Revolution is not a Dinner Party

The Tao of George

Getting Slippery with Bob McTavish

Bismarck with a Tan

Plastic Machine

Enlightenment at Honolua Bay

Panic on the Showroom Floor

Style Takes a Dive

Everybody Must Get Stoned

Surfer Goes Electrical Bananas

No Contest

There Will be Slaps

Kook Straps, Cadillacs, and Sex Wax

Blame it on the Boogie

Country Soul

Higher and Brighter with Alby Falzon

Fresh Blood on the Newsstand

Long Road to Bells Beach

Speed Freaks

Gods of Thunder

The Impossible Wave

Into the Vortex

Gerry Lopez, Pipeline Firewalker

The Rubberman Cometh

Barefoot Revolution

Tuberiding became the ultimate surfing maneuver during the shortboard revolution, and remains so today. Placing yourself inside the spinning chamber formed as the curl throws out ahead of the wave, racing through the hollows, and shooting back into daylight at the end—nothing in the sport can touch it.

From the late '50s to the mid '60s, tuberiding, as a sports world phenomenon, was just slightly more common than hitting a hole in one. Prior to that, hollow waves were simply avoided altogether. A big, finless surfboard was useless—dangerous, in fact—on what was then called a “plunger” or a “dumper.” Waikiki was the surf-world capital for 50 years because its gently sloped breaks were dependably 

-hollow. Duke Kahanamoku wrote in 1911 that a good surfing wave was “long in forming, and slow to break.” Hollow waves, by compariosn, tend to jolt forward suddenly and are often short.

After World War II, when the fin became a standard surfboard design feature, surfers learned to hold a tight angle across the wave face. Nobody spent any real time inside the tube over the next decade, but a hollow wave nonetheless became something to look forward to, as it meant the ride would be faster and more challenging. Bruce Brown made the point in his 1961 film 

 which opens with a voice-over homage to the tube: “Hollow waves are the best kind to ride. Doesn’t matter much what size it is, a hollow wave is the best.” But tuberiding on a longboard was so hard that few surfers even bothered to try. Getting a 10-foot 30-pound polyurethane slab of foam tucked into a hollow wave was just a little easier than fitting a model ship into a bottle. Still, by accident more than design, surfers occasionally found themselves into a tube section, at which point they usually defaulted to a bent-over, head-down position—the surfing equivalent of driving through a tunnel with eyes closed and arms locked.

Hawaiians were more comfortable in the tube than other surfers. Reefbreaks as a rule provide the most consistent and predictable hollow waves—tuberiding is easier when the surfer knows what’s coming and can set the ride up accordingly—and Hawaii is filled with such breaks. In the early 1960s, Joey Cabell, Wayne Miyata, Conrad Canha, and Sammy Lee, all from Honolulu, knew how to get through a tube section.

Tuberiding remained both difficult and rare, and the amount of time spent inside was incredibly brief—just a second or two, usually. Tuberiding was also deeply esoteric. Nobody felt obligated to explain why hanging ten was so great; it was obvious. But tuberiding, from the beginning, was constantly analyzed and described. “Once in a while you get locked so deep in the tube,” Cabell told 

 magazine in 1963, “that nobody in the beach can see you. And when you come out in the end, why, you aren’t even wet.” And why exactly, magazine readers must have wondered, was that so great? Tuberiding descriptions would always fall short; 

 did its best in 1963 by comparing a tuberide to “going on hashish,” but that wasn’t it. The surfers’ craving to ride inside a tunnel of water would remain as mysterious as it was strong.

By the mid-'60s, a North Shore break called Pipeline had become one of Hawaii’s signature waves—although it was so incredibly difficult to ride that it was regarded as a kind of high-risk novelty spot. Outstanding surf breaks are often notched into the coast in such a way that they maintain a presence even when the waves are down. Malibu and Waimea Bay both give off a thrumming surf vibe even during the off-season. Pipeline is different. With no swell running, it is totally camouflaged as a surf break. The beachfront is lovely, with a narrow corridor of sand fronting a row of houses with palm-studded frontyards, but nothing tips you off that the reef just offshore might produce any interesting waves.

Pipeline is a winter spot, like everywhere else on the North Shore. It works often, but only hits peak form a dozen or so times each year. The left-breaking wave here—Pipeline proper—requires a swell from the west, which aren't less frequent than swells from the north and northwest. Fortunately, those same swells hit the same shallow reef at Pipeline and form a right-breaking wave called Backdoor. The shape at Backdoor is more irregular and less tapered than Pipeline; even on a good day, plenty of waves will close out. Pipeline is better organized. Both waves are terrifyingly powerful; waves here don’t seem to break as much as they detonate, and a curl touching down into the trough can produce an upblast of whitewater twice as big as the wave itself.

When conditions are right, a Pipeline wave will spin down-reef like a huge, hollow drill bit, the aperture narrowing as it moves shoreward, until it expires into flat water or closes out. Each wave, start to finish, lasts about seven seconds. Aerated flash-pressurized water will often geyser out, or "spit," from the mouth of the tube. Backdoor breaks with the same atom-smashing force as Pipeline, but shuts down at about eight foot. Pipeline holds double that size, although the takeoff zone moves out seventy-five yards to a deep-water section called Second Reef—which, oddly, provides a sloping, almost relaxed lead-in to the hollow section of reef.

Through the 1950s, it wasn’t the power, exactly, that kept surfers out of the water at Pipeline. It was the shallowness. North Shore surfers worried about hitting the bottom, but it rarely happened at breaks like Sunset and Waimea. Pipeline was a different story. A ten-foot wave here breaks in as little as six feet of water—about half as much as the same wave at Sunset—and the thought of auguring into that fissured black-lava reef is what kept people out of the lineup years after they’d taken on virtually every other North Shore break.

In the late 1950s, Fred Van Dyke would occasionally wander down to what was then referred to as Banzai Beach with fellow big-wave rider Pat Curren. “I remember sitting there with Pat watching these super-radical perfect waves, and not being scared or nervous the way you’d get for a big day at Waimea—because this place was impossible. That’s what we thought. Pat turned to me once and said, ‘Two thousand years from now, maybe they’ll be riding it.’”

Many years after the fact, Waikiki ace Rabbit Kekai made offhand claims that he rode Pipeline on a finless hot curl board in the 1940s; it’s hard to imagine, although perhaps on a smaller day. Future world champion Fred Hemmings paddled out at Pipeline in 1960, at age fifteen, and took a beating on the single wave he caught. Filmmaker Bud Browne and a few others sometimes bodysurfed there when the waves was small.

Phil Edwards, though, is justly credited as the first surfer to really conquer Pipeline. He paddled out on a December afternoon in 1961, when the surf was just shoulder-high, and he got two or three practice rides while Bruce Brown filmed from the beach. The next morning was sunny and clear, with a light offshore wind, and a sparkling eight-foot west swell pouring through. Edwards, Brown, and two or three other surfers stood on the beach for an hour or so and watched. Without saying anything, Brown started to unpack his camera gear. The surfers looked uncomfortable, made a few noncommittal remarks, and kept watching. It was almost noon. Edwards finally said, “Screw it,” and picked up his board. Nobody followed as he walked down the beach.

Edwards wasn’t the most daring surfer of the era, but he was the most skilled and one of the smartest. There were a lot of ways to go wrong at Pipeline, Edwards knew, but what was required was in fact pretty simple: a quick start, to avoid getting pitched over the falls; a carefully angled drop (straight down and the board would pearl, too much angle and the tail would spin out); a smooth bottom turn; and a crouching dash to the finish. Nothing elaborate. One fluid motion, start to finish.

It happened so quickly he almost didn't have time to be scared. Moments after hitting the lineup, without so much as a pause to get his bearings, Edwards wheeled his board around, stroked into a fast-building eight-footer, pushed to his feet, and hit every mark exactly as planned. Halfway through, the curl arced past Edwards’ right shoulder and landed inches from his tailblock, a moment later the spit rushed past him like a burst of confetti, then he was gliding onto the shoulder. That was enough. He straightened off and rode for shore.

Strapping his board to the car a few minutes later, Edwards looked back and saw three surfers sitting in the lineup; each guy in turn picked off a wave, and each guy was hammered. What 

 happen next mattered as much as Edwards’ great wave. “We all thought that if you ate it out there, you’d either die or get pretty banged up,” Bruce Brown later recalled. “And instead these guys just swam in, grabbed their boards, and paddled out to try again.” Nobody thought the wave was safe. At least one of the surfers that day hit bottom, and eventually Pipeline would produce fatalities. But that first day proved that the wipeout was survivable, and that made all the difference.

Driving back to their North Shore rental, Brown’s friend Mike Diffenderfer announced that the wave should be called Pipeline. “The name kind of sealed it,” Brown recalled. “That morning, it was a place nobody surfed. By that afternoon it was a full-on spot.”

Edwards rode Pipeline a few more times, but never with any real commitment. He cheerfully admitted that he was “chicken” and that Pipeline was never his cup of tea. It didn't matter. John Peck and Butch Van Artsdalen, two more Southern Californians, both younger than Edwards, were on deck and ready to set the early Pipeline standard.

Peck was the more innovative surfer. Tuberiding is easier to do while riding frontside (facing the wave), and Pipeline is a left-breaking spot, which meant that a right-foot-forward “goofyfooter” had a big advantage over a left-foot-forward “regularfooter.” Peck, a gangly teenage regularfooter, not only figured out how to reduce the backsider’s handicap, he did it pretty much all at once, on New Year’s Day, 1963, with a vicious hangover. Peck came up with two basic techniques. First, he dropped his back knee toward the deck of the board on takeoff, almost like a sprinter in the blocks, which gave him more stability during the ride’s first few crucial moments. Then, while in trim, he swung his right hand forward and clamped onto the outside rail. This low “rail-grab” stance reduced Peck’s exposure. If the curl 

 whip down onto his head and shoulders, he might still hunker down into an even tighter ball and ride it out.

While Peck was a finesse man, Van Artsdalen, a goofyfooter from San Diego, was surfing’s own Raging Bull. He’d already proven himself fearless in La Jolla’s hard-breaking reef waves, and was virtually impervious to pain; his back and shoulders would be raked and bleeding after a wipeout at a shallow break called Big Rock, and Van Artsdalen would crane his head around for a quick look, swear, pick his board off the sand, and stroke back out. He was chatty and friendly as a rule, but a street-fighting terror when drunk, which was often. Friends and foes alike called him “Black Butch,” and the surf world in general gave him a lot of room.

Van Artsdalen flew to the North Shore in October 1962 and moved into a dry-docked boat just west of Pipeline. He’d been there the year before—his first visit to Hawaii—but left a few days before Phil Edwards rode Pipeline for the first time. Van Artsdalen heard the stories and saw the photos, and knew Pipeline was his break even before he rode it. That November he paddled out for the first time, on a new fire-engine red Hobie. Before the month was out he was indeed the break’s dominant surfer. Van Artsdalen was fast, strong, and athletic, but his Pipeline blueprint was to simply match power with power. Nobody charged into waves with as much speed and force, and the advantage from this explosive start alone was enormous. Van Artsdalen also had a genuinely intuitive feel for the break. He knew which waves to ride and which to let go—the line between a perfect Pipeline tube and a closeout is so fine it’s nearly invisible—and had a jeweler’s eye for picking out the narrow vertical seam that would get him from crest to trough in one piece. The drop was the hard part. Tuberiding itself was comparatively easy—turn, crouch, extend the arms, and floor it.

That December, Van Artsdalen late-dropped into a cavernous ten-footer, found his line, and vanished behind the curl, with just a foot or two of his bright red Hobie board sticking out from the mouth of the tube like a toothpick. Three or four seconds passed. Spit issued forth, then Van Artsdalen shot back into daylight, as cheers went up from the beach gallery. Someone shouted out, “Nobody does that!” Another surfer fell dramatically to the sand, as if he’d been shot, and rolled around muttering, “Oh my god.” It was the ride of the year, and Van Artsdalen, improvising as the wave now fizzled out, sat on the deck of his board, grinned, and rubbed his hands together.

The surf media devoured Pipeline. Waves broke close to the beach, the color and lighting were beautiful, and each ride was a miniature rocket launch, with a better than even chance of blowing up spectacularly. By the mid-1960s, Pipeline was on its way to becoming the sport’s most-watched, most-photographed break. Phil Edwards’ opening day experience had been edited into a two-minute gem for 

. John Peck’s New Year’s Day performance earned him a 

 gatefold cover. A surf journalist called Butch Van Artsdalen “Mr. Pipeline,” and it stuck. Meanwhile, the Chantays’ 1963 surf instrumental “Pipeline” reached #4 on the charts, making the break only slightly less famous than Malibu and Makaha.

Danger, of course, was a big part of the appeal. Long before anybody actually died at Pipeline, surf journalists and moviemakers did their best to present it as a killer on the loose. 

 first article on the break was called “Rest in Peace at the Pipeline,” and it predicted this little stretch of beach was about to become “a surfer’s graveyard.” Bruce Brown chilled 

 viewers by describing the Pipeline bottom as studded with coral heads that “stick up like big overgrown railroad spikes,” and he showed a clip of Australian surfer Bob Pike, after a bad wipeout, being helped off the beach with a broken collarbone and three broken ribs. In truth, the Pipeline bottom is uneven and crevassed but relatively flat and coral-free, but for years the legend stuck.

Joaquin Miro Quesada of Peru slammed onto the reef in 1967, broke his neck, and died a few hours later. It was the first Pipeline fatality. Thereafter, about every three years or so, Pipeline would claim another surfer. Lesser injuries were common: cuts and abrasions, plus the occasional broken bone, dislocation, or concussion. Most of the time, though, surfers who took horrific wipeouts at Pipeline came up rattled but unharmed.

But the risk was always there, and Pipeline had the sport psyched-out like no other break in the world. It defeated newcomers by the dozen. Some sat on the beach, unable to screw up the courage to paddle into the lineup. Others made it to the channel, stared into the pinwheeling tubes, and froze in place. First-timers who took a big hit left usually left water immediately, trembling and relieved, never to try again.

Still, each year a few challengers stuck it out, for reasons that were embedded in that clip of Phil Edwards getting shot like a cannonball from his first big Pipeline wave. 

 was completely wrong. Tuberiding wasn’t like smoking hashish. There was nothing opiate-like about it. Pipeline was the biggest, fastest rush in surfing—it was like hitting a crack pipe. Surfers who got a taste for it couldn’t get enough.

In the late 1950s, Fred Van Dyke and Pat Curren would occasionally sit on the beach at Pipeline. Van Dyke: “I remember watching these super-radical perfect waves, and not being at all scared or nervous—because this place was impossible. Pat turned to me and said, ‘Two thousand years from now, maybe they'll be riding it.'”

Chapter: 5

Barefoot Revolution

The Impossible Wave

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