THE MEN line the beach along the Banzai Pipeline, staring hard at Oahu's famed North Shore break. Mostly in their 20s or 30s, they're lean or stocky, smiling or scowling. Some have their heads shaved, some wear their hair bushy or long. Tattoos decorate their arms, scars mark their faces. A few are friendly, others are fearsome. Numbering dozens in all, they are Pipeline locals, and this is their beach.
Normally, when waves are barreling as they are this December morning, the crew would be surfing. But today they're watching, nervously. One of their own is competing in a qualifying event for December's 2005 Rip Curl Pro Pipeline Masters, the jewel in the Vans Triple Crown of Surfing and arguably the most famous surf contest in the world. John John Florence, the object of their focus, may charge like a big-wave veteran, but he's a 4'11'', 90-pound wisp who's all of 13.
Today's surf is big, 10- to 12-foot faces with barrels that close quickly, pushing surfers toward the shallow, sharp reef. Conditions in this spot are more daunting than they were less than one week earlier, when Malik Joyeux, a 25-year-old Tahitian big-wave specialist, drowned after a wipeout.
John John may very well be the hottest young surfer on the planet and the best tube rider at his age in history. He's certainly the youngest male ever invited to compete in the Triple Crown, where he's already ridden in the Op Pro Hawaii and the O'Neill World Cup. But every person watching understands the danger he faces in this rugged break. "Yeah, I was scared for him," pro rider Reef McIntosh says later. "I was like, 'Okay, where's the Water Patrol?'"
John John scores on two waves but is eliminated in the final minutes of the heat when Mikey Bruneau nails an 8.83-point wave. The boy paddles in, and as he does his cheering section visibly relaxes. It's an odd sight to an outsider, but familiar to denizens of Pipeline. Since John John began riding these waves eight years ago, dozens of Pipe locals have formed a tight-knit family around him, a village helping to raise a surfer. And he needs the help. The North Shore is a paradise of white sand and luscious waves to residents and tourists alike, but it's also a hardscrabble world of drugs and broken homes, a just-getting-by kind of place where a grom with promise could easily find his life derailed before his career gets on track.
Unless, of course, this phenom is adopted by a bunch of world-class surfers, some hardened by the life on this island and all shaped by the waves, men who over the years have become surrogate brothers, uncles, fathers. "John John's family," says Kai Garcia, co-founder of the famed North Shore WolfPak, which, according to its website, "controls the island's lineups with tactics swift and severe, their vengeance, when necessary, violent." "We're all family, "Garcia continues. "It's all we have. All we know."
THREE BLOND mops tear off on bicycles, pedaling along a dirt lane that lines the North Shore. It's a warm, overcast day in late October 2006, and the Florence boys-Ivan, 10; Nathan, 12; and John John, now 14 and 5'1", 95 pounds-have finished their after-school bowls of Grape-Nuts and are headed to their weekly boxing lesson at the home of Eddie Rothman, a 58-year-old event promoter, who, in 1976, was one of the first to organize a vigilante crew to keep order at Pipeline. An hour later, the boys are home, pulling on board shorts, grabbing boards and charging into the water.
Later, in a crowded two-bedroom bungalow on the beach, Ivan naps while Nathan reads a Margaret Atwood novel. The boys' mother, 37-year-old Alex Florence, fixes Boca Burgers and salad for dinner as John John hunches over his laptop. A ninth grader at Kahuku High, he's finishing a report on Martin Luther King Jr., his selection for an assignment on American heroes.
On first appraisal, John John lives a magical existence. He's won four straight National Scholastic Surfing Association titles and looks the part, with shoulder-length white-blond hair, Caribbean blue eyes and a saddle of freckles across his nose. At the moment he's wearing a sweatshirt, jeans and skate shoes, standard issue when he's not in board shorts. In the winter he surfs Oahu's North Shore; in the summer, thanks to O'Neill, Vans, Dakine and other sponsors, who throw clothes, gear and even a little traveling money his way, he surfs South Africa, France, Bali and Mexico. Talk of girls makes him blush, yet he casually mentions friends like singer Jack Johnson ("super cool, mellow") and surfing
legends Tom Carroll (a regular bungalow guest) and Kelly Slater ("He's like a big kid").
It's a life right off the Disney Channel-if you don't come back after the commercial break. "People think we're millionaires with a huge house," John John says. "It's not true. We've had to work through some hard times."
Alex's marriage to John Sr. started to sour soon after John John was born. Alex was a pro long-boarder, and to escape the tension at home she surfed, often bringing her baby to the beach. By the time John John could swim, he was riding the white water at Rocky Point and Gas Chambers, a couple of local breaks. By age 7, he was turning heads at Pipeline. "He was a freak show," says Petey Johnson, Jack's older brother and the manager of the O'Neill Hawaiian surf team. "The best ever for his age."
The Florence marriage ended around this time, with John Sr. heading 37 miles southeast to Honolulu, dropping out of regular contact with his sons. Alex, a suddenly single mother of three boys, struggled to make ends meet; there were times when the four of them ate cornflakes for dinner. She tended bar to make money-longboarding is the least lucrative niche of pro surfing-and rented a bedroom to surfers who spent the winter at Pipeline. Public assistance helped, as did a small stipend from
Vans. But money was always short.
In another place, this could have ended badly for Alex's children-in this place, for that matter. But John John's talent and charm, not to mention the WolfPak's unique brand of community pride, earned him the special protection of the North Shore's self-appointed guardians. "Contrary to what people think, we're not barbarians," says Kala Alexander, who started the WolfPak with Garcia. "We care about people, and we look out for every kid in the community. With John John, we looked out a bit more because he was always out there with us."
Today, dozens look out for John John, among them some serious surf stars: There's McIntosh, often as not the one yelling, "Go! Go!" when John John tries to snag a wave; Mark Healey, who jokes with (and dunks) him during lulls in the action; Jamie O'Brien, whose mom ran off to Vegas when he was 6 and who first brought John John out to the lineup and showed him where to sit, when to paddle and how to fit into the Pipeline pecking order; and Petey Johnson, who taught John John how to ride a bike and helps him now with his homework. To this day, in fact, Johnson and his wife, Jennifer, have the Florence brothers over for pizza and movies when Alex needs a sitter. Petey also helped to get John John and Alex (and Nathan and Ivan, who also surf) signed to O'Neill's roster.
By all accounts-John John's, Alex's, the Pipe regulars'-the attention was not orchestrated, but rather the product of talent recognizing talent, of grown men seeing themselves in a boy. Ask Alexander about living without a father. Ask O'Brien about surviving paycheck-to-paycheck. Ask any Hawaiian surfer about the hard living on the North Shore, where the average per capita income for the 18,000 full-time residents along the 11-mile stretch from Sunset Beach to Waialua is about $20,000 a year. The idyllic surfing life, they'll tell you, is an illusion. "There's crime, poverty and drugs," Alexander says. "I think more than half of the surfers out here come from dysfunctional families."
That's why it's a little surprising to see how calm Alex is about these grown men taking an interest in her son. Consider this story, one of many such tales she can tell in her girlish, meandering cadence: "When John John was, like, 7, he comes home after school and says, 'Mom, I want you to meet my new friend, Johnny.' I thought he'd met a boy at school and brought him home. But I turn around and there, standing in the kitchen, is Johnny Boy Gomes!"
Gomes, who'd won Pipe Masters a couple of years earlier, was a staple of the Pipeline crew. But he also had a penchant for violence, slugging surfers who had the nerve to drop in on him (among other affronts). "Do I worry that he's always out there with some heavy guys?" Alex asks. "Not really. He doesn't hang out with them at night, and I'm usually out there too. But he's not going to get into trouble. They look out for him."
You want to believe her, for two reasons. First, she is a stern parent, with three boys who do their homework without complaint and say "please" and "thank you" without prodding. Reason No. 2 is John John, whose fearlessness and skill on a board are matched by his maturity and poise off it. On water and on dry land, it's obvious to anyone who spends time with him that this 14-year-old is tough-not just physically, but also mentally and emotionally.
Those are useful qualities to have when Mom can barely stand to hear Dad's name, and Dad is simply never close enough to hear. John John and his two brothers spend occasional weekends with John Sr., but for the most part, their adult male guidance comes from the beach. In other words, it's not just surfing that John John's learning from his Pipeline buds. "My mom's super cool," he says. "But I can't talk to her about everything."
For that there's Petey Johnson. "We had the birds-and-the-bees talk about eight months ago," says Johnson, who tries to at least talk on the phone to John John most every day. "We were driving to go surfing on the east side and we talked for a while on the drive, on the beach, in the lineup. John John said he already knew, but I could tell there was enough stuff he didn't know." Jamie O'Brien, who recently took John John with him to Bali to shoot a surf video, also drops by the bungalow on a regular basis to check in on the boy.
John John, after all, is still a kid, albeit one who doesn't watch much TV (Alex doesn't own one) and who prefers soy burgers to fast food and fruit juice to soda. He prefaces almost every description with "super"-as in "super cool," "super nice," "super friendly"-and seems unfazed by the trappings of his fame, which include a signature skateboard, an upcoming short film to be directed by Owen Wilson (a fan), and a segment on MTV Cribs.
As his star rises, though, John John will no doubt be exposed to non-Disney Channel aspects of surfing-parties, drugs, alcohol, groupies-and many of his surrogate uncles, dads and big brothers fret over the possibilities. Many know the story of California phenom David Eggers, who in the early 1980s won nearly every junior title before turning pro at 16. A year later he was off the circuit for good, a victim of over-the-top partying. "Drugs and alcohol?" asks Makua Rothman, Eddie's son and a big-wave competitor himself. "You can't get away from it. I know a bunch of surfers who got a little fame and just stayed on the party wagon." O'Brien has similar concerns about John John: "Do I worry he'll get into trouble? Sure."
To help John John avoid that fate, the Pipeline crew employs its own brand of tough love. Some of it is as unsubtle as the back of Kai Garcia's hand. "John John's one of us," Garcia says. "But if he gets out of line, I'll slap him. I've slapped lots of my friends and it's done wonders for them."
A STRONG northwest swell is serving up clean eight-foot waves at Pipeline in late October. Surfers in the lineup and photographers on shore are jockeying for position. One by one, the Pipe stars take the steep drop, turn left, and slide along the frothing, spitting barrels. There's Petey and Jamie, Kala and Kai, Mark and Reef and just about every rider who lives within 10 miles.
John John is out there too, his focus on the second event of the 2006 Triple Crown, O'Neill's World Cup (Nov. 24-Dec. 6). Sets roll in, and the bigger guys catch all of the prized rides, cameras on shore snapping like M60s. Silently, intently, John John paddles for position, but he is continually shut out. When the waves are big at Pipe, only one surfer at a time can drop in; John John is never in position to take off, and none of the Pipe regulars are sitting back and yelling, "Go! Go!" this time. The day ends without John John Florence-one of the world's hottest young surfers, star of film and tube-catching a ride. He's disappointed, but doesn't gripe.
Lesson learned.
"John John gets his own waves," Garcia says a little later, no longer sounding like anyone's big brother. "When the surf is good, nobody gets a break at Pipe."...