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THE DAILY QUOTE
Where’s Steve? I don’t like it. he should be here by now!
Bali Strickland recounting the words of fellow On The Rock team member, Dave Sparkes. After two weeks of hurrying up and waiting for the Maui event to run and losing his mind in the process, Sparkesy had adopted a pet cockroach, which he named Steve. Every night Steve would turn up out on the porch, Sparkesy would pat him and talk to him about his day. On the last day though Steve never showed, and Sparkesy was freaking, thinking Steve had been on the wrong end of a can of bug spray.
See 'em all...
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HARD KORO
December 15, Da North Shore
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THE RAIN IN SPAIN...It doesn’t rain in Hawaii. It doesn’t just rain… it pours. Tropical downpours come in short, urgent bursts, like a teenage virgin on heat. And this winter has been one of the wettest on record - there's been two months worth of rain in two days. Torrential rain and coastal flooding has been the order of the day for the past week, interrupted by short spurts of brilliant sunshine. After an epic early season of surf, the rain has coincided with decreasing swell and dirty, polluted water. “It’s like taking a bath in leptosporidium,” Pancho Sullivan moaned this morning, before paddling out at Backdoor for his first surf in four days. Pancho, a self-confessed hypochondriac, caught a few choice waves before spending just as long in the shower as in surf, rinsing his ears out with hydrogen peroxide. The aqua blue faces and pitching silver lips that grace the covers of surf magazines have been nowhere to be seen. It’s been mud brown pits and, more recently, Mississippi boat wakes. Kekoa Bacalso floated down from Mililani to score a handful this morning, but he was still hurting from just how good Haleiwa was a few days ago. “Haleiwa was cracking but you just couldn’t surf it,” Kekoa lamented. “It was one of the biggest storms we’ve had all winter, actually the biggest rains we’ve had for a couple of years. Septic tanks were overflowing, houses were being swept away, and all sorts of stuff… Everywhere was pretty much flooded. A lot of the surf spots were polluted so no-one was really surfing.” The rain is still drumming on the roof as I write, and the swell looks… well it looks kind of lame, considering what we’ve had. But we’ll survive. It doesn’t rain in Hawaii, does it?
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Feature StoryWADE TOKORO LOVES YOU
Wade Tokoro is in love with surfing.
“I just love surfing – that’s my passion, that’s my life… It’s just fortunate that I can make my own surfboards.”
Wade is one half of Hawaii’s most famous sibling/shaping combination. Joined by younger brother Kerry, over the past 23 years the Tokoro brothers have built a reputation for finely crafted surfboards. Holed up in their tiny shaping factory in Kahalu’u, on Oahu’s windward coast, the Tokoros have developed one of the most influential surfboard design hubs on the planet. Some of the world’s biggest names now have Tokoro boards under their feet, led by world champions Mick Fanning, Andy Irons, Sunny Garcia and Mark Occhilupo, as well as luminaries like Joel Parkinson, Jamie O’Brien and Kekoa Bacalso. It’s a pretty impressive list of surfers, but Wade is one of the most humble humans you’ll ever meet, just stoked on surfing.
“We just love surfing, but we like to work with our hands and it’s just evolved. Surfing and making boards, it just came naturally.”
The Tokoro surfboard factory is a long drive from the North Shore circus. Wedged on the edge of a hill overlooking Kánohe Bay, the Tokoro factory sits on a block of land where the brothers grew up. It was an old pig farm before the Tokoros started shaping surfboards back in the early 80s, when both were just teenagers. The island’s windward coast is a slice of the old Hawaii, and the brothers’ surfboard designs evolved with little outside influence.
“We just started from scratch. We had no guidance. We just went for it and did a few hundred boards, not really knowing much. I would slowly just ask a few people and pick up things here and there. There were some guys on the North Shore, not well-known shapers, who I would watch and ask questions. But my brother is my biggest influence. We really brainstorm a lot together. We feed of each other and that just helps us move forward.”
With suitable humility, Wade credits most of his success to the close proximity of the North Shore – a seven-mile surfing miracle that sits a winding 45-minute drive from Kahalu’u and attracts the world’s best surfers every winter. “It’s really nice that Hawaii is a mecca of surfing and everyone comes and wants to surf on the North Shore. Working with guys like Mick (Fanning), for me it’s an honour. It just helps me as a shaper. It takes a bit more time and energy but I like it… it’s a challenge.”
A Tokoro is the surfboard of choice for winter pilgrims, from Kai
Otton to Mark Occhilupo. “Being here in Hawaii, you see the waves we
get here everyday – we’re surfing some waves with power and size, and
it’s different from most places in the world. So for us getting the
short stuff takes a little bit more time and energy to dial in. I’ve
been trying to put more energy into getting the shortboards working a
bit better. The North Shore has a lot of power so we’re making boards
for that type of surf – a little more power and juice. But in the
summer time we have the South Shore, which is less powerful, and it’s
probably closer to most waves in the world, so that’s how we fine-tune
our shortboards. The only thing here in Hawaii is that we don’t have
many beachbreak, sand bottom waves. There are a few spots, but most of
the breaks are all reef. Sometimes it’s challenging to get a tiny
beachbreak board, but I like the challenge.”
While Wade is working feverishly on his small-wave designs,
the name Tokoro is often associated with sleek pin-tail guns – boards
designed for places like Pipeline and Teahupo’o. Wade knows how they
work from pure trial and error – a few weeks ago he picked off one of
the waves of the season at Pipe on a 6’10’’ Tokoro special. “I broke
all my boards so the only board I had was a 6’10”, which was a little
short for me for that day. I was just waiting for the right wave and
this wave just came to me. It was a nice wedge, just a nice peak, but
when I was in the lip I had my eyes closed because there was so much
spray going into my face, and I was probably real scared too… Once I
got over the ledge I stood up and went WHOA, it was a pretty steep
wave. The board was a little short and felt like it did a little slide
on the bottom, but I got my balance back and got a nice barrel. I was
glad I made it. I would’ve really got drilled on that one…”
Wade Tokoro is in love with surfing.
He loves making surfboards, but… “it’s not as exciting as surfing.” //BRENDAN McALOON
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