“Surfing was born in Hawaii. Wouldn’t you think Hawaiian Airlines would have some sort of support to our sport?

The Big Wave World Tour champion and four-time Jaws winner Billy Kemper has taken to Instagram to chastise Hawaiian airlines for refusing to carry his two surfboards, unlocking a Pandora’s Box of complaints from a who’s who of world surfing.

Kemper, who is thirty-three, cocks his face impassively, eyes burning with the ultra-alertness of a Haitian priest speaking through a freshly severed human head, as he delivers his coup de grâce.

“Surfing was born in Hawaii, it’s part of the HAWAIIAN culture. Wouldn’t you think @hawaiianairlines would have some sort of support to our sport? THIS HAS TO CHANGE!”

Listen below.

 

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The pile-on is impressive in its expanse.

“Ive had this same experience with @hawaiianairlines they told me leave my boards because i was 1lb over, not even a extra charge policy just said leave it we dont care,” writes Nathan Florence.

Mark Healey: “That’s why they’re called Hawaiian and not Aloha. Been dealing with that shit from them my entire adult life.”

Eli Olson: “When I won the Hawaii / Tahiti regional title and was trying to fly to California for the US Open to represent Hawai’i @hawaiianairlines never let me bring two of my boards that I needed. They told me leave the boards at the airport it’s not their problem.”

Torrey Meister: “Definitely time to bring awareness to this…..AGAIN! @hawaiianairlines absolute worst airlines for surfers and Ive flown on a lot of them. The most horrible board bag fees and senseless baggage policy stories I have had flying are definitely with you @hawaiianairlines

“So many vivid memories from when I was a little kid trying to put my 4’11 surfboards on a Hawaiian airlines to go do events around the state of Hawaii and getting reamed with board charges, as you let 75pound golf bags go right by for free.

“To this day you are still doing the same thing! I started flying aloha airline back then and now I fly @southwestair as much as I can. Great staff, cheap flights, honest with their board fees, and if your board bag is under 50pounds they go on for free! Over 25years of flying around Hawaii and I can say you have never supported us surfers once! That’s why I stopped supporting you and tell everyone I know to do the same till we see some change. You know what they say about greed….”

Koby Abberton, with vomit emojis, “That’s why they charge so much they know all the islands are surfers. It’s robbery.”

And,

Shane Dorian, “SW is the shit! I love them. It’s ‘illegal’ to fly with 100 pound board bag, but they will allow you on the plane if you weigh 500 pounds. What’s that about? HA has some sketchy policies.”

You ever get heat for carrying boards?

I’ve shifted to the borrow a board when you get there model (thanks Paul Evans for recent Hossegor play date) although I imagine pro surfers and pro big-wave surfers have more sophisticated needs.

"It was an architectural gem – a hidden surf shack."

If you’re into quasi-kitsch mid-century interiors as fashioned by glamorous Amazonian women with a history of posing nude, you’ll know and adore the work of LA-via-Myrtle Beach’s Kelly Wearstler (pronounced Worst-ler).

Ms Wearstler, who is fifty-six in a few weeks, flew onto my radar in 1999 when she fitted out the relaunched Avalon Hotel in a sea of pretty greens and blues and banquette seating and mid-century pendants, transforming what was once a shadow haunted vestibule filled with the eyes-stinging smog of disinfectant.

The New York Times was similarly enchanted writing, “Her playful, elegantly over-the-top designs for the Avalon Beverly Hills changed the look of boutique hotels around the world.”

I gave my pretty white dick some Christmas sport in those rooms shortly after its doors were reopened. Glory days etc.

Now, and as celebrated in her latest book Synchronicity, the former Playboy playmate (“You can ask any of my friends. I have no problem with my sexuality. I’m completely uninhibited. Everybody has a body, and I want to show mine. God blessed me,” she says) has given an old surf shack on the Malibu beachfront her magical touch.

The joint had been on the market for years when Wearstler rented it so she and her fam could tough out the pandemic months. A pal had stayed at another place three doors and she was thrilled by how it hadn’t been gussied up by zeitgeist-y renovations.

So she tracked down the owner, asked if she could rent it and he said, hell yeah, long as I can show the place to potential buyers.

Smart guy.

Wearstler made the place look a million bucks and within a few months had a buyer – a Silicon Valley surfer who has since kept the place relatively original.

“You could have built a house three times the size of this one, which is what everybody unfortunately does on Broad Beach. But he’s not tearing the house down, just fixing up the original bathrooms and doing a little more landscaping. That was amazing to hear,” Wearstler told Wallpaper.

“It was about bringing together old spirit and new spirit to create unique experiences that make every room memorable.”

Check out Wearstler’s book here, nude pics can be bought here.

No one would see me crossing the street and think, “Woah, that dude definitely shreds.” Regardless, I still think surfing is for me.

I’m moving to California and I’m gonna surf. 

Never done it before. Haven’t even taken a lesson. There’s no part of me that thinks I’ll be particularly good at it either.

Looking at me, you’d probably assume I’d be rather bad at the beach. Bald, pasty white, and sporting a ginger-tinged beard.  I’m latino by blood, but for some odd reason, my appearance screams Celtic. Definitely not Coastal.

And after two years of beating my body to shit with bar food and budget beer while grieving a death, my abdomen looks like a half-roasted marshmallow that’s been dropped and kicked around on the floor– shapeless, white, and lumpy, with odd hairs sprouting from strange places.

There are abs under there. I’m working on it.

No one would see me crossing the street and think, “Woah, that dude definitely shreds.”

Regardless, I still think surfing is for me.

Ballsy logic from a guy who’s never achieved a true suntan and hasn’t even made an attempt at standing up on a board before. But I’d never skied or guided whitewater rafting trips before I moved West either. Flying blind into an unfamiliar sport is kinda my thing.

Water, whether frozen or fluid, has been the one consistent throughline of my life since I ditched New York City. In brief bursts while paddling or skiing, my brain goes silent.

But, I have to admit that, in the beginning, I got into mountain sports partly because I wanted to be seen. Get good fast, get cool pics, get acknowledged and announce my arrival on the scene. Maybe one day become the whitewater Jimmy Chin. Young, insecure and desperate to prove something after walking away from life as an office grundle, I wanted it known that I was really doing it.

That faded with time on river and snow. Eventually, it was mostly the action itself that provided satisfaction. I still posted outrageous shit about how incredible I was with paddle or pole in hand, but the intention was just to entertain or aggravate my friends. Attempts at accelerating my improvement eventually became about making myself happy.

But I don’t want any of that with surfing. No goals, no competitive urges, no hard-ons for recognition– externally or internally.

The way I envision it, I’d like to get in the water before the sun’s finished putting on her makeup and stepped out the door. The time of day when (I assume) the only other people out there will be surfers so seasoned, they’ll take one look at me bumbling my way through the waves, and not risk conversing with a kook.

That’s what I enjoy most about my imagined intro to surfing, and why I want it– the removal of room for ego, the doing it alone and the quiet.

A lot of shit annoys me. Restaurants that serve ranch instead of bleu cheese with buffalo wings. Vineyard Vines shirts. Sanctimonious Instagram posts. The tone that gossipy booster club moms talk in. Clammy hands. Italian subs with no prosciutto or roasted peps. Groups that walk shoulder-to-shoulder at a snail’s pace down the sidewalk on Saturday afternoon.

That last one chaps my ass way more than all the others. Nothing makes me boil more than when others affect the pace at which I can move or engage with the world as I desire. Somewhat irrational, I know. Like my abs, I’m working on it.

But that’s another reason why I want to surf. I’m ignorant to the sport, but not ignorant enough to think that every day the beach will be empty for my pleasure. That’s not what I’m getting at.

What makes my peaches swell, is the idea of an activity that’s powered by the individual from start to finish. I’ll have to step around umbrellas and kids digging holes if I’m not up early enough, but there won’t be any serpentine gondola lines to wait on, or forced, close-quarters conversation on a chair lift. No dependence on paddle partners or agonizing waits as my half-brained friends orchestrate a shuttle drop at the take out.

Drive to the beach, put the board under my arm, walk and commune with the water on my time.

I’m under no delusion that I’ll one day be a great surfer. Nor do I want to be. I just want to do it, be pleasant to others as I learn, lug the board back to my truck, then fuck off with the rest of my day still intact, no thought of status or progress on the mind.

I don’t look like a surfer nor do I know dick about how things in that world really work. But, from my limited research, I’ve surmised that I should avoid being seen with a Wavestorm in my possession, and that it’s a subculture that runs on respect. I like that.

Understanding how to operate in that sort of space is how I made it in the whitewater world. I never became a master, all-star river guide. But I did turn myself into a solid Class IV boater, because in the early stages, the silverbacks saw someone who was willing to listen and always defer to them. I’ll try to do the same thing surfing, though again, without any goals in mind.

I just wanna learn to stand up and stay there for a couple seconds, man.

It won’t be a perfect process. I’ll get mollywhopped on a reef, lose my board or, knowing my luck, see my prick turn all red and pink after a jellyfish sting. I’m sure I’ll unintentionally fuck up decorum and etiquette at some point too.

Local’s will get pissed at me in the lineup some day (that’s what they call it, right?). But, I’m ok with that.

I’m a dirtbag river guide, a ski town bartender and a Cuban refugee’s kid. I’ve always been good at getting punched in the face.