speculation about a revival of international tension during the Hawaiian leg of the pro tour, The Australian reports.
The scuttlebutt goes like this: Hawaiians TJ Barron and Makua Rothman had a disagreement in the water recently, and took the confrontation to the beach, where, according to rumour, Barron got the better of Rothman.
Rothman and his dad Eddie later visited the house occupied by the Billabong team on the beach at Pipeline, looking for Barron.
Nobody denies that a confrontation ensued. Australian Billabong spokesman John Mossop and Hawaiian contest director Randy Rarick both confirmed to me that the rumours of an altercation are true.
However, Rarick also confirmed that Billabong’s US marketing manager, Graham Stapelberg, stepped in as pacifier, warning both surfers that a wrong move could affect their sponsorship contracts. (Barron is sponsored by Billabong; Rothman is sponsored by one of its subsidiary labels, RVCA.)
My attempts to find out what really happened from eye-witnesses hit a brick wall. Repeated calls to Stapelberg were not returned, and attempts to contact Barron and Rothman were unsuccessful.
This is where the story, however exaggerated, becomes a reflection of surfing’s weird culture of paranoia and secrecy. Surf journalists who were on the North Shore, and there were dozens of them, ignored the incident. The only published reference to it was in a forum on Surfer magazine’s website.
In the absence of verified information, rumours took hold, quickly growing to involve baseball bats and Stapelberg being rushed to hospital (neither of these claims is true, nor is there any suggestion that anyone involved in the alleged incident would resort to such violence).
Then the conspiracy theorists got involved, speculating on Twitter and in blogs that the incident was related to two other mysterious aspects of this year’s Hawaiian leg of the pro tour: Billabong’s apparent haste to finish the Pipe Masters contest in relatively small waves, despite a new swell being predicted; and the fact that local entrants to the Pipe Masters were paid $7000 less than competitors who flew in from overseas.
Was the Billabong crew heavied off the island by locals, and was the cut in prize money Billabong’s form of retribution? Anonymous blog posters thought it was feasible.
Such theories have historical precedents. Acrimony between locals and the visiting pro-tour circus is as old as the pro tour itself. As the 2009 movie Bustin Down the Door documented, the local Hawaiians were violent towards visitors as far back as 1976.
The reason for the acrimony is simple: the Hawaiian concept of “aloha”, which enthusiastically welcomes those who show respect to locals, is occasionally tested by seemingly ungracious visitors. Plus, every year the Hawaiians are expected to share their waves with an increasing number of visitors. Not only is the crowding of breaks frustrating, it's dangerous, and the Hawaiians invariably act as marshals in an attempt to maintain safety in the water.
When I called Hawaiian Kamalei Alexander, a local who was employed as a commentator for the Pipe Masters, to ask if there was much resentment in the air this year, he declined to comment. But a friend standing nearby grabbed his phone and yelled down the line: “For sure bud, we Hawaiians been getting ripped off for a lot of years.”
When asked to identify himself, the interlocutor hung up. A subsequent call and email to Alexander yielded no reply.
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