Ghost Wave - Chris Dixon [85]
A few months later, Brad came home one afternoon particularly frustrated after losing a revered competition called the Katin to guys he knew he could outsurf. “I’m gonna fucking quit,” he told his dad.
Joe didn’t know jack about surfing, but he possessed an Olympian’s athletic instincts. He grabbed a pair of binoculars and joined Brad on the beach. “We had so many funny arguments,” says Brad. “He’d be like, ‘Your butt’s all over the place.’ I’m like, ‘You don’t even fuckin’ surf!’ Then we got a video camera, and I was like, ‘Oh, I see what you’re saying.’ He was hands-on, watching me surf, where I was breaking my line, telling me not to turn so hard when you don’t have enough speed. He wanted my surfing to be relaxed and have a beautiful look. Surfing’s an aesthetic. If you look good, you score well. We watched ice skating, gymnastics, diving. He’d go to the beach with me every day, twice a day. He’d come to every contest. We’d talk about me and we’d talk about surfing. I really needed that because I was really learning about myself. He was the only one who wanted to talk to me more about my surfing than I did. He became my best friend.”
When Gerlach was inevitably invited to join the NSSA National Team, he and Snips were arguably the two most driven and talented guys on the roster. They were also the most different.
“I’d just see him and be like Parsons,” Gerlach hisses. “Like this guy’s really going to beat me. He was the model team rider, tucked his sweatpants into his Ugg boots, and he’d have his wetsuit on and there’s just not a drop of water out of place.
“He’d look over at me in exactly the same way. ‘Gerlach. What a disheveled… Probably didn’t even come down to the beach with wax on his board. There’s no way I’m letting this guy beat me.’”
Parsons agrees, musing, “There was no one I wanted to beat more.”
Joe wanted Brad’s coaches, Ian Cairns and Peter Townend, to take a more technical approach, and he didn’t mind sharing with Brad that he disagreed with their methods. This stoked Brad into defiance that landed him regular NSSA suspensions. Temperamentally, father and son were not so far apart. “I was very arrogant,” admits Joe.
Brad turned pro at nineteen, followed shortly by Parsons—each was paid a thousand dollars a month by the nascent Association of Surfing Professionals. Surf magazines of the day hyped duals between Gary “Kong” Elkerton, Tommy Curren, and Mark Occhilupo, but they didn’t pick up on Mike and Brad’s rivalry. Indeed, neither Surfer even realized how much one despised the other till much later on. Yet Mike and Brad both feel that their quiet rivalry was actually the most intense—because it revolved around a validation of their very identities.
Parsons first served notice in Australia, taking second to eventual world champ Curren at Burleigh Heads. Then, in one of the biggest upsets in history to that time, Gerlach defeated reigning world champion Tom Carroll at the Stubbies Pro in Oceanside, California. Surfer’s prophetic scribe Derek Hynd wrote: “In that instant, watching a young Surfer in form, words from old British punks came forth: the next generation; a revelation.”
Gerlach ate up the hype and gave hilarious interviews in return. Here is a typical response in a Surfer profile.
What would a dream date with Brad Gerlach be?
Well, I think it would start out with just driving somewhere really fast. Me and my date, in my new car. As fast as it could go, like 140 or 150. Headed for…I don’t know…Headed for the desert. To some kind of small nightclub, nothing like hip or trendy. And there’s all kinds of people there, warm people—people