Welcome to Paradise!
It’s on right now, the first jewel, at Haleiwa
on Oahu’s north shore and the surf is horrible but I don’t care
because I love every second of the Triple Crown. I love the harbor
weird of Haleiwa. I love the big weird of Sunset. I love the nail
bite of Pipeline. You can keep your “world tour.” You can keep your
Australia, Europe, Somewhere and Brazil. Gimme Hawaii. Gimme Cap’n
Cook’s prize. And I think I rhapsodized the Trip five years ago to
this very day in the award-nominated book Welcome to Paradise,
Now Go to Hell.
Yes, it’s been five years since it came out and let’s read from
it now.
On the North Shore, the Pipeline Masters is the only World
Tour event, though the two events before, at Hale’iwa, which is a
six star, and Sunset Beach, which is a Prime, are surfed by all.
The surfer with the best scores in all three wins the Triple Crown
and the Triple Crown is held in high regard. The Triple Crown is,
in fact, held almost as high as the World Title. The surfer who can
master Hale’iwa, Sunset, and Pipeline enters the North Shore
folklore, even if he is from Australia. Even if he is from Florida.
The Triple Crown always takes place during the holiday season. It
brings Christmas cheer to an otherwise seasonless island.
I bump into Grenny. He is a surf agent. He has a small
roster of surfers and he gets them deals from the brands and helps
them with their travel and things of that nature. Grenny is in a
bit of trouble, right now, because he is undercutting the other big
agents in the game by charging a 10 percent fee instead of the
customary 15 percent. But it is OK because his main competition,
agent Blair Marlin, is in worse trouble for bringing Lindsay Lohan
to the North Shore. Blair is a very kind man but makes decisions
like a surfer, which is to say bad decisions. He claims that
Lindsay wanted to see one of his stars, Julian Wilson, but in
reality Blair spent all the time with Lindsay. The two of them were
photographed making eyes at each other and an honest friend told me
that he saw Lindsay leaving Blair’s room too early one morning
looking like, well, looking like Lindsay Lohan. Her purse would
later get stolen from her Jeep and $10,000 in cash would get stolen
from her purse.
The events that comprise the Triple Crown are held in a
waiting period of either one week or ten days, depending on the
spot. Surfing is dictated by nature. She has to provide the waves
and if there are no waves then the surfing itself becomes an act of
frustration. Of slopping around in gutless little ankle slappers in
front of cheering Chinese. Or Northern Irish. Frustrating. And so
contest organizers have either one week or ten days in which to
hold the event. They will watch the swell forecasts. They will use
science and try to determine the best time to start the contest and
aim for a firecracker finish.
I push between two tourists from Canada who can’t believe
they are on the North Shore and can’t believe they get to see the
event. They are both in their midforties, male, and wearing maple
leaf baseball hats and sports sandals. They clutch small GoPro
cameras in their sweaty hands and take little video clips of
everything. The people walking. The island scrub. The houses. Their
own sport sandals. Sport sandals are the worst things ever, equal
to Crocs and Vibrams in the record books of hideous fashion. But
their Canadian excitement is heartwarming so I forgive them their
fashion blunder.
Surfers are judged, in the events, on a scale of one to ten
by six judges. The judging criteria will shift depending on what a
particular wave offers. The Quiksilver Pro on the Gold Coast, for
example, will provide good scores for airs and good scores for
barrels, because the wave at Snapper Rock provides both. The Hurley
Pro at Trestles will provide great scores for airs because that is
what Trestles is known for. And on the North Shore, barrels are the
only real things judged. If a surfer paddles out at Pipeline and
tears the wave apart—really carves and hits the lip and gouges and
even throws a little slob, or some other skateboard-named air in,
but doesn’t slip into a barrel—he will be judged poorly and those
on the beach will hoot in derision at his stupidity. Pipeline is a
barrel. A gaping barrel. The best, most critical barrel in
surfing.
I am finally close to the event and see Neil Ridgway out on
the Ke Nui making a call. He looks over at me and says, very
sarcastically, “Chas Smith.” I say, “Hi Neil!” while throwing a
loose shaka and then he goes back to his call. He is wearing the
most clownish sunglasses that I have ever seen. They don’t fit his
face well but they are far better than his European red
beret.
In all the other events around the globe, surfers paddle out
against each other in man-on-man heats. They can catch as many
waves as they want and their two best are scored and the surfer
with the best two-wave total moves on and on and on until he wins
the finals and gets chaired up the beach and gets champagne sprayed
in his face by the second place surfer. Getting chaired up the
beach is one of the most embarrassing things in surfing. The
victor’s friends, usually countrymen, will meet him at the
shoreline after his victory and they will prop him on their
shoulders and move through the crowd to the podium. Two men
carrying one man. And it might look OK except surf events never
draw hundreds of thousands of people. They draw hundreds and
sometimes thousands. It would look good if a surfer was being
carried through an overflowing crowd of adoring fans, throwing
roses and blowing kisses and uncontrollably weeping. But at surf
events, when a surfer is getting chaired up the beach, sitting on
his friends’ shoulders, through spread-far-apart beach gawkers, it
looks embarrassing. It looks like Christian rock ’n’ roll.
I turn into the Ehukai Beach Park, throw another shaka at
Dave Prodan, and hear him say, awkwardly, “G’day, Chas” with his
Austral-American accent. Dave was half raised in Newport Beach,
California, and half raised in Australia and so his accent is a
mess. He is now the marketing director for the ASP. Not an enviable
position here. And I check the heat draw posted on the large
Billabong Presents the Pipe Masters in Memory of Andy Irons
scaffolding.
Want more? Of course you do! A delicate weaving of Lindsay Lohan
and Neil Ridgway and real talk.
Buy here!
