"I’ve trained my whole life. I’m not a normal guy,
you know…"
Earlier today, the former world champion surfer Mark
Occhilupo loosed episode thirty of his Occ-cast.
It features the Kauai surfer and former minder to Andy and Bruce
Irons, Kai Garcia, and it is a very good one, if only as an
instructional on how to appear fearsome.
The interview starts poorly.
Kai has little interest in the questions and Occ looks
bewildered as if expecting a tremendous backhand cut across his
cheekbone.
And then it gets good.
Of course, if you really want to get to know Kai, dive into Chas
Smith’s Welcome to Paradise Now Go to
Hell, available now for Christmas delivery etc. (Buy here,
free shipping etc)
Too cheap?
Read the Borg chapter here.
I have arrived back on the North Shore, fresh from
Honolulu and a piña colada, momentary respite, and a
revelation that maybe this is all really and truly paradise. That
is the violence and commitment to violence by wave and men that
makes it such. I have passed all the familiar landmarks and I am
ready to get my head fucking cracked as a personal ablution. I
always imagined that I wanted peace and tranquility and a garden
and Saint Bernard. But I am defective. I have had traditional
peace. I have owned a wonderful little prewar house in hipster
Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, with the wife that I hated, and we had a
Saint Bernard and I would come home from near-death Middle East
experiences and think, “Never again.” I would rub my Saint on his
big fluffy head and think, “I have done enough.” But three weeks
later I would be thinking about adventure and five weeks later I
would be on an adventure, running from Arabs holding rifles.
Sweating. Cursing. Damn me. Damn my own degenerate heart. But maybe
not. Maybe this is all the way, the truth, the life. Whatever. Even
today I want to go climb Mount Everest to prove that it is not very
difficult and the people that I love very much do not want me to
but I will anyhow because I cannot stop.
And so I passed Waimea, I passed Foodland, and I passed the
Billabong house before slamming my car onto the shoulder in front
of Sunset Beach Elementary School and thinking about an
adventure with Kaiborg. I needed his story. He told me, once, when
we talked about Andy Irons, that whatever I needed he would give
me. I wanted to push this further. To see if there is more to feel
on the North Shore. To see if I can fall even further down the
rabbity hole. To see if I can get further consumed, as if I am not
consumed enough already. I had turned the radio from Top 40 to a
Hawaiian station and Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, or Bruddah Iz to
da locals, is singing a ukulele cover. “Somewhere over the rainbow,
way up high, and the dreams that you dream of once in a lullaby . .
.”
The contest had just ended for the day and would commence again
early tomorrow morning but there were parties to be had and the
road was full with fans and surfers trying to decide what to do.
What their next steps should be. I push through them toward the
small sand trail and stood between the two Volcom houses. Their
gates flank me like zombies who would eat my brains. I decide to go
into the original house gate. I pull the lock and enter and feel
cold and not well.
I cannot see Kaiborg but do see a derelict sitting on the deck
hooting at the surfers in the water. Anytime a contest ends tens,
maybe hundreds, of surfers huddle on the shoulder until the final
horn and then they scramble to the peak, trying to catch the first
wave of the postcontest day. Today there are maybe fifty surfers
scrambling around, dropping in, getting spit out. And the derelict
hoots them. “Whoooooohooooo!” I ask him where Kaiborg is and he
responds in two syllables, “‘A’ house,” without looking my way. He
is not Hawaiian but old enough to be the sort of non-Hawaiian clown
grandfathered in. He is wearing shorts. And so I leave, kicking a
Coors can into the bush before opening the gate back to the sandy
path and through the A-team house gate.
The A-team house feels different, nicer, but it is still dark.
Its deck is not rotted. Its grass is not trampled to an early
death. There are no couches on cinder blocks. I approach and spot a
broom and scratch at my feet furiously before moving from grass to
wood. I make sure there are no specs of sand this time.
Dean Morrison is sitting on the porch, nursing a beer. He is the
smallest Gold Coast surfer, of Maori descent, and cute but also
loves his drink. He once used to surf on the World Championship
Tour but no longer because he loves his drink and is a bit of a
cheater. Once, during last year’s Pipe Masters, he surfed a heat
against Damien Hobgood and it was a real scrappy, close heat.
Toward the end Damien had priority and a great wave came toward him
and he paddled for it. Inexplicably he slipped and went over the
falls, awkwardly. It would have been a great wave and Damien might
have won but, instead, Dean won. Back on shore Damien found the
head judge and started barking about how Dean had actually tugged
his leash, sending him over the falls. A dirty move.
And now he nurses his beer on the Volcom A-team house deck. I
ask him if Kaiborg is around and he says, “Yeah, he’s inside
sleeping. Go wake him up.” I may be many things but I am not
totally oblivious. Still, it is tempting. I look through the
sliding glass door and see Kaiborg asleep, a sleeping giant, and it
feels like being at a zoo and wanting to stick a troublemaking hand
into the tiger’s cage. I resist, though, and sit next to Dean
instead, and watch Pipe fire and watch the sun slip farther down
the sky. It is still too cold but the sunset will be gorgeous for
sure. Sunsets on the North Shore are almost always gorgeous.
After fifteen minutes Kaiborg stumbles out onto the porch,
scratching his stomach and stretching. He looks out toward Pipe for
a long time. He arches his back. He is a giant of a man. As big as
a house. Arms like Toyota Land Cruisers. He towers above me because
I am sitting next to Dean but he would tower above me even if I was
standing. Even though I am slightly taller. And, looking up,
Kaiborg blocks the sky. He is all I can see. He is a specimen. He
is handsome like a Roman gladiator. “Kai,” I say in my friendly
voice, and my friendly voice always grates my ears because my nose
has been broken so many times that my friendly voice sounds like a
nasal Muppet. “Do you have a minute to talk?” I only like my voice
at three a.m. after one pack of Camel Reds and five whiskey sodas.
He studies me with freshly woken eyes and then responds, “Hoooo,
Chas, yeah brah, let’s go over to the other house.” I am climbing
Everest just to do it. Just because I can’t stop. I am entering
into the real possibility of big trouble for the sake of getting
into big trouble, or maybe to serve my ablution, but I also need to
hear more and I don’t know exactly what. I need to feel more. Eddie
and Kaiborg in the same wicked day is a real double-down. How can
simply talking to another man be so bad? Because this is the North
Shore. And asking personal questions is worse.
I follow him through both gates, brushing my feet like a fiend
again, before joining him on the cinder block couch.
We both watch the waves, quietly, for a few moments. We watch an
unknown surfer get barreled and spit out. We watch a haole paddle
awkwardly in the way of a Hawaiian and there will definitely be
blood spilt before the sun sets completely. I ask Kaiborg about how
it used to be on the North Shore. He looks at me and his voice
answers. It is not like Eddie’s. It is not a guttural mess but
instead sort of sweet, inflected with the islands. “Ahhhhhh, how do
you say . . . those were caveman days. Paleolithic. A trip, brah.
This is our spot, our place . . .” he said, referring to the
rampant territorialism of surf and of the North Shore “We’d learn
from our uncles, who would paddle out and beat the shit out of
people and then they’d tell us to beat them up. And we thought that
was normal. We didn’t know anything else, you know? Sad to say but
it’s just how it was. Not how it is anymore.” Bullshit. Bull
fucking shit. The past is always and forever seen as harder,
rougher, deadlier, tougher. Grandparents talk about walking to
school uphill both ways. Parents talk about the exorbitant cost of
shoes and things today. The past is always seen through a different
filter and events can take on greater, rougher, better, worse
connotations. I was not on the North Shore in those early days.
But, truthfully, I have seen more fear in the eyes on the North
Shore than anywhere on earth. I can’t imagine more fear than there
is today. Kaiborg is wrong. He is accentuating history and
minimizing the present. But there is no fucking way I will tell him
he is wrong and so I merely respond, “Yeah? Seems pretty rough to
me still, I mean . . . ” And he looks over at me, all two hundred
fifty muscled pounds of him, and says, “No no no. It’s so different
now. Back then there was nobody even around, not near the amount of
people that are here today. What we did . . . It was just straight
territorial trip. It was . . . back then we thought it was all cool
and right on, this is what we do cuz we didn’t know any better, but
now that I’m older and look back on it I’m like, whoa. Wow.” I
still think bull fucking shit. I believe, full well, that Kaiborg
doesn’t crack as many heads today as he used to but that is only
because he has done Malcom Gladwell’s ten thousand hours. Malcolm
Gladwell quoted neurologist Daniel Levin, in his book
Outliers: “The emerging picture from such studies is that
ten thousand hours of practice is required with being a world-class
expert in anything.” Kaiborg has cracked ten thousand heads and now
nobody will mess with him. Or very very few people will mess with
him. Word on the coconut wireless is that Kai and Eddie have beef.
That they don’t like each other. And also there is another at the
Volcom house, Tai Van Dyke, who is looking to take over as big man
and run Kaiborg off. Kaiborg used to party. He used to go as wild
as anyone. Wilder than maybe everyone, excluding Andy and Bruce.
But he has since cleaned up, completely. He doesn’t even drink
anymore, and this frustrates some. It frustrates Bruce and so Bruce
is on a mission to replace his old great friend with another dark
party animal, Tai Van Dyke. Bruce does not hide his contempt, nor
his ambition. Kaiborg has a whiteboard where he writes the workout
schedule for the groms. After John John won the Triple Crown, Bruce
marched downstairs and scrubbed out the workout schedule and wrote,
“Big fucking rager tonight,” signing underneath in his own scrawl,
“BRUCE IRONS.” A proper affront to the power structure at the
Volcom houses. Derek Dunfee, a big-wave surfer from La Jolla,
California, sponsored by Volcom, who has done many tour of duties,
later told me, “I have never felt it that way at all, that
unhinged. Literally. I had my bags packed the entire time I stayed
there in case shit really went down. I’ve never done that before
but it felt like all-out war was imminent at any moment and I was
ready to fucking bail.”
The North Shore has always been rough. It is rough today, and it
was rough when Kaiborg first started coming. I ask him when, in
fact, he did come first and he answers, “I started coming to the
North Shore when I was sixteen. First trip stayed with Marvin
Foster. I came with my brother and, like I said, those were the
kind of people we looked up to. We looked up to the kind of people
that most people don’t look up to. And it was the exact same thing
we got thrown in over here like it was over there. But over here we
had to prove ourself even more.” Over there is Kauai, where he grew
up and where he learned to pound and crack and surf. Marvin Foster
was one of the toughest men to ever wander the North Shore. He was
a genuine star in the 1980s, charging every oversized swell, but he
also got into the drug trade, spending eighteen months in prison in
the early 1990s on a weapons charge. He also, later, landed on
Hawaii’s top-ten-most-wanted list. Marvin Foster died by hanging
himself from a tree in 2010. This was Kaiborg’s moral compass.
But how does it all work? What happens? How does a
sixteen-year-old Kauai kid come to the North Shore and become a
legend? What did Kaiborg do to prove himself? And so I ask as the
sun slides farther and farther down the sky, which continues to
fire. Which continues to look like a painting. Kaiborg looks at the
sun and lets out a long and low “Psssssssshhhhhhhhhht” before
pausing long. How to answer? “Just doing all the wrong things. You
know. ‘Doing the work,’ as they like to say now. Doing the dirt for
everyone. Like they said, ‘Go lick that guy.’ You gotta do it.” It
sounds, to me, like hell. It sounds, to me, like jail and so I ask,
“Was it like jail?” And his voice goes very high in response, his
head kicks back, and he locks his fingers behind his head. A small
smile creeps over his face. “It wasn’t . . . it wasn’t . . . it
wasn’t like jail or anything like that because it was all we knew.
You know? Like now that I’m older and everything . . . it’s
basically like, I don’t live in the past, but I don’t shut the door
on it either. When I see people out in the water now or whatever,
hey, I’ll start character assassinating but then I’ll check myself
and go, ‘Hey, these guys are just out here to have a good time
too.’ I ain’t telling nobody to beat it. I ain’t telling . . . I
don’t yell at nobody in the water I don’t . . .” He trails off,
thinking more. Thinking about his past and what it meant to him and
what it means to him. “And that’s all from where I was to where I
am. And now I don’t say anything. I do my trip and that’s it. I’m
not the most friendly guy in the water but I’m not loudmouthing off
or, you know, I’m just out there to get my waves, get my daily
reprieve and come in all happy. But, you know, sometimes you gotta
put that vibe off out in the water because some people take your
kindness for weakness and they’ll start hustling you and, fuck
that, brah, you know . . . I don’t know if it’s like,
self-entitlement or, whatever, but I’ve put my time in and I’m
cherry-picking. I’m not a little kid paddling for every wave. I’m
waiting for mine and when they come to me, if you’re behind me,
that’s your problem. I’m going. I’m not going to yell at you, or
whatever, just don’t drop in on me. And everybody knows the
deal.”
No person would ever drop in on Kaiborg, full stop. He is huge
and one does not have to be intimately aware of any regional
hierarchy to know a huge man is not to be toyed with.
But still, how long does it take for a man, an outsider for that
matter, to climb to the top of the North Shore’s very specific,
very rough, hierarchy? Eddie came from Philadelphia and climbed to
the top in a matter of years. Kaiborg, though, is different.
“You’re always climbing ’til today.” And then he chuckles because
he is not climbing and maybe he never was. “Nahhh, honestly I can’t
say when or what but I’ve never really had a problem because I’ve
always been with all the crew. I’ve never been on the short end of
the stick, basically. And what that develops, when you start to
turn into a young man, is a lot of fucken unwarranted pride and
ego. And it’s ugly. That whole mind-frame is just . . . so wrong.
That . . . but hey. It’s life. If you don’t know any better and . .
. basically we all come from broken homes, the whole shit, so we
don’t know the ways like everybody around us, since we were like
five, so . . . you’re a product of your environment no matter what.
And as you get older, you start learning. The key is to try and
break the cycle and not repeat it with where you are with the kids
under you because . . . it’s just a shitty fucken thing.”
Kaiborg’s introspection is intriguing. He is here, on the
cinder-block-raised couch, in his fiefdom, talking about breaking
cycles of violence and the ugliness of ego and being a product of
an environment. His fiefdom. It is Eddie’s kingdom, but Kaiborg
rules the one thing that matters most. He rules Pipeline. This is
not what I expected at all. I expected bravado or harsh vibing or a
slap or aggressive platitudes about respect and such. But he seems
so Zen and what he is saying seems genuine. Or maybe I have been
totally and completely consumed and violent nonsense is now
completely reasonable. I tell him he is a Zen thug and he laughs.
“You know, it’s all simple. I see guys come and go left and right
and it’s bad. You’ve got to appreciate everything. You’ve got to
enjoy the ride until it’s the end. You’ve got to wiggle and waggle
and try and make a career out of surfing or being here, you know,
but the bottom line is that you’ve got to stay grateful and happy.
There’s so much worse things in life you could be doing than
sitting here talking to me. We’re blessed to do what we do. It’s
just . . . appreciate and stay grateful and, like the kids, I try
to instill in all these kids to give them a little structure in
life. You know, clean up after themselves. To go do the work when
the waves are flat, cuz the waves aren’t good all the time. That’s
when you train. Making good choices in life. It’s all that stuff.
Try to live clean. Watch out for all the fucken hanger-oners and
all the bad choices that they make real easily. But only they can
do it. Alls I can do is show them here’s the path, hopefully you
stay on it, and if they stray off of it, hopefully they can get
right back on it.”
Such a Zen thug but even if he is a Zen thug, even if he is
enlightened, even if I am not seeing clearly, I know that he is
still the Kaiborg of myth/reality legend and that he is greatly
feared. Kaiborg stories and Eddie stories are told with equal
amounts of petrified eyes and quavering voices. He is still
considered a monster and I tell him and, again, he lets out a long
and low “Psssssssshhhhhhhhhht” before continuing, “I don’t like
that at all. But. You know what . . . . Ffffff. I created it and
that’s why I’m changing it now. I’ve never been the most open and
friendly guy but you know now I’m trying to like . . . this year I
told myself, try to tell everybody hi. I’ll be on the bike path
walking down, or on the back road, and guys will see me coming and
they’ll be putting their head down and getting all squirrely and
I’ll be like, ‘What’s up?’ and they’ll be like, ‘Whoooaaa.’ And
I’ll be like . . . ffff, whatever. But you know, it’s life. You
live and learn. You gotta go through the process and it’s a process
and I wanted that . . . of course I wanted that mystique at some
point, but then you’re over it and it doesn’t just end when you’re
over it. I’ll probably always have it, but whatever. It serves me
well cuz when I speak up they better listen. Hey, I’m not perfect.
I still have my, you know, my inner demons like everybody but at
least I recognize it now and I try to keep them down and don’t
overreact and fly off the handle.” He laughs loudly. “I don’t want
to be perceived like that anymore, though. I’m a father and a
husband and basically . . . I do what I say, and say what I mean.
Alls we have in our life is our word. Everything else is fucking
bullshit.”
The wisdom continues to pour. The enlightenment of Kai “Kaiborg”
Garcia. And it may be even greater than the enlightenment of
Siddhartha Gautama “Buddha” himself because of the distance
traveled. Buddha moved from spoiled rich child to enlightened one,
which is a great climb, but Kaiborg moved from monster in one of
the the heaviest places on earth to . . . I don’t even know. To
something far greater. Wisdom. And I am feeeeeling it, baby. “Ahhhh
yeah, it’s hard to make a change in your life. Super hard. Really
hard. We’re creatures of habit. This guy told me a year ago,
‘You’re gonna have to change one thing about your life,’ and I
really look up to that guy, and I was like, ‘Oh yeah? What’s that?’
and he was all, ‘Everything.’ And I was all, “Ffffffuuuuuuuuu.’ But
he was right. You know. I did. And I’m trying to change everything.
It’s not easy but I’m working on it, you know? The bottom line is
we’re imperfect and it’s progress, not perfection, so if you make a
little progress every day, you know, you’re doing OK. At the end of
my day, I’ll sit down and think about my day and be brutally honest
with myself, be like, ‘OK, how could I have made my day better? How
could I have made people better around me?’ We all have our
moments, but as long as I sit down there and reflect every day then
I can wake up and try and make a little progress the next day. Day
by day. One foot over another. It’s hard to grasp but when you
start getting it, you start getting it. You start seeing what life
is about, not just existing through life—you start living again.
You’re not all blinded. You start looking at the ocean and the
rainbows and you start seeing the leaves falling off the trees. You
know, stuff like that. I don’t know. I could be fine this year and
I could flip the switch next year, you know? You just never know.”
Fuck sacred fig trees. Kaiborg found enlightenment under a
palm.
The sun is all the way beneath the earth’s rim and the sky is on
fire. It is all the colors of red and we both pause to look at it.
It is, truly, paradise. But at the same time it is always truly
hell. And since I am feeling all metaphysical I ask him about the
hell, about Eddie and the politics of a place outside the law. I
tell him that word on the Ke Nui is that Eddie and him are not on
friendly terms. He stretches again and speaks, “Ahhhh we’re fine.
We’re all one family. Just, everyone is on their different path.
You know, I’m kinda looking for enlightenment. Just staying
levelheaded. Hey, we all get along. We all argue and bicker and
shit, but that’s part of it. But at the end of the day, we all got
each other’s back. And the North Shore politics? You know what . .
. I love this place, and politics? I could give a f—a rat’s ass,
you know. I’m powerless over people, places, and things. If that
guy is an asshole out there, hey, you know what, I’m not gonna
worry about him. I can’t change him. I’ll let him wallow in his own
shit. Just don’t bring it. Boundaries, you know? I’ve got my
boundaries. Don’t, you know . . . stay out of my boundaries and
it’s all good. I don’t care what you’re doing, running around being
an asshole, whatever. That’s your trip. I just mind my own business
now.” And I am feeling all warm and in love. He is an apologist for
everything that is the North Shore. He is also validating my own
personal asshole trip by not judging it. Beautiful. Love. Warm.
Deluded? I don’t care anymore. Getting to the bottom of a
story—selling out Eddie, Kaiborg, the North Shore—had been
swallowed by a general feeling that I belong here.
At that moment an older, crazy local talking jibberish comes
crashing through the Volcom house gate and into the yard. He is
dripping wet, just having gotten out of the water, and is jabbering
about how Pipe almost crushed him but he got fully barreled and
whoosh! And bam! And pow!Kaiborg laughs
at him and says, “We’re more grassroots over here. We’re more core.
We have all of the local surfers come hang out here, you know what
I mean? Nike down the road and Quiksilver, they have their guys and
they all stay in their little bubble. They’re all bubble-ized. Over
here we got guys like”—and he gestures over to the older, crazy
local—“Donnie don’t go hang out at Quiksilver. You know what I
mean? We got every fucken creature walking around here. We keep it
real. It’s how we were all raised and we’re not fucken exclusive or
. . . we’re not better and no less than anyone. It’s pretty much
open arms over here.” And it is pretty much totally not but that is
the way that Kaiborg feels and so I just guffaw, slightly, and tug
on my pink shirtsleeve and continue to look at the fire-red
sky.
The gate opens again and a young Volcom grom comes through and
nods, submissively, in Kaiborg’s direction before scooting out of
sight. Kaiborg doesn’t notice him but I do and ask him about the
process of being a grom in the house. Standard lines about being a
family and cleaning up and the dungeon and working out and living
the dream because of the free bed thirty short steps away from
Pipe, free food, access, and never having to fear getting beaten up
in the water. But I still want to know how that came to be. How did
these houses come to rule? Kaiborg listens to my question and then
looks at me and then answers, “Look at me. I’m six two, two forty,
you know. Surfers are fucken what? Five eight, one fifty? It’s like
. . . plus I’ve trained my whole life. I’m not a normal guy, you
know, so. The groms are here, they’re part of it, and they know
better. If you go out there and drop in on a guy blatantly, or
whatever, you’re gonna get your head slapped. But it’s mellow now.
Everybody knows where they belong. It’s not like the old days.”
The old days. The old rough days, which to men like Kaiborg are
over and we are all living in the soft present, and to men like
Graham Stapelberg are not over because he is getting his face
slapped right off, and to men like me are not over because the
North Shore is scarier than any war zone. The past is always
amplified but I will say that the North Shore exists in perpetual
violence and it always has. Maybe the violence looked or felt
different in the past but it is not less today. Only different and
only realized differently.
The fire reds are turning into powder blues and darker blues.
Pipeline is still thundering, shaking the Volcom deck, which shakes
the cinder blocks, which shakes the couch. The contest will be
running again tomorrow. Booom! And Kaiborg is gazing out
and is not talking to me anymore but talking to Poseidon. “That’s a
heavy wave. This place is scary.” I ask him if it still scares him
and he responds honestly, “Ahhhh yeah. I want nothing to do with
it.” And he says this even though he surfs Pipe every big swell.
“Hey, we change. She don’t. We get older and slower. She does not
let up. Every time . . . there’s a bunch of times when I been out
there and I’m like, fuck . . . ” He lets his thought trail off as
another wave explodes “That’s what she does out here.”
Booom!
I pull myself off the couch and we shake hands and I leave him
sitting there, looking out at Pipe. A Zen thug. I didn’t serve my
ablution on the couch today, but I know he will still knock my head
completely off if he needs to, or wants to, someday. He has been
training in jujitsu for eighteen years. He has trained under the
greatest mixed martial arts Brazilian master, Royce Gracie. He has
fought in the octagon, or modern version of gladiator battle, many
times. He is six foot two, two hundred forty pounds but
seems like Gerard Butler’s King Leonidas in the film
300.