Flippy Hoffman's voice lives in my head by way of Jeff Divine and Tom Servais, who both do a good Hoffman imitation. Flippy was one of those old-school gravel-voiced profaners who liked to start in with an exclamatory "Christ!" As in, "Christ, Simmons, learn how to turn that fuckin' thing, you almost killed me!"

What I admired most about Hoffman, and its a rare trait among legend-status surfers, was how he made the sport look better and more interesting by tearing things down as required. The opposite of a myth-maker. Flippy loved riding waves, and loved the adventure that came with red zone surfing, but never felt the need to gild the past, to romanticize people, places and events. Hoffman knew that life's great moments are made no less great by the fact that they're generally stuck like tiny islands in a sea of pettiness, boredom, and all manner of human folly.

But let's turn it over to Flippy himself. Here is a shortened version of an interview he did with Surfing in 1992, on the early days on the North Shore.

You've got to remember one thing, I'm talking about pre-history here, before anything was really going on out there. If you want stories about what it was like once the whole scene got going, talk to Buzzy or Peter Cole or Munoz. Munoz loves to tell those stories. I was there before all that shit.

First time I saw the North Shore was in '52, the winter of '52-'53. My brother Walter was stationed in Hawaii and he would send us back these photos of big surf at Makaha. When I finally got there, Walter was sot of a god downtown. He was a big deal, one of the kings of the Waikiki Surf Club. And the local kids thought we were the greatest because we lived on the beach and would just sit back, have a beer, talk story and bullshit. They thought we were fucking fabulous. Except for Buzzy Trent—he was hyper.

[Later on] we lived in tents on Makaha Beach. We'd surf when the waves were big, and when it was small we'd dive for fish and cook 'em up on the sand. Sometimes one of us would get a big turtle and that would feed us for days. It all sounds real pretty, but don't kid yourself. It was awful. We were all sick. We had boils. I'll tell you, the day I got there, Burrhead [Jim Drever] was in the hospital, Lorrin [Harrison] just got out of the hospital, Bob Card had boils all over his body—had to leave the island or he was going to die. I wound up with a hernia and carbuncles all over. Dysentery—we were all really fucked up because we were living in tents, camping out the whole time.

We spent three months at Makaha, me and [Bob] Simmons. I remember the big deal was when they held the first Makaha contest. That first one had a lot of fistfights and hassles. Typical Hawaiian deal. The big beef was between the local kids and the Town kids. My brother Walter was really tight with the Town guys. So for that first contest, my brother comes out there with a bunch of guys from Town and they start taking waves and taking girls and the Makaha boys really didn't like that. Then, on top of that, they had this big luau and a hassle developed over how to cook the pig. Things got pretty hot. Except instead of beating each other up, all the Hawaiians decided to beat the haoles. Luckily, Walter was a big guy who everybody respected, and he saved Simmons' and mine and everybody else's ass. But this was the kind of deal that was happening. I had to get out.

Simmons and me decided to move to the North Shore. Simmons told me he'd heard of a place to rent over there for ten dollars a month. So we moved into a little white house at the tip of the point at Sunset. It's still there, in fact. But back then it was the only house around. The whole North Shore was empty, real barren. No houses along the beach. I remember Kam Highway, there was a railroad line alongside the road. There wasn't all the bushes and scrub that there is today. The railroad crews took care of all that shit, pruned it back. You used to be able to just pull the car over and check all the surf spots. You can't do that now; it's all grown out.

So we lived there and surfed Sunset. Surfers had been driving out there occasionally, of course. Wally [Froiseth], Georgie [Downing] and Rabbit had been going out there for years. Lorrin Harrison I think rode Haleiwa back in the late '20s. Lorrin and Pete Peterson would stow away on the S.S. Lurline, the ocean liner. As it came around Diamond Head, they'd dive overboard and swim to shore. They were hardcore, man. Really hardy guys.

But even though surfers had been driving out now and then to the North Shore, nobody actually lived there. Just pig ranchers and shit. So Simmons and me moved out there and we surfed, then we'd sit around and argue. That was it. Every day. Sometimes guys would come over from Makaha or Town and they'd surf, then leave. Me and Simmons would stay, surf and sit and argue. Simmons was more of an avid surfer than I was. He argued a lot, read a lot, talked a lot. But I didn't mind. I was 24, a commercial fisherman and a diver. I'd spent a lot of time with guys who'd been in jail, derelicts—I could handle that part of it, just living out in the country with one other guy and no company. I was used to guys like Simmons. We'd sit around and play checkers, which I'd win 20% of the time. Or chess, which I'd win 10% of the time. Or ping-pong, which I'd never win. Simmons was really good. Fairly good at checkers and chess, but unbelievable at ping-pong.

We were riding big balsa guns. Simmons had a helluva time that winter. He was a good surfer, but he insisted on riding boards with these big wide tails. They wouldn't penetrate; they'd lift up at the top of the wave on takeoff. And then freefall. Simmons had a tough time, but he'd never change his boards, he'd never admit that they weren't working.

We rode some big waves. Maximum-sized Sunset, whatever that is. We were into catching big waves, but we weren't doing a hell of a lot once we were on them. We did a lot of swimming, too. We got cleaned out a lot. And we'd go out anywhere; we'd surf Revelations, way, way outside of V-land, we'd surf anything. Size wasn't a problem. As a commercial fisherman, you're fishing and diving a mile out to sea. So being out in the middle of the ocean doesn't bother me like it does the average surfer. They don't know what the fuck they're doing out there. It's another world. But when you live out there, you get used to it. Anyway, we'd been bodysurfing the Wedge back home, which was much gnarlier than Sunset.

A couple years later the whole scene started to grow. At one point, I think it was '55 or '56, I went back and Buzzy was running some sort of training camp. Had all these guys running up and down the beach trying to get healthy, working out, holding their breath and all that kind of shit. Oh they were very serious about it. But God, we used to laugh at them. So more guys were out there surfing, but nobody was yet living there. Buzzy never lived on the North Shore—he'd always drive back over to Makaha. Rick Grigg and Fred Van Dyke and Peter Cole, they didn't move out there until a couple years later, the late '50s.

It's not really that different now. I don't care what you say, there are still plenty of surfers on the North Shore who don't give a damn about the whole scene; who are surfing big waves and could give a shit if anyone is taking their photograph. And they're still sitting around arguing with their buddies and driving into Haleiwa, just like we used to. Only difference is, back then there was nobody else around.

Flippy Hoffman died in 2010. Incredible he went as long as he did, considering how many times he got bent while diving. But that's another other story. Or series of stories. Anyway, today is Hoffman's birthday—he would have been 84. Cheers to you, Flippy!

FLIPPY HOFFMAN: MIGHTY DESTROYER OF BULLSHIT

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