The Eddie Ceremony
Dec 04 2006 / North Shore. HIEnergy All Around for the Opening Ceremonies of the Quiksilver Big Wave Invitational in Memory of Eddie Aikau
Ever fantasize about what you would say to a famous person if you ever had a conversation with them? My Eddie Vedder fantasy conversation has always gone like this: Eddie would introduce himself as Eddie, leaving out his last name as most famous people do, and I would say, “Nice to meet you. I really admire your music. Jamie’s Crying is one of my all time favorite songs.”
Get it? Eddie Vedder? Jamie’s Crying? Eddie Van Halen? Short guitarist with a lot of hair?
It’s a thin line between clever and stupid and that bad joke would either charm him or send him running. And beyond that, if I met Eddie Vedder I wanted to congratulate him for a cool protest song I heard on Indie 103.1 just before leaving for Hawaii. The lyrics went something like, “Mr. Cheney, find another country” or something like that, but it was a cool, Old School protest song that went back to all the great folksy protest songs of the 60s and 70s. I’d been wondering where the voices of protest were – beyond the Dixie Chicks – and was jazzed that Vedder came out with something good.
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So that was what I wanted to talk to Eddie Vedder about, should I ever meet him. But then I did meet him, hanging around at Waimea Falls Park for the opening ceremonies of the Quiksilver Big Wave Invitational in Memory of Eddie Aikau. Every year, Quiksilver invests a great deal of money and time to hold the opening ceremonies for a big wave contest that has a distinguished but inconsistent history. The event has been held only six and a half times in 20 years, so that means every year Quiksilver invests what has to be a couple hundred thousand dollars for an afternoon to remember Eddie Aikau, they are doing that for a contest that has a one in three chance of actually happening in any year.
But the ceremony is great – a couple dozen of the world’s best Waimea Bay surfers bringing their heavy artillery to the beach, to cruise and schmooze and talk to the media, then stand in a line as a kahu blesses the ceremony and remembers Eddie Aikau and his courage and bravery and all he represented for Hawaii, surfing and the world.
The Eddie opening ceremony is special for a number of reasons, and one of them is location, location, location. Waimea Bay has to rate in the Top 10 Most Beautiful Beaches on the planet. Even friends of mine who have lived on the North Shore all their lives get a little twinge when they drive by the Bay – a wild jungle valley running down to a straight stretch of sand fronting a perfect crescent of blue water that is dead calm most of time but deadly big a few days out of the year. Waimea Bay is the whole package: the rocks, the valley, the jungle, the church, the surf, the gnarly shorebreak, and it is one of God’s special places.
This year I made sure I got to Hawaii the day before the Eddie ceremony, and I’m glad I did, because it lived up to the expectations, and beyond.
The ceremony was scheduled to start at 3:00 and so I got there more than an hour early, but it wasn’t early enough. The parking lot was full and I just missed a spot along the road up top so I went back down and parked my big white van – borrowed from Karen, who everyone on the North Shore knows – in an illegal spot and then went schmoozing.
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Momma always said never go anywhere empty handed, so I walked across the park with a bag of historic surfing DVDs which included the Duke contests from 1966, 1967, 1968 and 1976 and other movies, and went looking for people who might appreciate them.
That wasn’t hard to do, as there were at least four generations of great surfers at this event, every from 80-something Rabbit Kekai to Jon Jon Florence. Walking around, I have those Duke contest DVDs to George Downing, Buffalo Keaulana and Jeff Hakman. But most importantly I got them to the Aikau family, because one of the DVD was a Bruce Brown production of the 1966 Duke Contest at Sunset Beach, and there was a short interview with Eddie and a few of his waves. Eddie Aikau paddled like a bat out of hell, charged big, windy Sunset as hard as anyone ever has and He Would Go with classic Hawaiian style. I wish they could have shown that 1966 Duke Contest to everyone at the event, so the younger generation could see who they were there to remember.
For the first hour or so I was stressing about the van and getting a ticket, but cruised and schmoozed, saying hello to the likes of Shaun Tomson, Tom Carroll, Paul Patterson and the World Champ himself: Kelly Slater. One of the people at the event was Kauai surfer Titus Kinimaka, who broke his leg at Waimea during the 1990s and almost died. There were quite a few people around from my hometown of Santa Cruz, including competitors Anthony Tashnick, Peter Mel and Flea.
The first couple hours was a whirlwind of talking and listening it would take a book to record it all. I remember one World Champion Who Shall Remain Anonymous laughing off a 100 MPH+ speeding ticket he got a couple nights before, although I think he knows he is going to get his license suspended when he goes to court the day after Christmas.
And Peter Mel talked about how four fins were the go for him in big waves, because they respond better in that crucial three or four seconds getting over the ledge while paddling giant Mavericks or Waimea Bay: “I rode a four fin at the Mavericks contest last year and they just give you that little extra, you know? They don’t hang up when you are going over the ledge and believe me that is a very important three seconds in a man’s life.”
At some point I ended up standing next to a smallish guy with wild, frizzy hair who I first thought was Noah Johnson, but turned out to be Eddie Vedder. I said hello and gave him a DVD called Trunk It and told him it had a lot of classic surfing and a lot of classic music and I hoped he would watch it. Then I (wisely) skipped over my well-rehearsed, clever/stupid fantasy conversation and asked him: “Of all the places you have traveled to and played, who are the most musical?”
He thought about that for a minute and had a good answer: “South Americans. Because they sing the guitar solos. No one else does that.”
And then Eddie excused himself and knelt down and began waxing an orange and yellow gun that looked to be one of Shane Dorian’s castaways because of the JC and other stickers. By now it was around 4:00 or 4:30 and there were hundreds of people at Waimea Falls Park. I had gotten lucky and snagged a legal parking space so I didn’t have to stress about that, and could relax and watch it all go down.
The surfers who had been milling about, talking to a couple dozen different media outlets organized themselves pretty quick, two dozen guys grabbing nine or ten feet of big wave guns a piece, all of them with leis on their necks and lining up in a half circle in no particular order, as the burly Westside Security brothers kept the dozens of photographers from getting out of control.
When they were all lined up, kahu Billy Mitchell got George Downing, Myra and Sol Aikau, Glen Moncata and Bob McKnight to join him in the middle. He asked everyone watching to join hands and then he gave a nice speech, partially in Hawaiian, mostly in English, which spoke of “mana.” That is the Hawaiian word for “energy” and it is similar to The Force in Star Wars. Mana is the energy that runs through the ocean and waves and people, and kahu Mitchell made it clear that people like Eddie let that ocean mana propel him, and make him special.
When kahu Mitchell had said his piece, the congregation broke up and there was a flow of human mana toward the ocean. All of the invited surfers and special guests walked down that worldclass beach to the water’s edge, where the Waimea River had been breeched and bodyboarders, skimboarders and bodysurfers were riding waves in the flow.
Out at sea, Waimea Bay was showing a little bit of fury. There was a lumpy, 10-12 foot swell breaking at Pinballs and beyond, and there were a few guys taking off on the big lumps – including one stand-up surfer with a paddle.
As hundreds of people stood at the water’s edge, the Happy Few paddled way out to the lineup, sat in a circle and engaged in their own private ceremony. Each surfer had a palm frond with him and at the end they slapped the water furiously, letting Eddie and the Gods know they were there, they were ready, bring it.
And then Waimea got a little crowded for about half an hour, as 24 of the world’s best took off on whatever they could find. There was one wave where a couple of guys absolutely ate it in the bowl, showing that Waimea at any size is nothing to be trifled with.
A surfer gets hungry after all that schmoozing and paddling and praying and surfing, and the surfers came back to lots of pupus and a nice sit-down meal provided by Quiksilver. Bob McKnight and Danny Kwock were both at the event. They mixed easily with Hawaiians and haole, having a good time and obviously enjoying the good things that their hard work and success allowed them to put on. There are some surf companies that are more about clothing than surfing, and others that are surf companies first. As big as Quiksilver has gotten – and their corporate HQ is like Microsoft, if you have never seen it – there is no doubt that at their core, Quiksilver is a surf company. The money, care and time they invest into the Eddie is proof of that, and it is that sincerity that is hopefully at the root of their success.
The sun went down around 6:00 and everyone grinded on plate dinner, Hawaiian style – rice, chicken, beef, sushi and salad. It was just a good vibe, all the way around, a lot of surfers and Hawaiian people remembering a great Hawaiian surfer, and the great surfers who will challenge Waimea in Eddie Aikau’s name.
After four hours of cruising and schmoozing, stalking and talking, wining and grinding, it all began to break up around 7:00. The night was still young and there were rumors that the mana would continue with a Pearl Jam and Jack Johnson private show up in Waimea Falls Park.
While some people went home, others stuck around to chase that rumor.
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-Ben Marcus
