Surf and Skate and Rock and Roll
Dec 12 2006 / Los Angeles, CASurf and Skate and Rock and Roll for the North Shore Bowl Jam
If you watch Stacy Peralta’s Riding Giants you will see Greg Noll and a Happy Few talking about the early years on the North Shore when, “there was nothing else to do, no girls or social life, so basically we surfed our guts out.” That was true of the North Shore for a few decades after. It was a place to come and surf and do not much else. Nightlife was always a long drive away in Waikiki, but most surfers were too beat to bother, so North Shore was all about eat, sleep, surf. Or as Kirk Gallagher put it in the 70s: power, shower devour.
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There was also a time when surfers and skaters were one in the same. You can see that in Stacy Peralta’s Dogtown documentary, where the surfing street kids of Venice changed the skateboarding world with urethane wheels, and skate moves borrowed from the “anything is possible” generation of Larry Bertlemann and Buttons Kaluhiokalani, who were the pioneers of modern hotdog surfing on the south and north shores of Oahu in the 70s.
But then there came a split in the 80s, when surfers and skateboarders divided into two camps, like Shiites and Sunni Muslims, and neither side considered it cool to associate with the other. Surfers thought skaters were inlanders with shitty taste in music. Skaters thought surfers were snobs.
But the times they are a changing and on Saturday, December 9, if you went da kine and turned right on the dirt road just after da kine and then walked past two big Braddah Security guards and through a gate you would have found yourself in a surf/skate/snow wonderland, where the best skaters in the world mixed with some of the best surfers in the world at the North Shore Bowl Jam.
I heard about this through my friend Karen, who has lived on the North Shore for decades. She said there was some kind of skate event on Saturday afternoon, at a secret private skatepark owned by Steve Ellis, the owner of Cholo’s Mexican Restaurant in Haleiwa. Karen and I both go back to the time when skateboarding underwent a radical transition from Flintstones technology to The Jetsons. The clay Hobie Super Surfer wheels we grew up on were Flintstones technology, because when you hit Pebbles you went Bam! Bam! And then urethane came along, and the wheels purred like a Jetsons speeder and allowed skaters to boldly go where skaters could only dream of going before. Karen and I were both deeply involved in skateboarding in the 70s, but when the Big Split came along in the 80s, we sided with the Sunni Surfers. We both lost interest and thought skaters were full of Shiite, got out of touch with who the best skaters were, and what they were up to.
Saturday was an off day for Pipe Masters and the Billabong women’s event at Honolua Bay. There was fun, small surf all over and after surfing the lefts at Haleiwa, I went looking for this secret skateboard park with a friend from Toronto, a girl who described herself as a “curb bitch” – which I guess is Canadian for skater chick. We drove past da kine, got lucky and found a parking space on Kam Highway and followed a lot of kids with skateboards up a dirt path, through the two Braddah Security guards and into a world I had no idea existed.
Walking in, we saw Darryl Hannah walking out, holding a big video camera over her shoulder, so we figured something big was bubbling.
Steve Ellis must be a connoisseur of good skating because he has built a beautiful, custom-made-with-the-finest materials amoeba-shaped skateboard pool, in a place you just don’t expect to see that kind of cutting edge terrain.
When we got there the competition was going full steam. The pool was lined with onlookers, punkers, surfers, skaters, tweakers, braddahs, haole and even a few snowboarders. They were playing a rap music/heavy metal mix on the loudspeakers and an announcer was calling the shots as skaters took turns jamming into the bowl and doing remarkable things.
I come from a time when it was considered rad to do two 360s, and then later it was rad just to get over the light in the deep end. Thirty years later, holy sh…! Modern surfing and modern skating have a couple of things in common, once again. First of all, like surfing, the speed of modern skating is unbelievable. It all looks like a special effect as these guys Jetsoned around the bowl, sliding coping, going up and out and doing maneuvers I don’t know the names for.
Skaters come in all shapes and sizes but like surfing, the cutting edge seems to be with the smaller, lighter guys who, like surfers, are all built like gymnasts.
I walked around through the crowd, not recognizing too many people, enumerating my skate cred lest anyone should challenge my presence: I was on the back cover of Anybody’s Skateboard Book in the 70s. In the 90s I visited Tony Hawk’s house a couple of times – where he had an epic halfpipe – and once gave his second wife a piggy back ride wearing a gorilla suit. No kidding. It was for a birthday party.
In 2001 I wrote the Surf, Skate and Rock and Roll Art of Jim Phillips for a Santa Cruz artist who had done most of the graphic art for Santa Cruz skateboards in the 80s. And most recently I had written a piece on Danny Way’s huge Great Wall of China skateboard jump for the Quiksilver book.
But no one challenged me and I got around to the leader board to see how the heats had gone and read off some names. The contest had started at 1:30, with five, five-man heats that were 30 minutes each. Some of the names even I recognized: Chris Miller, Jeff Grosso, Danny Way, Steve Caballero, Omar Hassan, Bob Burnquist, Lance Mountain.
I always thought it funny that Bob Burnquist was Brazilian, with a name like that and I wanted to say hello to Danny Way and ask him what he thought of the story in the Quiksilver book,
But I didn’t know who any of them were.
We got there around 4:30 and watched some skating as the announcer said the 12-man final would start at 6:00, straight up and down. There was a lot of going straight up and down and the skater who impressed me most was a smaller, oriental guy who kept going for McTwists and not making them. There was one, bigger, heavier guy who was alternately brilliant and clumsy, and kept shouting at the DJ to play “METAL!”
There were wipeouts and near collisions and guys almost getting impaled by their own skateboards and it was non-stop entertainment for an hour. I called my friend Karen to come and check it out and then called Brock Little, who I thought would probably be going to the U2/Pearl Jam concert that was drawing tens of thousands to Aloha Stadium that night. Brock said he wasn’t going but mentioned that Kelly Slater had an extra ticket. I didn’t think Kelly would give that ticket to me even if I did see him.
There were two last heats as the sun was going down and the announcer was prepping everyone for a 45-minute final heat of 12 guys that would start at 6:00 and go off under the lights.
Christian Fletcher showed up smoking a cigarette. One of the groms skating the pool in the dead time before the Final had a bushy bushy blonde hairdo but was wearing a disguise, black moustache. He was also a redhot little skater and I suspected it was none other than John John Florence, maybe wearing the disguise because sometimes sponsors don’t want their Million Dollar Babies risking getting hurt with the Pipe Masters just around the corner.
And then Kelly Slater showed up, moving through the crowd easily, drawing stares. At some point I passed him by and he said hello and we chatted and then, just like Willie Wonka, he pulled out the Golden Ticket: “I heard you wanted to go see Pearl Jam/U2. I have some extra tickets and Brock didn’t want to go and I gave one to an ex-girlfriend, so here.” He handed me a premium ticket to a show that was set to start in an hour and a half, and was at least 45 minutes away.
Torn between surf and skate and rock and roll, I watched the warmup for the Final. Steve Caballero was a name I recognized and I was impressed that a guy who had been competing for 25 years still had his skills in the deep end. The other guy I noticed was a younger guy in a black and white Adio t-shirt who was just incredibly quick and smooth. I predicted that guy was going to win, but I didn’t stick around.
As we were driving to Aloha Stadium and getting stuck in traffic and trying desperately to find a parking space, the final for the North Shore Bowl Jam went off. As I traded my Kelly Slater ticket to a scalper for two tickets and $50 and got in just in time for the start of U2, this is what went down, according to Karen, who stuck around for the final bloodbath: “The final was nuts. They were going so long and so hard for 45 minutes plus. They kept extending it. It was amazing. You have to mention that Chris Miller put his front tooth through his lip. It broke out and went through his lip and it’s gone. They took him to the hospital. Dave Yester was the lifeguard/medical guy on duty and he said Miller would probably have to have surgery . The Quicksilver guy with the yellow shirt – Omar Hassan, I think - his shirt was almost red by the end because he split his chin and declined stitches and wanted to keep skating. Some other guy came limping by too, I can’t remember who he was. It was gnarly. They were all doing stuff. Danny Way was getting 12 feet up in the air. He was going soooo high. And then Burnquist. Some local kid named Jimmy was going loco and holding his own, definitely. I don’t even know the names of it all. I don’t know who won. They all won. It’s a different world.”
These are different times on the North Shore, but they are good times. You can still do nothing all day but surf your guts out, fall asleep and do it again the next day – and there are a lot of people who do just that. But these days the North Shore offers amenities and even luxuries that the pioneers couldn’t have imagined. This is a good time, when you can stand next to skateboard legends one minute and see a legendary rock band two hours later.
