“Ricardo was a horrible singer who liked Chromeo!”

Filmmaker Bruno Zanin remembers his close pal Ricardo Dos Santos…

Two days before the Brazilian big-wave surfer Ricardo Dos Santos was shot to death, his best pal and filmmaker Bruno Zanin was lighting him up on whatsapp for a beer.

Ricardo wasn’t down that time, he needed sleep, but they were going to catch up real soon. On the day he was shot, Bruno was sleeping and a mutual pal from Rio called him. Said he’d seen something on Facebook and called to check if it was true.

Bruno woke up and “freaked.” He  drove the six clicks to the hospital and spent two days there, among the 50 family and friends who’d swarmed the hospital. There for the surgery, there for the hope as Ricardo’s godfather relayed whatever news the doctor’s had, and there when his best friend died.

“Why should we not believe that he’d survive? He was too strong,” says Bruno. “He got the biggest and scariest waves in life and we were praying al the time and thinking about him and making plans to do when he came out of hospital”

Fifteen hours after the shooting, they were told that the situation was critical and that “they should have faith and pray.” After 38 hours, Ricardo died.

“It was the most horrible day of my life,” says Bruno. “I can’t describe the feelings. I’m still really sad and tired.”

But Ricardo had a certain something about him. “He would want to be remembered as getting barrelled and coming out in a spray with a big smile on his face,” says Bruno.

And, yeah, he could drive you crazy. Like the time the pair travelled to Uruguay and Argentina. Twenty-three days, five thousand clicks, in a car together, Ricardo punching repeat on Chromeo’s Sexy Socialite, like, a million times, leaving the verses alone and jamming loudly in the chorus.

“Women are eyeing me

Their men are buying me

Drinks at the bar

You can’t go far

In this society

So why you coming at me, homie

With so much acrimony?

Your testimony’s phony

And the truth is you don’t know me

You’re a sexy socialite

(No I’m not, no I’m not)”

“He was a horrible singer,” says Bruno.

The pair had known each since they were kids. Ricardo lived on the beach where Bruno learned to surf but, in the past two years, they’d become really tight.

“I always like film surf, but as a hobby,” says Bruno. “And one day he invited me to start film him surfing, training and I did. He motivated me to be a filmmaker, to be a professional. He told me I should believe in myself and work.. and thats what ! As we travelled we became better friends. We fight, we laugh and we enjoy so much together.”

A little quirk of Ricardo was the nicknames he liked to attach to people. Bruno remembers Ricardo laughing as he announced each nickname. Some of the surfers he knew well, others he wasn’t quite as close to.

Adriano told us he used to call him Minério, with a really fucking strange accent, Gabriel he called him Medal, Filipe was Filipinho and Miguel was Miguelito.”

As for Bruno, he’d been living in Australia for two years and had slugged on 24kg. “I came home like a bear,” says Bruno. “And in my first day back in brazil.. another friend when he saw me really fat called me Batavo and unhappily rRcardo heard about this history and said… ‘WHATTTT??? BATAVO??? FUCKING BATAVO!!! FROM NOW I WILL JUST CALL YOU BATAVO, BATAVO IS YOUR NEW ARTISTIC NAME.. LITTLE BATAVO!! BATAVEX!”

Batavo? It’s yoghurt!

Oh Ricardo, RIP, buddy…


Bojack Horseman
Bojack Horseman. Have you seen this show on Netflix? Why the fuck not? From a stupid dumb sitcom, to one of the the deepest, hardest, most soul crushingly insightful cartoons ever made.

Candid: Four new ways to get high!

It's like choking down a handful of mystery pills with no clue where you'll end up… 

I have no idea how everyone else gets through the day. For me, it’s a toss up. Happy, sad, raging, mellow, so angry I can taste it because of the smallest of trespasses. I know I’m fucked.

If you’re like me, check this stuff out. They’re, one and all, like choking down a handful of mystery pills, no clue where you’ll end up.

  1. The Royal Tenenbaums. If you were ever the smart kid, the one who struggled fitting in but were assured that things would get better, then you know what I mean. Life never gets easier, simpler… the struggle remains, and sometimes you’re gonna feel like you’re the only one who takes part.

  2. I Dreamed a Dream. Anne Hathway.  Jesus Christ, Les Miserables was such a shit movie, Russell Crowe stomping out a beat like a drunk uncle who no one wants around but insists upon participating. Then Anne Hathaway hammers out the most soul crushing song you’ve ever heard. Tragic, gorgeous, straight to the heart.

  3. Ernest Goes to Camp. Poor retard. Guy only wants to help run a Summer Camp, then the rich man’s running dog beats him limp. This was important to me, I learned a lesson. A series of lessons. 1. You can’t cry during an Ernest movie without being mocked. 2. You’ll take a beating for standing up for what you believe in. Be strong enough to hand out that beating.

  4. Ziggy Stardust. Best rock album ever made. The pure beauty that emotes from it is beyond anything else. Get drunk, get maudlin, put it on and take the ride.

  5. Bojack Horseman. Have you seen this show on Netflix? Why the fuck not? From a stupid dumb sitcom, to one of the the deepest, hardest, most soul crushingly insightful cartoons ever made. The finale is one of the saddest things ever set to film, even if it stars a 1200 pound horseman struggling to deal with the consequences of his own quest for redemption.


Retro-awesome: The Best Surf Movie You Never Saw

"It'll help you find God!" says its maker Ray "Runman" Klein

You’ve never heard of Ray Kleiman. Long ago, he and his buddy Morgan Runyon made a series of hilarious Super 8 surf movies under the moniker, Runman. The series peaked in 1990 with the third of the series, Runman 69. And then Runman vanished.

(Although you can click here for a very sweet tribute by What Youth) 

So, there was rapture, at least in my heart, when I discovered Runman’s own version of 2005’s The Bruce Movie in that film’s DVD extras. In the six-minute short, we go deep into Bruce’s off-tour life on Kauai. We see a wild pig killed for a wedding feast. We see a drunk getting decked for hassling Bruce. We watch Bruce eat it jumping a motorbike. We see Andy and Bruce drunk together, we see tourists getting smashed on rocks and a wild stationary wave. We see giant whip-in airs and loving closeups of Bruce’s (now ex-girl), Mia’s, ass and titties.

Surf movies don’t get any better, or shorter. And you missed it!

I gave Ray a call on Thanksgiving to give us the low down on his contribution to The Bruce Movie all those beautiful years ago…

BeachGrit: Hey, Runman! Happy Thanksgiving!

Oh fuck, anything to do with celebrating killing people we love…

 Your movie is a masterpiece. How would you define your style?

I film reality as I see it. I don’t like to set anything up. I just like to film. And I get people as they usually are.

Talk me through the scene on the stationary wave where Bruce and Kamalei Alexander collide and then Bruce steals Kamalei’s board? Was Bruce serious?

That was pretty serious.

I would’ve thought that Kamalei would’ve squashed him like a bug given his awesome reputation.

You know how it is, when someone’s mad and the other person probably isn’t mad.

There’s many scenes of tourists being washed into rocks or into the ocean. Why?

That’s just… comedy.

It’s a common theme in your movies.

We do that a lot.

Do you live on Kauai?

I’m on earth.

I admit, I loved the juxtaposition of Bruce’s parents cheering when he crashed the bike. 

Yeah, that’s a good one! They loved that!

Have your heard if Bruce liked the movie?

It looks like he likes it. I see him, I hang out with him. I don’t really to talk to him about it. We know each other real good.

Your lens ponders Mia at length.

Yeah! She’s hot!

Tell me about the guy getting slapped by Chava Greenlee (Bruce’s friend, noted surfer on the North Shore)?

He was kinda mouthing off and was drunk and getting in Bruce’s face. The best story I heard about that was a guy came up to me and said, Hey man, my friend is in your Bruce movie. I said, Really? And he said, Yeah, it’s the guy getting punched out. This guy went up to his friend and said, You’re in the new Bruce movie! And he said, What am I doing? And he said, You’re catching two feet of air! 

The pig’s in a bad way in the opening scene.

That’s the real deal.

And it was classic, the stickers: Welcome to Hawaii –  now go home and Aloha also means goodbye.

You gotta show how it really is…

What do you do for leaves when you’re not filming?

I work on the land.

Are you a farmer or a shephard?

I caretake big pieces of property.

Do you carry a shotgun and ride on a four-wheeler?

No, it’s all on foot.

Is movie making a hobby?

I film for love. And it makes money sometimes.

How much did you get for this sweet little extra?

I made the the Bruce movie for love. I don’t think I got directly paid for it.

Did you get a hat?

I got a pat on the back with and I love you and a sticker.

Will this movie help non-believers find God?

It’ll definitely save a lot of people.

And to conclude?

If you want to see the real deal, watch my movie. And thanks to Volcom for letting me put it out there.

Here’s a cutie from Runman…

And this…

 


Sex, Lies and Rabbit Bartholomew?

Many things are coming to light. Many things.

Australian golfer Robert Allenby was recently, as reported on BeachGrit, “kidnapped,” “tossed in the trunk of a car,” “driven 6.5 miles,” “beaten up” and “robbed” in Honolulu after spending the early evening in a wine bar. Like Rabbit Bartholomew circa 1971!

He told the PGA, the day after the “incident,” that a homeless woman saw him tossed out of the trunk and battered. She has recently come forward and said, “Nah.”

Her name is, amazingly, Charade and she lives in Ala Moana Beach Park, which is where I once tried to buy ice. In any case, she told Hawaii Now News, “He was already all bleeding and he was groggy and he wasn’t really walking and he was disorientated a little bit…” but there was no trunk of a car or beating up. “…I can’t say somebody did something I didn’t see them do,” she told Hawaii News Now. “I can’t even tell you how he got hurt. I just know that he was bleeding everywhere.”

Charade says she likes to be helpful even though it makes her homeless boyfriend angry and she tried to help but pretty much denies his entire story. Especially since the wine bar is kitty corner to Ala Moana Beach Park as opposed to 6.5 miles away. Which makes me wonder about Rabbit Bartholomew circa 1971. Was he merely wine drunk outside Haleiwa Joes as opposed to charging big Sunset? Hmmmmmmmmm.

Is Charade a babe? Maybe.
Is Charade a babe? Maybe.

Man holding bags of Ice
There’s a meth epidemic in the Islands, haven’t you heard?

Long read: How to buy ice in Hawaii

Want to throw your life down the ol sink hole? Buy meth! Here's how!

Roger was sitting off the Pali Highway near downtown Honolulu in front of a big chain drug store. He looked like he’d been up for a couple days… tired and a little dirty. Otherwise, he seemed as normal as cheeseburger stains on a fat kid’s shirt. I knew, instinctively, that he either was high or had been high so I made a move. I’d been around the block for the past day and a half and, contrary to published hysteria, it hadn’t been easy to find a real-live tweaker in public. Yeah braddah, “Rog” wasn’t just regular high, he was twacked. Floating around the atmosphere on an ice cloud and I needed to take advantage of the situation

As I asked my uninformed/rude questions his eyes darted back and forth but he answered respectfully. Yes, he had smoked last night. No, I couldn’t take his picture. Yes, he had a steady job and a family. No, he hadn’t stuck any of his kids in a microwave.

“Roger” is the face of Hawaii’s sworn enemy –  crystallised methamphetamine abusers – and if statistics means anything, the nightmare has just begun.

They call crystal meth “ice” on the islands. They also call it an “epidemic” “monster” “curse” and “plague.” Hawaiian Lt. Governor Duke Aiona told CBS News that he’s “…never seen devastation from another drug like this. It’s insidious.”

U.S. Attorney to Hawaii, Ed Kubo added, “Clearly, Hawaii is being killed (by ice).” Awfully big words, but the numbers appear to back them up. The World Health Organisation reported that Hawaii is the only place in the United States where meth is more widely abused than alcohol, or any other drug, combined. 44% of all arrestees test positive for meth, 80% of all emergency room visits are meth related, and deaths related directly to meth have quadrupled in the past decade.

Anyhow, you can’t trust statistics, you can’t trust the news and you certainly can’t trust U.S. attorneys to Hawaii.

ICE: A BRIEF HISTORY

Ice is a relatively recent addition to the illicit drug scene, but methamphetamine is not. Invented by a Japanese scientist in 1919, the stuff has had a powerful clientele. Hitler lost WW II because he was too baked to think straight and JFK made his “ich bein ein Berliner” speech while soaring.

East Asian crime syndicates were the first to bring da meth to Da Islands. It was popular because Hawaiians don’t like needles and could easily crystallise the powder, making it smokable.

Back on the mainland, Mexican Cartels had just finished kicking Colombian drug lord buns in the early 2000s and wanted to expand their business. They saw slant-eyed gangstas running a profitable little circus in Hawaii and decided it would be theirs. In no time Mexis centralized the production (making almost all the ice in Cali and Mexico) and distribution. Today they have a complete monopoly.

HONOLULU FIVE-O

Directly concerning you Mr. Surfing Man, this ain’t just any drug infested Pacific island. Hawaii is surfing’s Golden Temple. Whatever happens here touches you touching me. Sweet Caroline.

United Flight 96 landed and there were no speed freaks waiting outside baggage claim to rob me blind. In fact, I wandered around the first day point five without much success. No matter where I looked, everything seemed normal. Well, not exactly normal, Honolulu is bizarre like an aging b-list actress. Bauhaus dominates the architectural scene, conjuring up a “non-aligned nations” vibe. Except instead of Congolese communists wandering around in Mao suits it’s Japanese twenty-nothings clutching monogrammed Louis Vuiton Neverfulls. It’s weird, but not plague-of-iced-out-zombies weird.

I would ask “locals” where I could find some “you know, ice or whatever.” They would either look at me like they didn’t know what I was talking about or give me pat condescension. A gay waiter at a sushi joint told me, for example, “It’ss everywhere. I mean, you don’t ssee it, but you ssee it…” I had to think he “ssaw” it every night. Gay white men are massive meth consumers. When I ordered him to get more specific he pointed west with a manicured pinky and said, “It’ss passt that misssty mountain…”

EWA BEACH (PAST THE MISTY MOUNTAIN)

Sho nuff, my first brush with ice came in Ewa Beach on the West side. I had read that Ewa Beach was dubbed the “meth capital of the world” but that don’t mean much. My hometown of Coos Bay, Oregon is also called the “meth capital of the world” and so are a handful of other backwater hovels strewn across mid-America. Maybe a Johnny Methelseed went planting the idea in the heads of ugly little mayors that “meth capital” looks good on tourist brochures. I don’t know.

Ewa Beach looked regular as I exited the highway. Standard mainland colonisation-style. Blockbusters video stores and Vons super markets punctuated by an odd malasada or kine grub joint. Things started to go sour as I moved toward the water, though. Gated communities gave way to boarded up hell-holes with bizarre accoutrement 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 gym. Meth keeps you awake and creative. Maybe this dude pumped iron, then made sculptures from the set.

The streets were strangely ghost town silent. It appeared that, while clickers don’t sleep, that they don’t stand in the sun either. I got out of my car and started snapping photos when I heard,

“Haole boi…you wan beef?”

I turned around and saw three tubby Hawaiians posturing in all their ugly tank top spread toe steez.

“No, I want ice.” They gave me a long, hard look. “Whachu said haole boi?”

“I want ice.”

Ah, get out haole before we hurt you.” I left. They were 15 and I probably could have taken them, but whatever.

I walked around for a while longer but it was all the same. Crappy houses and no people. The streets were laid out in an uninspired grid and after a while I got lost. Cruddy house, cruddy yard, cruddy house, cruddy garbage… I re-found my car and bolted.

Making my way back up to the H-1 East I noticed a sign for a “behavioral clinic.” Perfect! Research on meth use suggests that it’s tough to die from the stuff. Unlike heroin or other opiates you can’t really overdose. Instead, people lose their minds. I assumed that a mental institution in the middle of Ewa Beach would be crawling with looney battery benders.

I got in big trouble for walking around “unsupervised.” A muumuued nurse rudely informed me that, “People who use vast amounts of methamphetamine usually have strokes and die before they go crazy” so they didn’t have any methamphetamine users on the premises. I let her know she was flying in the face of hard academic study. From what I had read, lots of heads go crazy. She stared at me for a while, then, like the 15-year-old boys, suggested I leave.

Ewa Beach was close. I mean, the evidence of ice infiltration was everywhere. Drugstores didn’t sell regular Sudafed (Sudafed contains pseudophedrine which can be used to manufacture ice. On the mainland they lock it up. In Ewa Beach they don’t even have it at all), neighborhoods had turned to shit and, despite what the stupid, fat nurse lady said, there was a dubious mental clinic… yet I still didn’t see any meandering junkies.

HONOLULU FIVE-1

Back in Honolulu, sitting in a seedy Mexican restaurant while nursing stale chips and salsa, I had an epiphany. I had come to the restaurant with the hair-brained notion that Mexicans were setting up swinging joints as fronts for their ice business. Things looked good for a while. My waiter was babbling Spanish and a table of ultra-caliente Latina’s fronted mine. Within half an hour, however, I had discerned that my waiter was Peruvian, the Latinas were Puerto Rican and the owner was Chinese. Bummed. Then it hit me like a shrink-wrapped kilo. I was trying to hard. Meth is no cocaine. Coke is sexy, sultry Al Pacino in a white leisure suit talking like a Cuban Italian. Coke dealers like to show-off. Their cars, clothes, women and front businesses scream I DEAL YOUR COKE!

Meth, 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 movers had recently been apprehended. The newspapers flashed his bling, which included a 1985 Chevy Blazer and some jet skis. I’ll tell you this, if Pablo Escobar had been caught with a 1985 Chevy Blazer, he would have shot himself. Coke is a party rich starlet drug. Meth is a desperate tooth-rotting drug.

I had to be was desperate. Hurrying outside, I found the first trashy 30-year-old standing in front of a strip club I could and asked him for some ice. I’m sure my drug vocab was woefully inaccurate, but it worked. He shot me a sideways glare, then asked how much I wanted. I didn’t even know how it was sold so I said an ounce. He seemed doubtful but quoted a price I thought was ridiculously high (come to find out it was alright) so I told him I had to get cash and bailed.

Desperation had worked! The scales had fallen from my eyes! I took my confidence to the Pali Hwy where I stumbled upon “Roger.” He was sitting off a run down stretch of road and didn’t want to be approached. Ice heads don’t like to jive on their uncool addiction, but he still talked to me a little. Moving from Honolulu slum to sleazy bar, interacting with geeters, I chatted with a tweaked couple whom I photographed making out. The guy got mad but I told him they were cute. He ended up explaining how you smoke ice (in a glass pipe) and how it makes you feel.

“Amazing brudduh. Jess real amazing.”

Even tourist heaven Waikiki held ice secrets. Outside the Marriott a 40-year-old man was trying to force his two parrots on unsuspecting honeymooners. The parrots would sit on the young lovers shoulders while the man moved jerkily around photographing the scene. I saw one of the pictures and it was horrible: poorly cropped and a little out of focus. I marched up and said, “I’ll pay you the parrot picture rate if you tell me, honestly, if you smoke ice.” He looked around and whispered, “sometimes.”

I finished my night under the fireworks at Ala Moana Park. It was the 4th of July, but I wasn’t just here to celebrate (and frankly I didn’t know why Hawaiians were there either). Ala Moana houses Hawaii’s homeless population, which I just knew would include thwackers. It didn’t this patriotic night. The most disastrous examples of humanity I could find were senile Japanese grandpas and Hare Krishnas. No matter. I had had my breakthrough. Time for the Temple.

NORTH SHORE HOLY OF HOLIES

The next morning I left for surfing’s most hallowed ground. The North Shore is shockingly close to Honolulu but it feels like a different world. Pineapple plantations give way to crystal green water and languid air. As the Kamehameaha bends north, past Waimea, Pipe and Sunset it’s shocking to actually witness each spot with my own haole blue eyes.

The whole place surprised me by how small it was. In my head, these waves occupy the geographic space of one large country (like Kazakhstan) but in real life it’s an easy bike ride from Hale’iwa to Sunset.

Obviously I know it only works in da wintertime, but still, seeing its dormant summer flatness is depressing. These giants have made and broken men from Eddie to Lance Burkhart. Watching a Japanese girl screaming with glee as she body boarded a two-inch wave was simply too much. This was right in front of the Volcom House. Legit Pipe being manhandled Harijuku style.

I began to see the point of hard drug indulgence. Such a heavy memory of unfulfilled potential – of what it should be and isn’t right now. A pent-up energy explodes over the lackadaisical sunscreen slathered University of Texas frat boys, then dissipates into snorkel tour groups. It’d be like if the real Saudi Arabian Mecca was only the surging mass of Islamic humanity it is for a few months out of the year and the rest of the time it was a Chuck E. Cheese Pizza parlor. Fat little ginger heads sliding down the Ka’ba and barfing in the Great Mosque.

Living so close to something like that must play dirty mind tricks. I sauntered over to Foodland and asked the checker if she had seen ice tear up the community.

She said, “Yeah. Sometimes they come in here all tweaked and drop their stuff of the ground.”

Another surf shop girl said that she was from Detroit and had been on the North Shore for one month: “The first crack head I’d ever seen was just a few days ago right here.” (For those who don’t know Detroit is a nasty town plagued by every out-of-control drug pestilence you can imagine.)

The only person who wouldn’t tell me anything/didn’t know anything was the Hindu kid selling “Banzai” t-shirts at ‘Ehukai Beach Park.

“No I don-a-know what ice is. I’m religious.”

Then he flashed me his best shaka.

I stuck around Pipe as the sun dribbled down the sky. Darkness brought a few gackers who had wandered from their hovels into the night. They stood at bus stops and stumbled along the Kam. I approached one outside Shark Cove who was entirely incoherent. Apparently two of his cats were missing, but one was a tom and one was a hunter so it might be fine. There does seem to be more baseheads, per capita, then Honolulu, and like Honolulu they only come out at under the moon.

Frankly, at this point, the thrill of meeting ice junkies was wearing thin. I had already talked to quite a few, and, honestly, they weren’t very interesting. All of them were poor, and most smelled rotten. I knew that working class people use ice too, in order to stay awake, or whatever they tell themselves… but the middle classes don’t like to talk. A tattoo artist warily told me, “It’s like coffee, man…” but that’s all I could get.

Whatevs, Mickey D time.

McDonald’s is a magnet for the weird. Maybe it’s the lighting, or the colours. In any case, the dregs of society are drawn to the golden arches. I made my way to the one at the southern tip of Hale’iwa town and marched to the front door. Sitting right there, at one of the outside cement tables, was a surfed out 20-year-old. Salt-crusted skin, sun-bleached hair, and nothing but board shorts, a frown and lots of swear words. “Fucking McDonalds!” He threw his fries at the door and half a Big Mac at the window. He was shifting violently on his bench, kicking cups, and stuff.

“What’s the matter bro?”

“Mind your own fucking business!!!”

“OK just trying to help.”

Somehow I offered this last line with real sincerity. I think my goodwill shocked him because he threw his Coke at the trash, jumped on his surf-stickered motor scooter and scooted. Good. I had seen my first surf ice head and lived to tell the tale. Mission almost complete.

So what does this all mean? Does Oahu have an ungodly ice epidemic? Something that, if unchecked, will wipe out future generations, or is it all yellow rhetoric used to sell the 10 o’clock news?

In my studied professional opinion, the talk about the ice plague is as yellow as Lindsey Lohan’s eyeballs. Don’t get me wrong, if you know what you’re looking for you can see ice, and it’s effect, everywhere BUT to be a “plague” or an “epidemic” it’s got to be egalitarian. I’ll tell you this, I didn’t see any bank execs shaking and cursing at bus stops. I know that the World Health Organisation claims that ice is the most widely abused drug in Hawaii, suggesting that the banker is doin’ his cursing and shaking in an executive bathroom. In any case, I don’t care about him or your artist friend who lives in a Waikiki loft and snorts meth bi-weekly. The banker and your friend are just flavor of the month drug users, not the tip of an epidemic ice-berg.

Those concerned with drug use (the police, medical institutions, non-profits, etc.) call it a plague because it’s democratic.

“Who knows, man, I could be addicted next blah blah blah”. But you won’t be. Poor people will be addicted next because poor people are bummers and do bummer things. In New York they inhale crack. In remote Australia they sniff petrol. In Hawaii they smoke ice. The cellar dwellers of humanity have always been afflicted. Two thousand years ago they had leprosy. Today they have drug addiction.

Average people get a dramatic thrill discussing how much “ice crime” there is in the “bad ice neighborhoods” but the problem is, Hawaii doesn’t have the kind of Cartel warfare that really causes blood to flow. The Mexican Cartels run 96% percent of the meth into Hawaii and take 95% of the money back to California and Mexico. Most of the crime only affects, again, bummer poor people who live near other bummer poor people. A strung out junkie on Pua Lane stealing a stereo from another strung out junkie on Pua Lane. Ain’t no Miami Vice busts of neo-classical beachfront mansions. Armed thugs shooting Uzis from cigarette boats while Don Johnston sticks his penknife into a kilo and takes a taste. Drug money has to stay around for that kind of good movie violence, and it just doesn’t here.

To be fair, Hawaii has a few factors that magnify the problem. For starters, ice is the most addictive drug around. 98% of first-time meth users become addicted after a year and no more than 6% of meth users can ever really kick the habit. It permanently destroys your brain, rots your teeth and pocks your face.

Also, Hawaii’s native population got colonised/stated-up by the biggest sin bags ever: White Protestants. The naked Polynesians had no chance since WASP’s can hold their sin better than any people group in the history of mankind. Whitey proceeds to pass the good times along at an exorbitant price. Sexually transmitted disease, booze, greed, drugs… all white specialties that have destroyed the “gentler races.”

Hawaii’s climate supports a more degenerate scene then, say, Reykjavik. The perpetual 78 degrees means you can sell everything you own for a little taste of the crystal. Sell your car, house, kids, wife… ain’t no thang! The nights are warm and the sun is free. Paradise facilitates extremes that wouldn’t be approached elsewhere.

Lastly, the islands are strange. Populated year round, in two-week increments, by some of the most hideous examples of pan-Caucasian and pan-Asian humanity. Those who move here permanently are usually douche bags in the construction trade who love to sit out at Ala Moana Bowls and say things like, “You can’t beat this. All I do is surf, screw and eat.” It’s an inescapable Disney landmass, which is great to surf from November to January… but tough to swallow as a round-the-calendar lifestyle choice. I could see how it’d be easier to slip into some reality-bending substance.

STILL, all things thoughtfully considered, ice is no plague.

I finally bought some glass on my last night in Honolulu. It was a little bag (maybe 1/16 of an ounce?). The guy who sold it to me was a twitchy, tweaking poor Anglo. Probably 45 or 50. Probably used to work in the welding arts before taking an entrepreneurial turn. He was wearing jean shorts, ankle socks, Reeboks, and a “hang loose” tank-top. It cost me 30 bucks and I brought it back to my hotel room. It sat on the desk staring at me in a decidedly unglamorous way, so I gave it to the Duke Kahanamoku statue. One more Hawaiian down, 200,000 to go.

Aloha.