Surfing Hawaii. Leonard Lueras
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as the mystique surrounding the area's surf spots began to grow, and as the sport of surfing became more popular, larger groups of local and international surfers began living in some of these old homes and cabins on Oahu's North Shore. Many of them stayed for the entire winter surfing season, and as a result of their presence, a new lifestyle evolved in and about Haleiwa town.
While Haleiwa is only an hour away from Waikiki's famous and crowded beaches, physically and psychologically, it exists in an unrushed and sleepy world of its own. To observe a bit of how Haleiwa has evolved over the years, let's take a drive through Haleiwa town—then and now.
If you were a surfer visiting the North Shore in the 70s, you would probably have eaten breakfast at a small diner known as Yama's. Years later, Yama's became Shima's, which was sold and is now gone forever. In the early '80s, the most popular breakfast place was the Wizard of Eggs, a very modern cafe with big plates of rice and eggs and American-style pancakes.
For lunch, you would have bought hamburgers or saimin noodles in a cafe near Haleiwa Beach Park known to all as Jerry's. That shop is also no longer there, but local surfers remember stopping in at Jerry's to order lunch and then taking it with them to the beach. For dinner, you would have gone to where all the surfers went: the old Seaview Inn, which later became the trendy Chart House restaurant, and which just recently became reincarnated again as a new hangout called Aloha Joe's.
The old and popular Seaview Inn had it all: cheap meals, cold beer, delicious fresh fish caught by local fishing boats, plus a clientele that consisted of surfers from around the world. For many years it was far and away the most popular restaurant for surfers in Hawaii. For Triple Crown surfers who didn't start frequenting Hawaii until the early '80s, places like the Seaview Inn were on their last legs.
After the devastation wrought on the North Shore by Hurricane Iwa in 1982, life in Haleiwa went through some dramatic changes. For one thing, business slowed down considerably due to the emergency repairs that had to be made to buildings and general town infrastructure. This in turn forced the local economy to shift away from recreation and an easy-going lifestyle and, well, "get serious." People found that they had less $ to spend on the fun things in life, and even in sleepy Haleiwa by the sea, where a charming little-town lifestyle had prevailed for many years, people were forced to change their habits.
As a result, much commercialization of Haleiwa and its environs has taken place, even in surfing. For example, in the mid-'70s, there were only two or three surf shops in and about Haleiwa Town. In those days. North Shore surfers didn't need many more shops than that. A small shop up at Sunset Beach took care of most of what people needed, and for more than that, well, people usually just drove to Honolulu.
Within 10 years, the number of surf shops in Haleiwa had tripled. Today, there are at least 15 shops in town selling surfing-related products. Given the ever-increasing number of tourists from around the world who come here and want to return home with a piece of our lifestyle, all of these shops somehow manage to survive, even during the off-season and long after Hawaii's big winter waves have left the North Shore.
A Haleiwa sign of sometimes difficult surfing times. Photo: Brett Uprichard
Despite these changes, Haleiwa has managed to retain an old Hawaii allure reminiscent of years past. For the most part, Haleiwa's charming old buildings have been repaired and repainted, and like faithful sentinels they survive and stand strong against the trade winds and the North Shore's fickle weather and surf spray. Even a new highway that bypasses the town and gets you to the surf quicker really hasn't diminished the old magic of the place. Here, in what is arguably the only true "Surf City" in Hawaii, you can still find bits of what you might call Old Polynesia-style. Wander through Haleiwa's old shops and you'll be treated with the rare opportunity to share in the best of the past and the brightest of the present.
Come, hele on (move along) and join me as I take a bicycle ride through an old north Oahu cane town that the surfing world rediscovered and brought back to life more than 40 years ago. Get a sense of both the Hawaii of yesteryear and the foreseeable and trendy future.
Any male surfer worth his ding-repair kit would love to have a, uh, woodie, especially when he is about to get married. This classic woodie wagon is decked out in style and about to take the plunge. Photo: Art Brewer
On a typical cruise of this Surf City— known since ancient times as haleiwa, literally the hale (home) of the iwa (frigate bird)—I usually head into town just before the lunch hour and enter Haleiwa near the Xcel Surf Shop, driving down Haleiwa's main road and past the Cafe Haleiwa, where all surfers have breakfast. From there I check my mail and dispatch letters at the post office, where many of us usually meet to talk story with one another.
From the post office it's on down to the local surf shops for wax (or anything else that's necessary to maintain the surfing lifestyle). Later, I might just stop off at the Raging Isle Shop for mountain bike gear and more surf talk with famous surfboard shaper/cycle store owner Billy Barnfield.
Further down the road, and especially if it's lunchtime, I will check out the little sandwich shop known as Storto's, next door to the BK Surf Shop, a place that's owned by the famous '70s surfer, Barry Kanaiaupuni. With the energy to surf the rest of the day, I will drive on down the road, past the H. Miura Store, where surfer-style board shorts were first invented for North Shore surfers of the '60s, and where they are still being made for the surfers of today. In this historic shop, you can have shirts, pants and boardshorts custom-made, no matter how B-I-G or s-m-a-l-l you might be!
From here it's back across the Old Haleiwa Bridge—alongside the venerable Surf N' Sea shop's yellow walls, and then a slow pedal past the big country park where everyone plays soccer on winter weekends. Eventually I'm back on Kam Highway, cruising past Laniakea and the rest of the North Shore until I'm back home at Sunset Beach.
Yup, that's it, folks—a slow and easy cruise to "Surf Town" Haleiwa and back home again. Now, I just have to think about where I'll be surfing and make sure that I didn't forget to buy that bar of wax I'll need before I can paddle out!
—Bernie Baker, reporting nostalgically from somewhere on the North Shore
Until the Triple Crown of Surfing was created in 1982-83, there had been very little for surfers in Hawaii to be involved in when it came to competitive challenges. There was the early and classic Duke Kahanamoku Invitational Surfing Championships (which had debuted in 1965 and was held sporadically for a few years) and the great Makaha International Surfing Championships, but there wasn't an overall trophy for the best surfer in Hawaii, only individual contest awards. With the creation of the Triple Crown, however, three separate events—The Sunset Beach Pro, The Pipeline Masters and a Haleiwa open meet—became to competitive surfing what the Super Bowl is to football. The Triple Crown now represents the highest laurel in international professional surfing.
Beginning with the Makaha Championships of the '60s and continuing on through to the era of the International Professional Surfing (IPS), competition on the North Shore had always pitted the world's best surfers (meaning the best in Hawaii) against one another. While the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) World Championship may be the year-round award for surfing events around the world, ask any surfer—especially one from Hawaii—and he or she will tell you that to win the Triple Crown is to be at the top of the surfing game. Year after year, the three events of the Triple Crown have continued to elicit awe-inspiring performances from surfers. This has always been its purpose, to spotlight the best surfers in the world. But the Triple Crown is also important to Hawaiian surfers for its spirit because it is an award achieved on home reefs and beaches.
In the beginning, forming the Triple Crown was as simple a process as enjoining three friends to start a rock n' roll band. We had our lead guitar (Pipeline), the bass (Sunset) and the drums (Haleiwa), all making great music. These three had been playing their individual songs, and their spirit was strong on the North Shore