The SURFER Profile

ALMOST NOT FAMOUS
Bobby Martinez Writes His Second Act

Throughout a pro surfing career, Bobby has battled doubts about his commitment and speculation about his mindset. His talent, however, has never been called into question.

The next year, he left his sponsor. He reached into his savings and financed himself for three-quarters of the WQS tour. If he didn’t make the ’CT, he would be sponsorless, with no savings to fall back on. He would go to work with his dad, doing hard labor. He made the ASP World Tour. Last year, 2006, his first year on the World Tour, he finished fifth in the world, something nobody would have predicted. He won the ASP Rookie of the Year award. Suddenly, he had a lot of surf-industry friends. His phone began ringing quite a bit. He would be at surf functions and people would want to talk to him. He didn’t like the way that felt. He knew what friendship felt like—he had a lot of true friends back home in Santa Barbara—and this wasn’t it.

He says he started noticing that people would talk to him, and he would see their eyes light up at something behind him. Kelly Slater or Andy Irons had walked into the room, most usually. “F--k you,” he would think.

And that’s why he doesn’t have much use for the industry. It’s hollow. Empty. Driven not by loyalty, but by fashion and popularity. And that doesn’t last. Most surfers should be able to appreciate that.

This neighborhood, then, can be equated with loyalty. Loyalty is something that’s important to Bobby Martinez. His friends from home are loyal. His family is loyal. One gets the sense that Bobby himself is intensely loyal. Bobby’s favorite thing in the world—or things, as the case may be—seems to be his dogs. Oso and Rio. Bear and River, translated. Some people like their dogs. Bobby seems to love his.

When we’re in the car, and I make the comment about the convention of Bobby-as-gangster, we’re on our way to sign the paperwork on a new house he’s purchasing. Exciting stuff, I think. When we get there, it’s nice. Single story, three bedrooms, much bigger than his current house, inside and out. Nice front yard. Big backyard. Fetch-sized. Bobby seems to have forgotten what the house looks like, having been out of the country for a month prior, and he likes what he sees.

“I think it’s going to be so much better for them,” he says, referring to his dogs, who wait in the bed of the truck. He patrols the backyard. Follows the fence line, looking for any exit points. “Look at this backyard. It’s so much bigger.”

The house is a block from the beach. Finishing fifth in the world pays.

“The beach right there,” he says, pointing down the street, “it’s a dog beach. I can walk them down there and let them run.”

Yes, Bobby Martinez appreciates loyalty, so he doesn’t much fancy the surf world.

***

Surfing, though—the act of riding a wave—is another story. Bobby Martinez will never stop being a surfer, he says. Even if he falls off the pro tour tomorrow and comes back to Santa Barbara to work a day job. He’ll still have a place in the lineup at Rincon. And he’ll still track swells where he can find them.

And while to some, he might seem the unlikely face of surfing—today, Bobby is wearing an oversized sweat suit, and he is covered in tattoos, and we are listening to hip-hop music in the truck—it’s more aptly described as inevitable.

Bobby’s parents liked to take the kids to the beach. As a kid, Bobby liked to be in the water. Like most other kids—most white or Hawaiian kids, that is—Bobby started in the shorebreak, then moved on to a Boogieboard, and finally, one Christmas, he got himself a shortboard.

Not exactly what most kids in his neighborhood were doing, he admits, but it’s also not that uncommon, he asserts. “It’s not like I’m the first Mexican to ever surf,” he says.

But he may have been the best. He won more NSSA Nationals titles than any other amateur surfer in the history of the sport. He got sponsorship contracts. He started reporting back to the old neighborhood in surf-logo T-shirts and Billabong gear. He took some s--t, he says today, laughing. The guys from the neighborhood called him “dude” and laughed. But who doesn’t take a little s--t, he says.

He surfed Rincon religiously. Earned a spot in the lineup. As a goofyfoot, he learned to surf backside with a rigid aplomb that most surfers never achieve. He made a lot of friends from surfing.