Ghost Wave - Chris Dixon [64]
Since the 1960s, many of the most gripping exploits at Makaha have taken place under the eagle eyes of Richard “Buffalo” Keaulana. “Buff” is a broad-shouldered full-blooded Hawaiian who can trace his lineage directly back to King Kamehameha. Buffalo grew up in Waikiki. He was brutally abused by an alcoholic stepfather, and thus spent much of his waking and sleeping life on the beach. But he grew into a gentle giant with a compassionate heart and became a popular diver and champion bodysurfer. Eventually he was named the first lifeguard ever on Makaha—a job equal parts cop, judge, jury, and hellman (a surfer-centric term that at its essence describes a fearless waterman). Buffalo also became one of the best surfers to ever charge Makaha, and he and his fiery, hilarious wife, Momi, raised six children in a tiny bungalow mere feet from his lifeguard stand. In 1976, Buffalo joined the famous cross-Pacific journey aboard Hōkūle’a, a reproduction of a traditional Polynesian sailing vessel. Guided only by the stars, Hōkūle’a’s 2,400-mile voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti proved definitively how Hawaii’s Polynesian ancestors sailed to the islands.
Buffalo’s oldest son, Brian, is not quite so big as his dad. While he’s clearly Buff’s son, a sharper facial structure suggests at least a few genes of the haole, Charleston, South Carolina, whalers in his mother’s distant ancestry. Brian has left a deep impression on the surfing world. He has won multiple world surfing tandem championships and is widely considered among the most talented big wave surfers Oahu ever spawned. He’s also coordinated stunts for films like Waterworld and Pearl Harbor and is widely regarded as the best heavy-water rescue expert in the world.
On this early August morning, I find Brian and Buffalo posted up beneath a kamani tree that Brian’s mother planted in honor of his birth. Brian’s charging his batteries with a quadruple espresso, a drink the local Starbucks employees call a “Keaulana Special”; he has already fielded about ten phone calls. Best friend and fellow surfer stuntman Brock Little wants to discuss a job. Filmmaker Brian Grazer might be down for a visit. Brian’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Chanel, is going surfing. “Where?” he asks. “Who with? How long going be gone?”
I ask Brian if he worries about raising his two teenage kids along Makaha’s shoreline—a stretch still generally referred to as Hawaii’s Wild West, and not only for its waves. To Brian, this is the safest place on Earth. “My family is so deep-rooted and connected,” he says. “When I was a kid, I couldn’t get away with jack. Anything I did, Dad finds out. For my daughter it’s even worse. She never realized it till I said, ‘Okay, you don’t believe me? Go out for the day.’ When she got back, I gave her a blow by blow of her day: where she was at class, what path she took to school, where she was holding her boyfriend’s hand.”
Brian’s early years in the water, during the 1960s and early 1970s, were spent under the watchful eyes of the best big wave surfers on Earth—guys like Rick Grigg, Buzzy Trent, Butch Van Artsdalen, Pat Curren, Fred Hemmings, Paul Strauch, James “Chubby” Mitchell, and a wild, burly hellman named Greg Noll. So close were these men to the clan Keaulana that for years Brian thought most were his biological uncles. Noll in particular spent many nights in the tiny family bungalow.