I thought the place looked salvageable, but Sutherland said no. “Dry rot. Rust. The walls are racked. It’s a teardown.”
He sounded so unsentimental.
“Anyway, look at the neighborhood.”
He gave me an eyebrow signal that I had to interpret. We couldn’t actually see the neighbors. We were in the yard, surrounded by coconut palms, lush vegetation, an ancient unpainted stake fence. I decided I knew what he meant: mansions were slowly filling every lot along this part of the coast. In fact, Jock and his siblings had already sold this place to wealthy mainlanders. But the new owners seemed to be in no hurry to build, so Jock was still taking care of the yard, and using it to park his van while he surfed nearby.
He sounded so unsentimental.
“Anyway, look at the neighborhood.”
He gave me an eyebrow signal that I had to interpret. We couldn’t actually see the neighbors. We were in the yard, surrounded by coconut palms, lush vegetation, an ancient unpainted stake fence. I decided I knew what he meant: mansions were slowly filling every lot along this part of the coast. In fact, Jock and his siblings had already sold this place to wealthy mainlanders. But the new owners seemed to be in no hurry to build, so Jock was still taking care of the yard, and using it to park his van while he surfed nearby.
There were a dozen people out, and every one of them greeted Jock as he paddled past: little shakas and fist bumps with old regulars. This spot, where the waves range greatly in quality and intensity, is known as Jocko’s. The eponymous local had arrived. (...)
Sutherland surfs unusually well for a man of seventy-five. Surfing well at his age is unusual, full stop. But he has spent his whole life, nearly, in this wave-rich corner of Oahu. He’s wiry, long-armed, spry, disturbingly lean—five-ten, one-thirty-five—and he still carries, across his upper back, a serious rack of paddling muscles. He works as a roofer, running a small company, and gets in the water whenever possible. His hair is short and gray, his skin sun-punished and deeply lined. But his glance is sharp, and his default expression is a level, knowing, impish gaze. You need to watch the eyebrows. (...)
Although Jock didn’t know it, he and I went way back. I’m a few years younger, and also started surfing as a kid. But my family lived in Los Angeles, where the surf craze of the early sixties—call it the “Gidget” boom—was being manufactured. Jock was out here, on the North Shore of Oahu. Surfing has a cultish aspect, and many of its pilgrimage sites are in this small corner of Hawaii. When I took my vows, surfing had a sacred text, too—a magazine called Surfer, which outsiders inevitably called “the Bible of the sport.”
The magazine was created by John Severson, a California surfer and filmmaker who wanted to counter the “Gidget” version with something closer to the real thing. One of his inspired gimmicks was the Reader Poll, which débuted in 1963 and produced an annual list of the world’s best surfers. For my friends and me, the Surfer poll established a righteous pantheon. I can still name the top twenty from that first year, possibly in order.
In the mid-sixties, a flashy young haole (Hawaiian for “white person”) named Jock Sutherland made his move on surfing’s main stage—known simply as the North Shore—riding enormous waves with rare, almost playful aplomb. He was, unlike most surfers, a switch-foot, able to ride equally well leading with his left foot or his right. As a goofy-foot (right foot forward), he rode the Banzai Pipeline, the world’s most famous, most photogenic, and, at that time, most dangerous wave. Images of Jock in stylish high gear at huge Pipeline, one hand delicately grazing the water’s surface, hung in the bedrooms of surf rats everywhere. He rose swiftly through the Surfer poll, and in 1969 was No. 1—the consensus best surfer in the world.
When I mentioned this achievement, faux casually, Jock gave me the fish eye. “That whole thing was rigged,” he said. “Severson decided who would win. I had a part in a film he was releasing.” (...)
We were eating home-cooked Asian-style mixed vegetables at his place, a modest upstairs apartment in the hills above the North Shore. I should not have been shocked, but I was. Hadn’t I faithfully voted, after long deliberations, in each Reader Poll? Hadn’t I worshipped the surfing of young Jock? Of course, I didn’t know anything about him beyond a few great film clips and some classic stills.
A surfer as famous as he was could have made enough money for an easy retirement, I thought, but Sutherland hadn’t cashed in. Surfing was never, to his mind, a job. Even when he was at the apex of the surfing world, he was unimpressed, stubborn. There was no pro tour in those days. “You could work for a board manufacturer, maybe have your own signature-model board,” he told me. “But that meant sell, sell, sell. That was . . . crass. I mean, the banality. It was antithetical to being able to enjoy being out in the water.”
Jock built a different sort of life on his home coast. He’s seemingly everybody’s favorite roofer, a part-time farmer, a revered elder with garrulous tendencies. I’ve heard him called “the mayor of the North Shore.” My old starstruck view of him was pure projection. In truth, he was, from an early age, leading a strange, half-wild, quite complicated existence.
His place was jammed with books, magazines, cookware, and tools, but there was no shelf of trophies or mementos—just a faded poster in a hallway from the 1967 Duke Kahanamoku Invitational, a major surf contest that Jock won. He had recently been elected to something called the Hawaii Waterman Hall of Fame, which throws a big banquet in Honolulu. Evidence of the award was nowhere to be seen. (...)
When Jock was twelve, his mother sent him to stay with a man known as the Hermit of Kalalau, on the island of Kauai. The hermit lived in a cave on the Nāpali Coast—a roadless wilderness where sea cliffs rise as high as four thousand feet. “That was actually his summer cave, down by the beach,” Jock told me. “He had a winter cave up the valley.”
The hermit’s name was Dr. Bernard Wheatley. “I was the object of his displeasure,” Jock recalled. “Being a kid, I was unaware of the imperatives of his existence. There was a good little bodysurfing wave out front, but he didn’t want me to swim out there. He was responsible for me. I started whining, and I ended up bodysurfing it.”
Jock enjoyed himself in Kalalau. “It was like a summer camp, but for more serious stuff than laying around playing cards,” he said. “We did a lot of foraging.” They also did some hunting—Jock had brought along the family .22. Dr. Wheatley warmed to him, slightly: “He tolerated me. I was curious. I had potential.”
Jock suspected that his mother wanted him to spend time with a father figure. His father, John Lauren Sutherland, was a Coast Guard officer who had left the family when Jock was ten. How did his mother know Dr. Wheatley? Well, he was her type of person. She had a job with the Army, doing education counselling, and was raising four kids alone, but she frequented the wilder coasts of Hawaii and had an exceptionally wide circle of friends.
Audrey Sutherland was a one-off. She grew up in California, went to U.C.L.A. at sixteen for international relations, worked as a riveter in the Second World War. She became a long-distance swimmer, married a sailor, worked in commercial fishing, and moved to Oahu in 1952. There she did substitute teaching, taught swimming, got her Army job. Her kids, growing up in the decommissioned barracks at the ocean’s edge, were all water babies. After their father left, they scrounged. “When you’re poor,” Jock told me, “you learn how to find food on the reefs, hunt, pick wild fruit, trade with your neighbors. We set out lobster traps. Spearfishing, night diving. Got a lot of fruit from the hills.”
Audrey drew up a list of things that every child should be able to do by age sixteen and stuck it on the wall. It read, in part:
—Clean a fish and dress a chicken
—Write a business letter
—Splice or put a fixture on an electric cord
—Operate a sewing machine and mend your own clothes
—Handle a boat safely and competently
—Save someone drowning using available equipment
—Read at a tenth grade level
—Listen to an adult talk with interest and empathy
—Dance with any age
This list changed with the times, adding computers and contraception, and nobody really kept score, but everybody got the idea.
Audrey had what she called a “wildcat need” to take wilderness trips alone. She used her short vacations from her Army job to explore backcountry Hawaii—climbing volcanoes, swimming remote coasts, living off the land. She swam the northeast shore of Molokai, perhaps the wildest coast in the islands, from east to west, pulling her supplies behind her on a line. That took a week. She hiked into narrow, once inhabited valleys, got into terrible scrapes on cliffs and landings, nearly lost her life on more than one occasion. In 1978, she published a book about her Molokai expeditions called, after Louisa May Alcott, “Paddling My Own Canoe.”
Audrey had a theory about relations with her kids: “They decided letting me be crazy gave them more freedom.” But sometimes she took one of them along for what Jock called “our mountain education.” The Sutherlands didn’t have a TV when Jock was young, and Audrey was proud to raise readers. The kids went to high school in Waialua, an old sugar-mill town a few miles down the coast. A retired county lifeguard who worked with Jock’s younger brother told me, “All those Sutherlands were really fucking smarty-pants. They read way more books than anybody else.” (...)
Jock’s father introduced him to surfing—on an old balsa board, as he recalls. He began to surf at spots he could paddle to, or walk to with a board on his head—and surfboards then weighed nearly as much as he did. Just to the west was Laniakea, just to the east Chun’s Reef. Both are well-known breaks, and yet, surfing them with Jock, you learn that every peak and chunk of reef has a hyperlocalized name: “That’s Piddlies, and that thing over there is Chuckleheads.”
Jock knows everybody on the North Shore, but he seems to keep special track of good photographers, like the old cover-shot surfer he is. A set comes through, and we need to scramble out. Jock, as always, gets a head start, and catches the first wave. Afterward, he paddles back out and asks me, shyly, if he looked dorky jumping up regular-foot (that’s left foot forward, not his more natural stance), and I assure him that he looked smooth. He nods happily—never too late for vanity.
Later, he insists that I take off in front of him. It’s a small wave, not much wall, and I’m not sure what we’re doing riding it together. He yells, “Come back!” He’s gesturing at me to ride toward him, which I do, though it makes no sense. He keeps gesturing. Now we’re on a collision course. “More!” He cuts back to give me more room. I keep heading toward him, against my better judgment. Our boards are now inches apart. The wave is a dribbler. “O.K.!” he yells, steering away and pointing at the wave beyond me. I turn and see that this small, weak wave has hit a shallow shelf of coral, far closer to shore than people normally surf at Chun’s. The wave stands up, chest high, turns smooth as pearl, and I find myself flying through a lovely section, the sun infusing the lip with a gray-green glow. Jock, now far behind, is giving me a thumbs-up. (...)
Jock, after many false starts, is off to see Pia. To prepare, he goes to see a barber who works out of her house near Sunset. He’s given her a ton of avocados, so it’s a discount haircut. He comes out looking like a boy. Jock, for a world-class athlete, has always had a delicate head and neck, and this haircut makes me want to protect him from the world.
Before he goes, we surf Chun’s one more time, and he gives me a wave-judgment tip that I could not have imagined previously. It’s a rising swell, and the sets are starting to produce a lovely peak right next to the channel. The crowd has moved over there, but Jock instead points toward the horizon: “Let’s go, Bill.” I see nothing, but I follow. He’s paddling fast, moving way out, away from the crowd. Eventually, a wave appears—easily the biggest of the day, standing up far outside. It’s physically impossible, I believe, that Jock could have known that wave was coming. But he gets there in plenty of time, right to the heart of the peak, and spins. Everybody else in the water is caught inside by at least forty yards. People are shouting in dismay and disbelief. It’s a demonstration of basically incomprehensible mastery.
Then Jock does something truly weird. He jumps up and goes left. Chun’s is a right-hander—the channel is on the west side of the reef. But Jock sets out east, from the main peak across a very long wall. I punch through the lip near the takeoff and turn to watch. The wave runs off for fifty, sixty yards, no sign of Jock, until he finally comes sailing over the shoulder, way down by Piddlies someplace. It is one of the most counterintuitive things I’ve seen in a lifetime of surfing.
[ed. I can't praise Bill Finnegan's Pulitizer Prize-winning book Barbarian Days highly enough. Even if you think you have zero interest in surfing, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised, even enthralled.]
Jock built a different sort of life on his home coast. He’s seemingly everybody’s favorite roofer, a part-time farmer, a revered elder with garrulous tendencies. I’ve heard him called “the mayor of the North Shore.” My old starstruck view of him was pure projection. In truth, he was, from an early age, leading a strange, half-wild, quite complicated existence.
His place was jammed with books, magazines, cookware, and tools, but there was no shelf of trophies or mementos—just a faded poster in a hallway from the 1967 Duke Kahanamoku Invitational, a major surf contest that Jock won. He had recently been elected to something called the Hawaii Waterman Hall of Fame, which throws a big banquet in Honolulu. Evidence of the award was nowhere to be seen. (...)
When Jock was twelve, his mother sent him to stay with a man known as the Hermit of Kalalau, on the island of Kauai. The hermit lived in a cave on the Nāpali Coast—a roadless wilderness where sea cliffs rise as high as four thousand feet. “That was actually his summer cave, down by the beach,” Jock told me. “He had a winter cave up the valley.”
The hermit’s name was Dr. Bernard Wheatley. “I was the object of his displeasure,” Jock recalled. “Being a kid, I was unaware of the imperatives of his existence. There was a good little bodysurfing wave out front, but he didn’t want me to swim out there. He was responsible for me. I started whining, and I ended up bodysurfing it.”
Jock enjoyed himself in Kalalau. “It was like a summer camp, but for more serious stuff than laying around playing cards,” he said. “We did a lot of foraging.” They also did some hunting—Jock had brought along the family .22. Dr. Wheatley warmed to him, slightly: “He tolerated me. I was curious. I had potential.”
Jock suspected that his mother wanted him to spend time with a father figure. His father, John Lauren Sutherland, was a Coast Guard officer who had left the family when Jock was ten. How did his mother know Dr. Wheatley? Well, he was her type of person. She had a job with the Army, doing education counselling, and was raising four kids alone, but she frequented the wilder coasts of Hawaii and had an exceptionally wide circle of friends.
Audrey Sutherland was a one-off. She grew up in California, went to U.C.L.A. at sixteen for international relations, worked as a riveter in the Second World War. She became a long-distance swimmer, married a sailor, worked in commercial fishing, and moved to Oahu in 1952. There she did substitute teaching, taught swimming, got her Army job. Her kids, growing up in the decommissioned barracks at the ocean’s edge, were all water babies. After their father left, they scrounged. “When you’re poor,” Jock told me, “you learn how to find food on the reefs, hunt, pick wild fruit, trade with your neighbors. We set out lobster traps. Spearfishing, night diving. Got a lot of fruit from the hills.”
Audrey drew up a list of things that every child should be able to do by age sixteen and stuck it on the wall. It read, in part:
—Write a business letter
—Splice or put a fixture on an electric cord
—Operate a sewing machine and mend your own clothes
—Handle a boat safely and competently
—Save someone drowning using available equipment
—Read at a tenth grade level
—Listen to an adult talk with interest and empathy
—Dance with any age
This list changed with the times, adding computers and contraception, and nobody really kept score, but everybody got the idea.
Audrey had what she called a “wildcat need” to take wilderness trips alone. She used her short vacations from her Army job to explore backcountry Hawaii—climbing volcanoes, swimming remote coasts, living off the land. She swam the northeast shore of Molokai, perhaps the wildest coast in the islands, from east to west, pulling her supplies behind her on a line. That took a week. She hiked into narrow, once inhabited valleys, got into terrible scrapes on cliffs and landings, nearly lost her life on more than one occasion. In 1978, she published a book about her Molokai expeditions called, after Louisa May Alcott, “Paddling My Own Canoe.”
Audrey had a theory about relations with her kids: “They decided letting me be crazy gave them more freedom.” But sometimes she took one of them along for what Jock called “our mountain education.” The Sutherlands didn’t have a TV when Jock was young, and Audrey was proud to raise readers. The kids went to high school in Waialua, an old sugar-mill town a few miles down the coast. A retired county lifeguard who worked with Jock’s younger brother told me, “All those Sutherlands were really fucking smarty-pants. They read way more books than anybody else.” (...)
Jock’s father introduced him to surfing—on an old balsa board, as he recalls. He began to surf at spots he could paddle to, or walk to with a board on his head—and surfboards then weighed nearly as much as he did. Just to the west was Laniakea, just to the east Chun’s Reef. Both are well-known breaks, and yet, surfing them with Jock, you learn that every peak and chunk of reef has a hyperlocalized name: “That’s Piddlies, and that thing over there is Chuckleheads.”
The North Shore has a concentration of spots that, in the wintertime, break bigger and better than any other known coast, and in the fifties a trickle of doughty Californians began making the pilgrimage, testing their skill and nerve alongside a small crew of locals. A few big-wave surfers became household names—at least in the households where I hung out. Board-makers started shaping specialized boards, known as “guns,” for riding huge waves.
But the first time Jock surfed Waimea Bay, which was then considered the largest ridable wave in the world, he did so on the same battered board he rode at Piddlies. He was fifteen. “It was pretty consequential, riding a board that wasn’t all that fast,” he recalled, quietly. His talent drew attention, and older guys started giving him lifts to more distant spots, like Sunset Beach, a complex big-wave reef break farther east. A local board shaper, Dick Brewer, befriended Jock. “He was kind of a proxy father,” Jock said. The relationship had its transactional side. Brewer gave Jock boards that let him surf faster, harder, more freely, and people saw the Brewer sticker under his feet.
Although there was no pro tour yet, there were contests. Jock won the Hawaiian State Championships three years in a row, and in 1966 placed second in the World Championships, in San Diego. These events were all held in small waves—not his specialty—but he was wicked fast, technically solid, and unpredictable. He switched stance, which is something you rarely see in contests. In unchallenging waves, he did silly but difficult things like taking off fin first. He seemed to be out there having fun, and yet he usually won. When he won the 1967 Duke Kahanamoku Invitational, it was the biggest deal in competitive surfing, at least in Hawaii, and it was held at Sunset, in serious waves. Jock, who was still in his teens, got no prize money.
But it was not in contests that he made his name. It was at Pipeline, which sits roughly halfway between Waimea and Sunset Beach. A few surfers rode Pipeline well, notably Butch Van Artsdalen, a hellion from La Jolla. But most people were afraid of it. When Pipe is working, it breaks with stupendous force in shallow water, producing one of the world’s most beautiful, deadly tubes. Jock and his buddies started riding it on small days. “I made one or two out of ten,” he said.
He kept at it, refining his approach. He started making the takeoffs, and seeing how to avoid the heavy lip, by quickly finding a ridable line and “pulling in”—crouching close to the face and letting the barrel envelop him. Then, with perfect positioning and a bit of luck, he would be thrown into the clear by the explosive force of the lip’s impact. Jock seemed to have more time as he rode than anybody else did. Dropping in to the heaviest waves, he would fade and stall, casually timing his bottom turn to set up the deepest possible barrel. He would disappear into the roaring darkness, then reappear, usually, going very fast, with that little grin. (...)
But the first time Jock surfed Waimea Bay, which was then considered the largest ridable wave in the world, he did so on the same battered board he rode at Piddlies. He was fifteen. “It was pretty consequential, riding a board that wasn’t all that fast,” he recalled, quietly. His talent drew attention, and older guys started giving him lifts to more distant spots, like Sunset Beach, a complex big-wave reef break farther east. A local board shaper, Dick Brewer, befriended Jock. “He was kind of a proxy father,” Jock said. The relationship had its transactional side. Brewer gave Jock boards that let him surf faster, harder, more freely, and people saw the Brewer sticker under his feet.
Although there was no pro tour yet, there were contests. Jock won the Hawaiian State Championships three years in a row, and in 1966 placed second in the World Championships, in San Diego. These events were all held in small waves—not his specialty—but he was wicked fast, technically solid, and unpredictable. He switched stance, which is something you rarely see in contests. In unchallenging waves, he did silly but difficult things like taking off fin first. He seemed to be out there having fun, and yet he usually won. When he won the 1967 Duke Kahanamoku Invitational, it was the biggest deal in competitive surfing, at least in Hawaii, and it was held at Sunset, in serious waves. Jock, who was still in his teens, got no prize money.
But it was not in contests that he made his name. It was at Pipeline, which sits roughly halfway between Waimea and Sunset Beach. A few surfers rode Pipeline well, notably Butch Van Artsdalen, a hellion from La Jolla. But most people were afraid of it. When Pipe is working, it breaks with stupendous force in shallow water, producing one of the world’s most beautiful, deadly tubes. Jock and his buddies started riding it on small days. “I made one or two out of ten,” he said.
He kept at it, refining his approach. He started making the takeoffs, and seeing how to avoid the heavy lip, by quickly finding a ridable line and “pulling in”—crouching close to the face and letting the barrel envelop him. Then, with perfect positioning and a bit of luck, he would be thrown into the clear by the explosive force of the lip’s impact. Jock seemed to have more time as he rode than anybody else did. Dropping in to the heaviest waves, he would fade and stall, casually timing his bottom turn to set up the deepest possible barrel. He would disappear into the roaring darkness, then reappear, usually, going very fast, with that little grin. (...)
Jock knows everybody on the North Shore, but he seems to keep special track of good photographers, like the old cover-shot surfer he is. A set comes through, and we need to scramble out. Jock, as always, gets a head start, and catches the first wave. Afterward, he paddles back out and asks me, shyly, if he looked dorky jumping up regular-foot (that’s left foot forward, not his more natural stance), and I assure him that he looked smooth. He nods happily—never too late for vanity.
Later, he insists that I take off in front of him. It’s a small wave, not much wall, and I’m not sure what we’re doing riding it together. He yells, “Come back!” He’s gesturing at me to ride toward him, which I do, though it makes no sense. He keeps gesturing. Now we’re on a collision course. “More!” He cuts back to give me more room. I keep heading toward him, against my better judgment. Our boards are now inches apart. The wave is a dribbler. “O.K.!” he yells, steering away and pointing at the wave beyond me. I turn and see that this small, weak wave has hit a shallow shelf of coral, far closer to shore than people normally surf at Chun’s. The wave stands up, chest high, turns smooth as pearl, and I find myself flying through a lovely section, the sun infusing the lip with a gray-green glow. Jock, now far behind, is giving me a thumbs-up. (...)
A solid north swell hits the North Shore. It’s way out of season, nearly May. Jock and I check Pipe. The crowd is so thick that the surfers look, from down the beach, like ants stuck on a glue trap, an undulant mass. It’s dead glassy, no wind, and very ominous-looking. The water is gray, almost brown, and the swell seems bunched up for its size. Ten-foot waves come through, and nobody in the crowd even tries to take off. The waves detonate on the reef, most with no corner, no shoulder, confirming the wisdom of the crowd’s prudence. The bunched-up swell makes a two-wave hold-down look all too possible. “Not user-friendly,” Jock says.
We drive to Sunset. The wave there breaks on a long set of reefs far from shore, and it is handling this swell beautifully. Two-story peaks stand against the sky, and then a long clean wall roars toward the channel. Dozens of people are watching from the highway, but there are only a few surfers out. My heart hammers. This is obviously the spot. I start changing. Jock does not.
“You’re not going out?”
Jock looks miserable. “No, I’m going to run some errands. I feel emotionally wounded.” He had a difficult conversation that morning, apparently, with Pia Stern, his longtime girlfriend. Pia, who lives in San Diego, is a painter and an art teacher. She and Jock met in the nineties, when she was teaching at the University of Hawaii. They have never lived together. They fly back and forth when they can. “We’re very attached, very close, but I don’t have a name for it,” Pia told me. (...)
Jock quotes Pia often, and seems in awe of her. But, Pia told me, “I’m uncomfortable when he puts me on a pedestal.” This is a theme with Jock. He speaks of his mother with reverential affection. He keeps a collection of her handwritten journals. But his view of his father has developed an edge. “He treated Mom more like a girlfriend than a wife,” he told me. “He had girlfriends everywhere. Really, he was just another selfish surfer.” (...)
I heard Dave Rastovich, a superb pro surfer, contrast Jock with the “grumpy old dude who wishes it was yesteryear”—the inevitable guy who grumbles about the days when it wasn’t so crowded and, hell, even the waves were better. Jock was the antithesis, “always vibrant and always buzzing,” he said. I couldn’t argue with that. He still wanted to surf well, and wanted to look good as he surfed, but I have never heard him fret, even in a sidelong way, about his lost relevance in high-performance surfing. He still likes to compete—in the “old guys’ division,” in local North Shore contests. Last year, he took second at Haleiwa. (...)
We drive to Sunset. The wave there breaks on a long set of reefs far from shore, and it is handling this swell beautifully. Two-story peaks stand against the sky, and then a long clean wall roars toward the channel. Dozens of people are watching from the highway, but there are only a few surfers out. My heart hammers. This is obviously the spot. I start changing. Jock does not.
“You’re not going out?”
Jock looks miserable. “No, I’m going to run some errands. I feel emotionally wounded.” He had a difficult conversation that morning, apparently, with Pia Stern, his longtime girlfriend. Pia, who lives in San Diego, is a painter and an art teacher. She and Jock met in the nineties, when she was teaching at the University of Hawaii. They have never lived together. They fly back and forth when they can. “We’re very attached, very close, but I don’t have a name for it,” Pia told me. (...)
Jock quotes Pia often, and seems in awe of her. But, Pia told me, “I’m uncomfortable when he puts me on a pedestal.” This is a theme with Jock. He speaks of his mother with reverential affection. He keeps a collection of her handwritten journals. But his view of his father has developed an edge. “He treated Mom more like a girlfriend than a wife,” he told me. “He had girlfriends everywhere. Really, he was just another selfish surfer.” (...)
I heard Dave Rastovich, a superb pro surfer, contrast Jock with the “grumpy old dude who wishes it was yesteryear”—the inevitable guy who grumbles about the days when it wasn’t so crowded and, hell, even the waves were better. Jock was the antithesis, “always vibrant and always buzzing,” he said. I couldn’t argue with that. He still wanted to surf well, and wanted to look good as he surfed, but I have never heard him fret, even in a sidelong way, about his lost relevance in high-performance surfing. He still likes to compete—in the “old guys’ division,” in local North Shore contests. Last year, he took second at Haleiwa. (...)
Jock, after many false starts, is off to see Pia. To prepare, he goes to see a barber who works out of her house near Sunset. He’s given her a ton of avocados, so it’s a discount haircut. He comes out looking like a boy. Jock, for a world-class athlete, has always had a delicate head and neck, and this haircut makes me want to protect him from the world.
Before he goes, we surf Chun’s one more time, and he gives me a wave-judgment tip that I could not have imagined previously. It’s a rising swell, and the sets are starting to produce a lovely peak right next to the channel. The crowd has moved over there, but Jock instead points toward the horizon: “Let’s go, Bill.” I see nothing, but I follow. He’s paddling fast, moving way out, away from the crowd. Eventually, a wave appears—easily the biggest of the day, standing up far outside. It’s physically impossible, I believe, that Jock could have known that wave was coming. But he gets there in plenty of time, right to the heart of the peak, and spins. Everybody else in the water is caught inside by at least forty yards. People are shouting in dismay and disbelief. It’s a demonstration of basically incomprehensible mastery.
Then Jock does something truly weird. He jumps up and goes left. Chun’s is a right-hander—the channel is on the west side of the reef. But Jock sets out east, from the main peak across a very long wall. I punch through the lip near the takeoff and turn to watch. The wave runs off for fifty, sixty yards, no sign of Jock, until he finally comes sailing over the shoulder, way down by Piddlies someplace. It is one of the most counterintuitive things I’ve seen in a lifetime of surfing.
by William Finnegan, New Yorker | Read more:
Image: Katy Grannan for The New Yorker[ed. I can't praise Bill Finnegan's Pulitizer Prize-winning book Barbarian Days highly enough. Even if you think you have zero interest in surfing, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised, even enthralled.]
