SURFERMAG.COM CURRENT ISSUE vol. 44 #3

1980 Larry Blair, a charismatic young goofy-foot from Maroubra, Australia, having won back-to-back Pipeline Masters in '78 and '79, arrives on the North Shore in fine fettle. Rocketing onto pro surfing's center stage for having as a complete unknown won Sydney's prestigious Coke Contest in 1978, the theatrical, if often ungainly, McCoy team rider (who actually attended acting school and once played a corpse on a popular Australian soap opera) was described by a leading Australian wetsuit manufacturer as "the hottest kook in the world. A proprietary cross-section of North Shore locals, unimpressed with both Blair's acting credentials and bold claims to take out yet a third Pipe title, deal out their own response. Accosted on the beach at Pipeline before the event, Blair is summarily punched out and has his boards stomped on. He is later quietly eliminated from the event, and is never again a significant presence in professional competition.

1962 Having first been ridden by Phil Edwards, who the season previous paddled out and caught several fast curls at the urging of surf filmmaker Bruce Brown, the Banzai Pipeline quickly becomes one of the North Shore's premier arenas. On the period equipment, wild wipeouts dominate but from amid the carnage Honolulu local John Peck stands out on his backhand. Utilizing the novel approach of crouching to grab his outside rail while still dropping in, Peck can avoid the speed-scrubbing bottom turn and trim high in the curl through the middle of the wave. 14 years later, during the fabled "Free Ride Era", South African Shaun Tomson will use the exact same approach to "redefine" Pipeline surfing. 20 years later Hawaiian Michael Ho will add his touch to Peck's line, winning the Pipeline Masters with his right hand, the one that holds the rail, in a fiberglass cast--rumored to be the result of a pre-event brawl.

1965 U.S. Men's Champion and Harbour team rider Rich Chew of Long Beach paddles out on a clean little sandbar that has built up between swells at Pupukea. The resulting SURFER photo spread, titled "CHEW CHEWS ISLAND TINIES", establishes Chew as the North Shore's all-time nancy-boy, a reputation that haunts the all-around performer and oft-decorated professional lifeguard for the rest of his career.

1966 In an interview for Sport's Illustrated magazine, Waimea regular Fred Van Dyke theorizes that most North Shore big wave riders are latent homosexuals. Van Dyke later claims he was quoted out of context, while everyone else is busy looking up the word "latent."

1980 Steamers Disco in Haleiwa establishes itself as the North Shore's only real night-spot, in which during the height of the New Wave a pro surfer can still wear skin-tight Jordache jeans and not get beaten up. Or at least not on purpose. During one nocturnal foray into Steamer's pink and black zone, the ever-stylish Shaun Tomson, striding manfully across the dance floor, is caught in the middle of a catfight between a prominent Australian professional and her irate lover, the latter apparently incensed about the blond goofy-foot's particularly charged performance with another wahine to A Taste of Honey's "Boogie-oogie-oogie". Tomson catches an elbow with nothing latent about it in the face, sustaining a back eye that will later require much explaining.

1965 In a social climate previously lubricated with Primo beer and Mateus rose, acid hits the North Shore, adding new significance to the term "big drop." Younger generation stars like Jeff Hakman, Jock Sutherland, Herbie Fletcher and Jackie Eberle turn on and drop in, but it's Old Guard member and early-60s Sunset Superman Paul Grebauer who really establishes the Rainbow Bridge, passionately espousing LSD's mind-opening qualities a full three years before the Summer of Love. By that time Grebauer had already dropped out to seek further enlightenment in Up Country Maui.

1982 With Hawaii's state-wide, DEA-backed Operation Green Harvest eradication program in its second year, the North Shore's pakalolo supply withers considerably. Cocaine fills the gap, bringing with its flurry a significant increase in violence, theft, tension and blond haole girls willing to do anything for blow. This influx of available, compliant women, the first in the North Shore's history, has a major social impact, bringing elements of Da City to Da Country in the form of a proliferation of shirts with collars and lowered Honda Accords.

1967 Jackie Eberle, the stand-out goofy-foot of the season after ripping both Sunset Beach and Waimea Bay on clean, pre-transitional era Harbour guns shaped by Dick Brewer, is discovered one night by Jeff Hakman and Jock Sutherland in a catatonic acid trip from which he never returns. Even as MacGillivray-Freeman's newly-released Free and Easy highlights his clean lines, Eberle remains permanently institutionalized.

1969 Herbie "The Kid" Fletcher,a Huntington Beach hotshot now living on Ke Nui Road three doors down from Pipeline, drops a tab of Owlsey Purple and proceeds to paddle out on a 12-foot day at Pipe, right on sunset. "It was heavy, man," recounted Fletcher 20 years later. "Pipe's hard enough to surf without all that shit goin' on. I caught this Second Reef set and ended up just surfin' the colors." 16 years after coming down off of this session, Fletcher would turn on to a whole different trip in the very same lineup, towing South Africa's Martin Potter into a Second Reef set from behind a Jet Ski.