Homeless in Hawaii
Yeah, you can sleep on the beach, in certain areas. But it ain't some fun outdoorsy solo trip. You've got neighbors, lots of them. There's the angry meth addict with two vicious pit bulls tied up outside his shanty, there's the off his meds schizo who fell through the cracks creeping in the bushes, there's the strung out single mom with five kids living out of their ramshackle mini van. And forget about living on Oahu's North Shore, you're headed for Waianae. If you think the corpo surf world is cool with you pitching a tent and roasting weenies in front of their beach rental you've got another thing coming.

How to: fail at Hawaii!

The seven dumb mistakes people make when they cut off a slice of paradise… 

Moving to Hawaii, and making things work in the long term, comes down to your first six months.  Man, are those babies a doozy! Broke as shit, not knowing anyone, struggling to find work, a place to live, banging your head against the pervasive nepotism present in a place that puts a premium on interpersonal relationships.

It’s hard as hell and most people give up.  My mother gave up after three days.

Which makes it even more difficult for the people who stick it out. Employers don’t want someone who may bounce in two months, and you’ll be kept at an arms length by your new friends. No reason to get close when you’ll probably bail back home at the first sign of hardship.

I’ve seen so many people come and go over the last seven years, and they all make the same mistakes.

Have a problem with being broke

It doesn’t matter how smart you are, or how good your skill set is, wages are lower than the mainland and the cost of living is way higher. Your quality of life is going to take a major hit, if you measure it in financial assets.

Learn to find joy in the free things. Hike, surf, dive, head down to Ehukai and bask in the glorious under-aged ass cavorting in the shorebreak.

Offer unsolicited opinions

No one wants to hear how you feel about the Hawaiian sovereignty movement or about how tourism supports the state (for the record, menial jobs that don’t pay a living wage don’t count for shit), or about how hard it is being a white man in Hawaii or that the anti telescope/anti GMO/anti whatever activists are idiots.

Unless you’re enlisted and live on base. Those are really the only things those people talk about.

Smoke meth

It’s un-fucking-real how many people move to Hawaii and start smoking meth. It doesn’t even make sense. A tropical wonderland that lives life at a crawl calls for downers, not uppers.

Think that living outdoors is an option

Yeah, you can sleep on the beach, in certain areas. But it ain’t some fun outdoorsy solo trip. You’ve got neighbors, lots of them. There’s the angry meth addict with two vicious pit bulls tied up outside his shanty. There’s the off-his-meds schizo who fell through the cracks creeping in the bushes. There’s the strung-out single mom with five kids living out of their ramshackle mini van. And forget about living on Oahu’s North Shore, you’re headed for Waianae. If you think the corpo surf world is cool with you pitching a tent and roasting weenies in front of their beach rental you’ve got another think coming.

Pick up a pidgin accent

If you live here long enough you can’t help but adopt some words. No matter how hard I try, I find myself saying “shoots” and “manini” and “no need.”

But there’s a certain type of haole that tries to fit in by employing an ersatz accent. “Ho, brah, we go holo holo” sounds fucking retarded when you have a nasal Cali twang.

Steal fruit

Seriously, never pick fruit without asking permission. You’ll get your ass kicked and the cops won’t do shit, because you had it coming.

Be a hippy

I’ve noticed this is more of a thing on Kauai. Little dorks running up credit card debt while pretending to chase enlightenment. No one, and I mean no one, likes hippies. They’re filthy dirty and they stink. Which is totally unacceptable in a place with the ocean, plenty of public showers, and a million streams to rinse your foul body in.


Unexpected: The best wave in the world is…

You won't believe your eyes! (unless you are G-Mac) (or Anderson Cooper)

The Daily Mail, a United Kingdom tabloid with center-right stance and a circulation just under 2 mil, is also, apparently, an authority on surfing. And so it was to much fanfare that they released their infographic revealing the world’s best places to surf. “The Surfer’s Bucket List” they called in. Breaks around the world held anthropomorphic breaths in hopes of maybe being number one………………..and the winner was……………..

Nazare!

Apparently “best” means “biggest” and “biggest” means “?” I don’t think the editors took in to consideration the face of the wave measurement vs. Hawaii’s back of the wave measurement but who cares…that’s just weird science.

Nazare was followed by Mavericks followed by Cornwall followed by Cloudbreak followed by Pipeline and Uluwatu in a tie. Tofino, Vancouver and Montanita, Ecuador also made the list.

Other surprises included the fact that Bondi, Australia is actually on the Gold Coast, Black’s Beach near San Diego has fierce locals, experienced surfers can surf Pipeline in Hawaii but “should also try Backdoor whilst on the island” and anyone who surfs Mavericks automatically “achieves legend status.” Congrats Taylor Paul!

And better luck next year Loser Trestles.

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Just in: 95% of Byron surfers say yes to shark cull!

Businesses closing, deserted beaches, no one surfing… 

Whatever you think of the ethics of fishing for dangerous sharks, you can’t argue that shark attacks are good for business. Oowee, Ballina, just down the coast there from Byron Bay, is suddenly a ghost town.

In February, surfer Tadashi Nakahara was killed by a white. A month ago a bodyboarder was hit by a white and is still in hospital. Last week, a little further down the coast, a surfer fought off a white. This afternoon, a shark knocked a surfer off his board.

The Ballina council has been dropping 16k every weekend for a chopper to patrol the beaches. What doth it see? Seven great whites, some ten feet long, some closer to twenty, plying the near coastal waters.

Close Ballina’s fabulous beaches ’cause there’s sharks and what else have you got? You want tourists to come play in their cavernous mall? Stroll the aisles of a regional K-Mart?

“I’ve been in Ballina or Byron Bay all my life and I’ve never seen anything like it,” Ballina shire mayor David Wright said at a community meeting held on Monday night. “People who have surfed every morning for 40 years are not going in. People are pulling out of holidays from caravan parks and other accommodation. If you’ve seen the Mick Fanning footage, that’s happened 10 or 11 times in this area this year.”

According to the Sydney Morning Herald,

“Surfers on the NSW north coast have overwhelmingly voted for a partial cull of sharks following an unprecedented number of attacks and sightings along the world-famous coastline. The extraordinary development came during a heated community meeting on Monday night, in which residents were told some businesses were about to fold because visitors were too scared to come to the area for beach holidays. Le-Ba Boardriders Club president Don Munro, who organised the meeting for boardriders from Byron, Ballina and Evans Head shires, said about 95 per cent of the 200 people present voted in support of  ‘controlled management or culling.

“It would involve killing sharks that have caused repeated problems, such as the seven regular great whites spotted in aerial patrols.

“Surfers are more environmentally aware than most, we live in the water, we have an appreciation that we’re in their domain but … now it’s just gone crazy and no one really knows why,” he said. “The thing is, what price do we put on a life?”

Read the full story here. 


Yesterday: Snapper Rocks was insanely fun!

And the world’s tiniest helicopter was there… 

Whatever you think of the drone jam, y’gotta say, right now, it’s hard to fault the vision they steal with their prying little eyes.

The clip below from the weekend just gone in the southern hemisphere, and presented by Gold Coast clothing label The Mad Hueys, makes you think, am I doing the right thing living where I’m living, surfing the waves I surf?

Wouldn’t my life, by virtue of the endless tubing seen here, be infinitely better if I were to shift my game to that atavistic, no-future strip of hookers and gangsters, wife-beaters and ice eaters?

Surfing all day, maybe tossing cards around at Jupiters at night, living the supposed dream?

This I wonder…


MOVIE: SICK, INSANE AND DUMB!

Let's swing back in time to the world of Morgan Runyon's and Ray Klein's Runman 2… 

There are two surf videos that had a huge impact on my young life, yet are nearly impossible to find copies of nowadays. My favorite was Voluptuous, that hour’s long collection of insane rippage, with some sick weirdness springled throughout.

Danny Way had a surf part in it (and dude killed it by late 90’s standards.) There was Chris Taloa shredding on his stand-up boog, a pre face tattoo Joe Crimo doing pop shuvits, some hot young thing deep throating a banana, and the soundtrack was comprised of the very best punk rock music my pubescent mind could imagine.  My only copy eventually ended up dead, murdered by countless VCR rewinds.

Then there was the Runman. Such awesome punk rock degeneracy, I loved ’em all. Runman 69 was my fave, closely followed by Runman 2I haven’t been able to watch any of them in years, so I was delighted to find a quick google search this morning turned up some copies online.  Still no 69, but the first and second installments are up on youtube for all to enjoy.

I’d feel bad about linking to it, if it were available for sale. But it isn’t, (click here).

Enjoy while you can, I’m sure it’s gonna get hit with a DMCA request shortly.

Here’s an interview BeachGrit made with Ray Klein a lil while back about the brilliant short he made as an extra for The Bruce Movie in 2005, but that ended up being the highlight of that otherwise disappointing film. 

(Click!)