful of rocks. The other two stood, arms folded. They were fifteen years old. I continued walking but did not run into anyone else or any other trouble. I got lost, seemingly passing the same derelict house after the same derelict house until I accidentally found my car and left.
Back in Waikiki I went to a seedy Mexican restaurant and ate stale chips and salsa and also had an epiphany. I had come to the restaurant with the notion that most of the world’s methamphetamine is produced in Mexico and maybe Mexicans were setting up restaurants as fronts. Things looked good for a while. My waiter was babbling Spanish and a table of very sexy Latinas fronted mine. Within half an hour, however, I had discerned that my waiter was Peruvian, the Latinas were Puerto Rican, and the owner of the restaurant was Chinese. Defeated.
Then it hit me. I was trying too hard. Ice is not cocaine. Cocaine is sexy, sultry Al Pacino in a white leisure suit. Cocaine dealers like to show off. Their cars, clothes, and women advertise what and who they are. Methamphetamine, on the other hand, is embarrassing and tawdry. Ice dealers, if they show off, do it in stupid ways. One of Oahu’s biggest local producers had recently been apprehended. The newspapers flashed reports of his bling, which included a 1985 Chevy Blazer and some Jet Skis. If Pablo Escobar had been caught with a 1985 Chevy Blazer, he would have shot himself. Cocaine is a party-rich starlet drug. Methamphetamine is a desperate drug.
I hurried outside and found an ugly, tattooed thirty-year-old standing in front of a strip club, and asked him for some ice. I’m sure my drug vocab was woefully inaccurate, but it worked and I bought a small baggie off of him.
I went back to my hotel room and stared at the baggie. The crystals inside looked harmless. They looked like rock salt. And I wrote about my experience, though I did not smoke or snort. I ended up leaving the baggie at the foot of Waikiki’s famed Duke Kahanamoku statue.
Once, I told my story about Ewa Beach to a local Hawaiian, a rare Hawaiian possessing Hawaiian blood, and he was shocked that I did not get killed. Willful ignorance has always been my armor.
Waikiki and Ewa Beach are not the North Shore, though, and as my flight sank lower and lower toward Honolulu’s tarmac for my first winter in paradise, I was depressed when I should have been thrilled.
There was something about the lights that dotted the island outside of the bright gold of Waikiki. Maybe it was my lust for city life, but the lights on Oahu were spread too far apart. They didn’t suggest culture or dreaminess or relaxation. They suggested the small torches held by an angry mob. They suggested rage.
I rented my car across the parking lot fronting the terminal. The only one they had was a white Mitsubishi Spyder convertible and this was the beginning of a personal trend. I now always insist on white convertibles when in Hawaii. Sometimes they are Chrysler Sebrings. Sometimes they are Toyota Solaras. But they are always white and they are always convertible. It is what my personal Hawaii film set demands just like the Dirty Harry film set demanded a 1968 Ford Galaxie 500.
And I drove west on the Queen Liliuokalani Freeway, turning north before Ewa Beach on the H-2. I passed palm trees and odd pines. There are so many odd pines—called Norfolk pines—on Oahu with spindly branches spread far apart and cones and scent. Pine doesn’t suggest tropics but on Oahu, pine is everywhere.
The H-2 climbed up into the Wailua range that cuts across the island and more pines and skirted Mililani Town and the Schofield military barracks where the army’s Twenty-Fifth Infantry Division trains. The architecture depressed. So depressed. Boxy with small windows and air-conditioning units and fences and military police. Laundry hanging on wires, washed by big-boned military wives. Depressed.
And then onto the Kamehameha Highway through acres of island weeds, waist-high kunai grass, then pineapple and past the Dole Pineapple Plantation. This is a tourist attraction here, though almost all of the merchandise—small wooden pineapples and stuffed pineapples and pineapple soft-serve—come from the Philippines.
And then past red dirt and more kunai grass and then the Kamehameha dipped and I pulled over, stood up through the open convertible top, and looked at the flicker of Hale’iwa Town and I looked, for the first time, at the North Shore. At Shangri-la. It was too dark to see the waves but the land, this land, held so many memories even though I had never been here. Even though I had never beheld it with my own eyes. I looked and felt my heart beat.
Certainly, I was bringing my own reputation into a volatile land. A volcanic land. But the North Shore is not Damascus. So I sat back down and found a Top 40 station and curved down, down, down. Depressed but also thrilled.
And as I drove past Hale’iwa Town and past the waves I had studied since I was an Oregonian child and past raised pickup trucks with bumper stickers that read “Keep Country Country” and past ramshackle homes, I thought, “Well what the fuck is this?”
First impressions of a dreamed-about place are strange. I remember the first time I went to London. I was shocked, shocked, by how ugly the men were. Their teeth did their own thing. Their haircuts looked done by hedge trimmers. I could not imagine that London once ruled the world. I remember the first time I went to Cairo and the slums spilled out to the pyramids and the Sphinx looked like a small toy. I could not imagine that Cairo once ruled the world. I will always remember that first trip to the North Shore.
It seemed run-down. It seemed unkempt. It seemed used. It seemed rotten. It was not the gilded expanse of my imagination. It was rough and dirty. But I had a job to do so I shook off first impressions and went to sleep in a home smelling of mildew and salt water and woke up the next morning depressed. Everything was a blur. I went to contests. I surfed and got rolled off the reef. I sat on the beach with a dropped jaw and watched Pipeline explode. Pipeline. The Banzai Pipeline. It is the most famous wave in all of surfing. It is the most famous wave in the world and it comes steaming in from across the Pacific or maybe from Hades itself and it explodes on the reef not thirty feet from the shore. It is pure energy. It is a natural wonder like Mount Everest or Victoria Falls. I deflected angry looks from oversized mokes. I ate Spam musubi, which is Spam served like sushi on a bit of rice wrapped in seaweed. I visited with the surfers I knew and loved and deflected angry looks from the surfers I had burned too. I drank mai tais with Paul Evans, the editor of Surf Europe. I soaked in everything I could and listened to stories about the men bigger than mountains who pounded people. Stories about a man named Kaiborg who was as mean as a rhinoceros. Stories about a man named Fast Eddie Rothman. Surfers always whispered Eddie stories quietly and always while looking over their shoulders. He was a myth. A boogeyman. A specter. He was said to have his hands in every aspect of the North Shore scene. He was accused of involvement in the drug trade. He was accused of extorting the surf companies. He was accused of unspeakable violence. He would stop grown men’s hearts just by entering a room. Nobody really knew anything, and whispers and whispered stories would take on lives of their own but isn’t that always the case with men who have exceeded merely being a man and have become something more?
No one knew exactly where Eddie came from but there were whispers of New York or Philadelphia. There were whispers that he was Jewish. No one knew exactly what he did. They only knew he was a walking nightmare. They only knew if they crossed him they might end up in the worst trouble. And I didn’t have much thought of meeting this particular specter. I didn’t even know how to begin to meet him and so I went about my blurry business and simply listened to the whispers about Eddie and Kaiborg and the violent, just barely hidden North Shore.
It was almost too much and every day I woke up depressed but also thrilled because every day held more potential for danger than any place I had ever been. Yes, when I sat in the Hezbollah dungeon I had wanted to escape the adrenalized life forever. I had wanted to do completely soft, easy, beautiful cinematic things but I had realized, somewhere in the transition between war and surf, that, yes, I cannot help causing problems but even more, even worse, I had realized that the dangerous elements are necessary for me to even live, that Uncle Dave’s picture with mujahideen and Stinger missiles would have been meaningless without the scary mujahideen and the deadly missiles. Danger is sexy and I am cursed to forever chase it.
And then Mick Fanning, the same Mick Fanning that I wrote dressed dull and was dull, won the World Title and so I went, with Paul Evans, to the Rip Curl house for his victory party. It was a hot evening.
As I pushed through the door, leaving my cream-colored smash-heeled Vans on the stoop, it was hot. And the living area of the modern island house was filled with revelers. They were celebrating. I found a beer and dropped into conversation with a publisher of an Australian surf magazine, and then another Australian writer named Tim Baker found me. Tim Baker is embarrassing, a total surf fan and too old, and he looked embarrassing that night wearing a “Mick-tory” hat and a “Mick-tory” T-shirt. Rip Curl had produced them especially for the occasion. Tim told me that he did not like my writing, that it was too negative, and then told me he would introduce me to his friend Mick Fanning and he was sure we would get along well. I was not sure.
We moved over to where Mick was standing in a corner, looking drunk.
His blue eyes were glazed over once with tired, twice with sun, thrice with beer. Lids drooping. Puffy. He barely registered the congratulatory masses. They were all there for him. Dancing and drinking in the hot Hawaiian night. A youth came by and said, “Good on ya, mate.” He nodded and lifted his can of Bud Light, slightly. A gorgeous girl with pearly white teeth and a tan the color of peanut brittle pointed both her fingers to the sky. “Yew!” He nodded and lifted his can of Bud Light, slightly higher.
Tim Baker fought through the celebration and introduced us. “Mick, this is Chas Smith.” Mick’s glazed face scrunched. “So you’re Chas Smith,” he said while shaking my hand. And then his glazed face suddenly engaged. “Fuck you. You know, fuck you. You write so much shit about me. So much fucking shit. What makes you so cool? Why the fuck do you think you’re so cool?” I looked down at my white Helmut Lang button-up and perfectly trim grey jeans. I did look cool. My hair was nicely mussed, but I responded, “Ahhh I don’t think I’m that cool.” His eyes continued filling with rage and wandered around my mouth. “Fuck you. You know, you are a fucking Jew.” I responded, “Sorry?” And he said, again, “You are a fucking Jew.” I told him, “No, I’m not Jewish. I am English with a little German . . .” He said, “Fuck you. You are a fucking Jew. You totally fucking write off surfing and then you make money off of surfing. You’re a fucking Jew.” I was intrigued by Mick’s socioeconomic analysis but responded, “I don’t make that much money off surfing.” He said, “Fuck you. I should punch you in the fucking face. I should punch you in the fucking face right now.” I was scratching my chin and trying to figure out an appropriate response. I was smiling broadly. I stood a head taller than Mick and he was leaning into me. We were only a few centimeters apart when I felt the hairless arm fold around my neck. And I smelled Spam and yesterday’s beer. And I was drug away, danced away, Lindy Hopped away, for a beating that never materialized.
The story I wrote about the incident, “Tales of a Fucking Jew,” was a Stab bestseller. It also cost them hundreds of more thousands of dollars in lost advertising revenue and giant headaches. The New South Wales Board of Jewish Deputies had become enraged. Mick Fanning had to call them, crying, and apologize, but he mostly blamed me, saying he was only using the same sort of ironic language that I regularly used. His mother blamed me. Every major newspaper in Australia ran with the story and I was alternately depicted as being the worst sort of muckraker and a brave, honest voice. It was on the radio. It was on television. It was everywhere. Derek Rielly laughed but also cringed as the magazine came dangerously close to folding.
I asked Derek to publicly fire me but he wouldn’t. And so I simply went about my muckraking business. Bravely and honestly. But more than causing trouble, more than anything, the North Shore had crawled into my heart. It was all I thought about. That first tour was vicious. It was manic and I hated it with everything in me and I loved it more than I could say at the same exact time. It was beautiful. It was bizarre. The colors. Powdery yellows drifting into salmons drifting into fiery tangerines slipping into a full palette of blue. Carolina, cornflower, denim, palatinate, Persian, navy, ultramarine, midnight. The smells. Chicken and dog and teriyaki sauce and salt water and rot and surf wax. The women with chipped toenail polish and hungry eyes. The scene. Mobs of surfers high on adrenaline and cocaine. Surf industry scenesters running scared and also high on cocaine and also chasing the women. The waves. Waves known around the world. Waves that kill and make men famous. The history. The men: Brutes. Thugs. Gangsters. It was a Brian De Palma film that nobody would make because making it would guarantee banishment from the surf world, at best, being buried in the pineapple fields, at worst. These North Shore stories are only internal top secrets. It would be like writing about the mob while being in the mob. I never wanted to go back. Yet it was all I thought about. I wanted to move there semipermanently. I had become infected by something confoundingly at odds with itself.
And then, out of the blue, Fast Eddie Rothman called me. I was supposed to be covering the US Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach, California, but was, instead, attending the White Party, the largest gay party in the world, in Palm Springs with my woman when my phone rang. I could do whatever I wanted because, alongside my work at Stab, I had been made editor-at-living-large for Surfing Magazine. Horrible house music pumped while oiled men danced and I looked down and saw the call was from an 808 area code, Hawaii’s area code, so I answered. The voice on the other end was gruff. Gravely deep. “Dis Chas Smith?” I answered that it was. “Dis is Eddie.” And he didn’t have to say which Eddie. I already knew. “You know dat fucken guy who call you a Jew?” I responded that I did. “Haaa. I slapped him for you.” And that was all. I didn’t know why Eddie slapped Mick. It certainly wasn’t for my sake. I can’t imagine that he was a fan of my work, but then again he called me to tell me about it. Whatever it was, why ever he did it, I was now totally stuck. I had to go back to the North Shore and sit across from this specter and look into his eyes and hear his story, even if the only thing we shared was my apocryphal Judaism. Even if it was going to get me killed. I was compelled beyond anything I could control. This was the war I wanted to cover more than any other. Yes, danger is sexy and I am cursed to forever chase it.