Surfing's Dark Side on the North Shore | The New York Times 2009

The North Shore of Oahu has long been a surfer's paradise. The home of massive, perfectly formed waves that continue to draw board riders from across the globe. As a kid, you got all the surf magazines in Australia. You saw the pictures of the North Shore and these waves and you went, you know, look, that's something you got to do. But this idyllic setting has a darker side, and Peter Townend, one of Australia's legendary surfers, was part of it. Because in those days, you didn't get in the events unless you were making some noise. And sometimes people didn't like to hear the noise. It caused problems. Townend, also known as P.T., won the very first World Championship of Surfing here in 1976. Thirty-plus years later, it's a pretty cool thing to see your name first on the list and Kelly Slater's on the other end of the list. It probably means a lot more now than it did back then. Since then, surfing has become a global, multibillion-dollar industry. And during several weeks every December, crowds flock to the North Shore to watch the world's best surfers compete at the Billabong Pipeline Masters Tournament, considered the Super Bowl of surfing. But surfing's sunny image is misleading, as revealed in a recent film called Bustin' Down the Door. The film celebrates how a group of surfers from Australia and South Africa, and not native Hawaiians, pioneered the professional surfers' movement here in the 1970s. The surfers, P.T. among them, proclaimed their surfing superiority over the locals, causing intense resentment. I don't think that we went out in the water to, like, piss people off. Despite whatever tensions were caused, whether it was us not being humble, whether it was us being too aggressive in the water, whatever it was, is that we did whatever we did because we believed we could make the sport happen. A group calling itself Tahui formed in 1976 to protest new contests that kept locals off the waves. The surfers were threatened, and several were beaten. Some of them acquired guns for protection. P.T. admits he got off lightly. You know, I got punched out and off the wall. I didn't get beat to a pulp or anything, but I got a couple of good head slaps, as Eddie would call them. One of the founders of Tahui is Eddie Rothman. So all these people come here from the mainland, from Australia, from wherever they came, and just really disrespect the place, you know? These guys came over here super aggressive, trying to catch every wave in the water, dropping in on the young kids, you know, out of control. That's why Tahui was formed, is to make sure local people get their waves too. They had pretty systematic protests where they would go to the surf tournaments and they would paddle out in large packs, even though they were not supposed to because of the so-called permits that excluded them from the waves. The film has reopened old wounds and put a spotlight on a persistent and unsavory aspect of North Shore surf culture, where breaches of respect are sometimes met with vicious reprisal. In this 2004 video, a visiting blonde surfer who paddles out during a surf contest is confronted by a local. A fight breaks out in the water. The fight resumes on the beach, this time with a blonde surfer confronted by Kala Alexander. They just think a lot of locals here are violent, and you know what I mean? It's just that we put a lot of emphasis on respect, and people come over here and disrespect people. You might be in a fight, you know what I mean? It's just the way it is. You don't do that. Kala Alexander is a member of the Wolf Pack, a club of young surfers who act as protectors of the break here at Pipeline, sometimes punishing those who violate their unwritten code. It's not about putting people in their place. You saw it. Pipeline's dangerous. And yesterday was small. The day before was two, three times as big. What would make us all get along a lot better is if a lot of people realized that it's over their abilities. Surfing's increasing popularity has lured larger and larger crowds into the breaks at Pipeline, and some, even the best, say that a certain vigilante justice at Pipeline helps ensure order. With a wave that's that intense, you're going to have people that are intense too. That's where they live. That's their backyard. No one's going to come in there and try to just have their way with the place or, you know, with the crowd or anything. It's kept in order, and it seems to work at Pipeline. Alexander says the video, and others like it online, overstate the extent of violence here. Both Tahui and the Wolf Pack have tried to soften their image, organizing benefit events and Easter egg hunts. I feel like I'm a lot mellower. I never did condone violence, you know. But in life, stuff happens, you know what I mean? And, you know, we all have emotions, and sometimes they get the best of us, and I regret a lot of the things that I've done. While the violence may be repugnant to some, it has long been weaved into surfing's culture here, a fact that is recognized by those who have come, and will continue to come, to surf some of the best waves in the world. A lot of what the North Shore has been around, give respect, get respect. That's an important part of coming to the North Shore. And I don't think that's changed a bit.