The Panic Response

Loving your home break is a different kind of love. 

They say love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast—but love for a home break is selfish and unreasonable and maddening. Like devotion, or religion. You are a follower because the holy waters of this wave pass over your body and make you pure, day in and day out, every single time you hop in. You are a devotee, and though you might go to church on Sunday, you know who your real God is. You know what it is that really completes you and fills the hole in your soul. 

It is this wave. This place. You tuck your daughter into bed at night and tell her you love her. Somewhere in those words you are wondering what the wind is doing. You look into your wife’s eyes and whisper good night, but somewhere in her face you search for the peak. You look into a mirror and you see yourself, but you know who you are. You are your home break.

Because your home break isn’t just a break, it’s an identity. Stray too far and eventually you feel lost. Untethered. Not totally you. You are a Bowls-guy. A Pipe-guy. A Sandy’s-guy. A Lighthouse-guy. You are your home break. Identity is a tough thing to kick.

*

Rolling up to the parking lot at any localized surf spot, especially one you’ve never been to, is intimidating. There might be a couple of vacant, unmarked stalls to park in overlooking the break, but you never really know what’s kosher until the session is over and you read KOOK spelled out in wax across your back window. 

Indeed, there are parking lots like this in front of breaks all over the planet and Point Panic is no exception. An invisible record needle skips, and blank stares from the boys say, “You lost, brah?” I park in an open stall and the sea out front is a brilliant, neon blue. In the foreground is a concrete promenade lining a sea wall. To the west are the rolling, grassy hills of Kaka‘ako Waterfront Park, which sit over the ashes of an old city landfill. Around the public bathrooms are makeshift homeless tents, tarps, and shopping carts that wheel the transient lives of their owners. Further yet, lining the outskirts of the park, are other hidden homeless communities that resemble refugee camps in such squalor they make a Rio favela look like the Marriott.

Beside me in the parking lot, locals tailgate with ice coolers and vape pens, prep fishing rods and dive gear. They wax up boards for the two breaks next to Point Panic where you’re allowed to board surf. A lifted black Tundra with windows rolled down creeps by behind me, blasting bass so extraordinarily loud that it rattles the organs within my ribcage. The sound triggers a couple car alarms and nobody seems bothered in the slightest. 

In the corner of the lot there is The Tree. The Tree is the gathering place—where the locals, the legends, and the boyz meet and wait for the tide to shift, talk shit, and eat plate lunches. One does not necessarily have to bodysurf to hang out at The Tree. But they must have history with this home break. There are a few benches, some chairs, and a table beneath The Tree. Next to that, in earshot of the conversation, is a memorial plaque for the Fallen. The Point Panic Water Warriors—Panics-guys that now live immemorially. 

I steer clear of The Tree until a formal invite is extended. I have no history here. Plus, I already can’t help but feel like an imposter. I am certainly no avid bodysurfer and this culture is, in many ways, foreign to me, even if I have surfed 50 yards from these guys at neighboring Kewalo Basin many times. Rather, I’m visiting to understand this home break and the characters that call it home. A beach cleanup is my icebreaker and, sheepishly, I approach a popup tent past the tree while Point Panic’s iconic green buoy dances hula in the turquoise distance. 

Kanekoa Crabbe, the contest director for the annual “Point Panic Experience” bodysurfing event, hands me a sign up sheet for a raffle after the cleanup. He points to various tools. “I believe that we gotta give back before we take,” he explains. “Which is why we always do a cleanup in the spring, then have the bodysurf contest in the summer.”

Certainly, people who love their home break care for it. I grab a bucket and aluminum tongs and start picking cigarette butts, batteries, fishhooks, and items far more unsightly—left behind by the adjacent homeless population—from the cracks of the sea wall. Out front, a rising south swell is running, nothing to write home about. Some suspects get a few tight, highline tubes off the initial bowl, but no one’s doing the belly spins let alone front flips like I’d seen on YouTube. Yes, I said front flips (Google: Kaneali’i Wilcox).

Kanekoa Crabbe is a second generation Point Panic surfer, son of legendary bodysurfer Curtis Crabbe (pioneer of McDonald’s-tray hand-boarding). He walks with me and details what makes Point Panic tick.

Reminiscent of Kaiser Bowls or V-Land, the wave here is a mechanical, bowly right-hander, with an okay left, breaking off the far east corner of Kaka‘ako Waterfront Park, directly across the channel from Kewalo’s left. While the origins of the name, Point Panic, are debated, most concur that the name comes from the panic one felt after losing a board in the leash-less (pre-bodysurfing-only) days, only to watch it careen into the sea wall. Others say it’s the panic felt from seeing all the sharks in the water, an issue owed to the United Fishing Agency, which, for years, had an auction block right around the corner. It was said that the boats would dump fish heads and release their bilge pumps on the way in, attracting sharks in their bloody wakes. 

Before 1948, the land in front of Point Panic was a marshy wetland, which then became a Honolulu City and County dump turned landfill. The two breaks next to Point Panic are named Incinerators (for the massive incinerator that still stands) and Flies (for the cloud of flies that would get pushed into the lineup from the dump during hard offshore trade winds). The dump closed down in the 80s and, over the remains of the landfill, a large, grassy park was built with a concrete promenade.

For proper Panics, you don’t want the tide too low or too high—ideally a rising mid-tide on a south-southwest swell. You want those south swells generated by the storms that hug the northeast coast of New Zealand and shoot fetch straight up to Hawaii. Not the ones that get cheese-grated by Fiji, but the swells that slam Tahiti first, two or three days before they hit. Best winds are simply the prevailing east-northeast trades, pretty much the offshore wind for all Town spots west of Diamond Head. Three to 5 feet (6- to 10-foot faces) is best. Over 6 feet can cause too much of a foam ball, if not closeout the wave entirely. 

Among bodysurfers, there’s an illustrious history of world-class events, modern icons, legends, and fallen heroes at Point Panic. Fabled fraternities like the Honolulu Bodysurfing Club and Point Panic Bodysurfing Club. A rich history of contests have operated at the break for over 30 years, with Bob Thomas running the Point Panic Championships from the early 80s through early 90s, then the Wahilani family running the Hawaiian Bodysurfing Championships for years after that. Dr. Michael Kliks ran the Red Wings Memorial World Championships of Handboarding for nearly 15 years, and now Kanekoa organizes the Point Panic Experience and has been running a version of this since 2009.

He rattles off the names of Panic greats over the generations. From Honey Boy, Raymond Kaho’onei, Willie Mai’i, his father Curtis, and more from the late 60s and 70s. He continues into the 80s with Doug Palama, Sam Wahilani, Merv and Alec Kamalu, then the 90s with Darryl Amau, Craig Yano, Kaleo Galarza and BK Holt (most who still rip to this day). The newer generation of Kaneali’i Wilcox, Kaeo Auana,
Kai Santos, Steve Kapela, and on, cap the roster.

Hearing these names—and looking around the joint—I notice something very apparent. The list has enough Native Hawaiian blood to qualify for homestead land. I ask Kanekoa about this detail. 

“Honestly, maybe Native Hawaiians just have a deeper connection to the ocean, and Panics is a type of pu’uhonua, or place of refuge,” he says. “Like, it’s a place where you don’t even need waves, right? You just pull up, walk up the coast, talk story with someone you know. But bodysurfing—I think it’s a spiritual thing for Hawaiians. I mean, it’s not just at Panics. There are little communities of Hawaiian bodysurfers all over the island, from Hau’ula to Waimanalo to Yokohama Bay. We’re ocean lovers. Maybe Hawaiians come here and meet other Hawaiians who love the ocean just like them, so you got a friend who’s ethnically and culturally similar to you with the same hobby. Of course you gonna make friends. That’s just a win-win situation.”

Between weeding and pulling lead fishing weights out of the rocks, I’m introduced to a handful of other Panic regulars, and I learn another thing about home breaks: part of belonging to one is wholeheartedly believing that your break is the best break in the world. Just as being in love with someone means a part of you feels that she or he could never harm you. You love them too much to believe the truth. A shared delusion.

“To me…” says Sean Enoka, leaning back, searching for the right words and taking a look out at the ocean, “Panics is the best bodysurfing wave in the world—hands down. I think it’s the setup or the layout. The way it wraps in on itself just makes it perfect to fit high and tight in the barrel.”

He contorts his body, pantomiming the moment that he’s describing and suddenly I’m with him in the lineup. “I dunno any place else that lets you out of the tube bodysurfing like Panics,” he continues. “It’s a Hawaiian-style of riding, a dance with the wave. The first time I came here, I seen BK Holt pull off one belly-spin right in front of me. Then Johnny Hernandez was right behind him and rode the thing on his back in the barrel. I was like, ‘Is that what’s really going on over here?’ But if you going ask me what this place means to me: I live and breathe Point Panic,” he says firmly. “I’m just really passionate about bodysurfing and this break. Like, it gets in the way of work and stuff.” He laughs and smiles defiantly.

“In the old days,” recalls Raymond Kaho’onei, “it was Coach Sam Pomailani, UH Teddy, Merv, Doug Palama, Eddie Kapuiki, Vance Chun. These were the guys. But most of all Honey Boy. Honey Boy was the greatest I’d ever seen. But it was just dirt out here, no park yet, and the wave was something special. Back then I was mainly a surfer and I was definitely mad when they closed it to boards. But then I started bodysurfing. And I started to understand that bodysurfing was the ultimate, because it’s more challenging as far as making it out of tubes. It’s a truly different thing, more of a beauty, really than challenge. It’s Mother Nature and your body. True Hawaiian.”

“The connection we have within the surfing community here,” says Ernie Foster, “that’s probably the most important thing about this place. If an issue came about and it was called to fight for this spot, there’d be numbers. Plain and simple. You don’t want to rustle the bush. There’s a lot of people that are quiet, but when it’s time to step up, they will.” 

His words are foreboding and, when I ask him what it is that threatens this place, he points behind him at the dozen new high rises across Ala Moana Boulevard. “Look around, brah,” he says.

Prodding deeper on these development issues, I receive a unanimous reply from the pack: “You talk with Kliks, yet?” A question like a kid poking at a wasp’s nest.

*

Deep in Manoa Valley, a gorgeous, old community sits at the foot of the Ko’olau Mountains. It’s a place where, on the hour, rainbows dance in the mist of passing showers. Dr. Michael Kliks ushers me into his home. Perched on a ridge on one side of the valley, his balcony overlooks the South Shore, glittering a few miles yonder. If I wanted to talk laws and legislation concerning Point Panic, I was told by the Point Panic boys to see him. 

I follow the impossibly fit 76-year-old man with a puff of thick, white hair to the balcony’s railing, past a row of fluttering Tibetan prayer flags. “You want to talk about development and what threatens Point Panic,” he says, pointing toward the ocean. “Tell me what you see.” 

A row of brand-spanking-new, towering, high-rise buildings blocks out any sight of the shoreline, let alone the surf. “Not many years ago, I could actually check the surf from here with binoculars,” he says. “I could literally see my friend’s bald head glistening in the sunlight. Now? Nothing.”

Dr. Kliks’ voice is soft and convincing. He invites me in, sits me on the couch, and then shuffles away to his office to print me out some materials concerning “Point Panic Politics.” Over the phone, before this meeting, he’d told me to review some statutes. I lie through my teeth and tell him I’ve done my research. 

His home feels like a movie set of a man who’s time-traveled across the globe through different modern eras and collected souvenirs from each destination. There are books, relics, artifacts, masks, art, and atlases from seemingly everywhere. A museum of indigenous culture and antiquities. I spot a particularly stunning tribal mask and ask him about it.

“I picked that one up from West Africa when I was a Fulbright scholar working with the Jimmy Carter Foundation to find a cure for Guinea worm disease. The mask’s actually from Oprah Winfrey’s tribal ancestors—the Kpelle people,” he continues, matter-of-factly. “I’ve thought about sending the mask to her as a gift…but I don’t know if she’d appreciate that.”

A little background on Kliks. He’s a retired master beekeeper with a Ph.D. in medical parasitology and entomology. He studied bugs in order to find ways to control the diseases and outbreaks spawned by insects. He was also a photojournalist during the Vietnam War, has studied photography under Ansel Adams, was once neighbors with Charles Manson, has been abducted while abroad twice (once in Nigeria and once in Thailand), speaks seven languages, and, of course is an avid bodysurfer—a little less, though, these days, as his joints grow increasingly arthritic. On a midway stop between the Mainland U.S. and Southeast Asia during the war, he moved to Oahu permanently in the mid 70s. 

Since then, Kliks, along with fellow bodysurfers Bob Thomas, Vance Chun, Jarrett Liu, and others in the Point Panic community, have become instrumental in getting actual legislation passed to make Point Panic the sole bodysurfing-only wave in the entire state of Hawaii. He’s also continued to protect the wave and oceanfront land known as Kaka‘ako Makai from development. 

Fascinating and persnickety—or a pain in the ass, depending on who you’re talking to—Dr. Kliks sits down beside me, hands me a glass of bubbling seltzer water, and details the countless battles he and the bodysurfing community at Point Panic have fought over the decades.

Bottom line, he’s a politician’s worst nightmare. He has studied the inner workings of government, knows his rights, knows how to mobilize bodies, knows exactly how a bill is passed, how statutes are revised, and has the contacts, emails, and personal cell phone numbers of every single statesman, legislator, and councilman you’d need to reach. Most importantly, he knows the indispensible truth that most citizens in America often do not know—that if you want to change the law, it’s fucking possible. Especially if you’re persistent, organized, and believe your home break is the center of the goddamned universe.

He credits his know-how in this area to his work in the 60s with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the Civil Rights movement. He worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to integrate hotels, restaurants, and bars in the South. So yeah…he’s done that, too.

Before Point Panic legally became bodysurfing-only in the early 80s (the statutes were revised in ’81 but took a little while to kick in) board surfers and bodysurfers coexisted. But there were some fights/collisions between the two parties. And when it came down to it, it was dangerous as a bodysurfer to mix it up too closely with heavy, leash-less, flying pieces of fiberglass. The bodysurfers wanted just one safe haven on the island, not much to ask out of the hundred or so that existed for board-surfers. After a couple years, and hundreds of hours of paperwork, meetings, and testimonies, they got their spot. Of course, that wasn’t the end of their problems. 

Being that Kaka‘ako Makai is some of the last prime, underdeveloped, oceanfront property left in Honolulu—run by the state agency Hawaii Community Development Authority (HCDA)—developers want a piece. Dr. Kliks hands me various documents, evidence of countless battles, testimonies, and correspondence with politicians over the years, from protest marches to a “feral cat taskforce memo” regarding the break.

Over the last few decades, Kliks and the bodysurfers’ dedication to the cause has been nothing short of astounding. They organized the Save Our Kaka‘ako Makai (SOKM) coalition and, in 2006, teamed up with the Surfrider Foundation and Save Our Surf to stop developing giant Alexander & Baldwin, Inc. from building condos on the land. Before that, through testimonies and marches to the capital, they beat other Goliath-sized developers like Castle & Cooke (from building residential) and D.G. Anderson (from building a theme park/putt-putt course). They even fended off a $10 million amusement park planned for the land, complete with go-kart racing, a skydiving chamber, and wave pool. 

“We would rain and snow email on our legislators,” says Kliks proudly. “We were trying to make them understand that it wasn’t just one guy down here talking. It was thousands. I have an email list of 1,200 people. So we were telling them, ‘Don’t do this—we all vote!’”

In 2011, HCDA even approved a master plan of their vision of what Kaka‘ako Makai could be. This vision includes park expansion, a community center, public accessibility, and Native Hawaiian cultural facilities.

“‘No residential at Kaka‘ako Makai’ has been our mantra,” he continues. “Because that residential is just gonna be condos or high rises, and it’s not gonna be us or local people living there. It’s gonna be the rich—who live in Europe or China and have a pad here they rarely stay at, which will eventually cut off access for the public and other beach-goers. This is the last oceanfront land in Honolulu and developers will do anything to get it. But, they’ll never break ground on these projects. The day they do, the boys will burn that tractor and someone might die. You want blood to flow at Point Panic, send someone down there to break ground on a high rise.”

He nods, solemnly, scurrying away to another room to bring me back a parting gift: a bottle of potent, homemade metheglin, or mead, a medieval fermented honey beverage leftover from his beekeeping days. “Chill it in the fridge and enjoy it with a loved one,” he tells me. He also asks if I could return the bottle so he could reuse it. I think it’s just an excuse to hang again.

*

 I ask world champion bodysurfer Mark Cunningham what it is that’s truly so special about Point Panic—about the fact that it’s the only wave that’s exclusively reserved for their kind, the quality of the wave itself, or some other unknowable trait that I’ll never understand.

“I almost sense you’re trying to instill some magic that’s not there,” he says. “It’s just another South Shore wave, and the fact that you’re not sharing the wave with bodyboarders and board surfers is what makes the difference. Panics is a blue-collar spot, you know? There’re guys that come from real jobs in Downtown Honolulu on their lunch breaks. Then there’re the bruddahs who might be in between jobs and they have a lot more time to spend down there. Or, there are guys working the graveyard shift and they’re dawn patrolling. It’s just like any other surf spot where the regulars fit it into their lives and schedules. 

“But as bodysurfers, we love that sort of uniqueness and I think it carries a sort of underground cool. It’s just you and Mother Earth in the impact zone having fun, and there’s no pressure to get a cover shot or get a shot for your sponsor. It’s ocean recreation in its purest form.”

*

I ask Kanekoa what threatens Point Panic the most today. Or rather, if the wave isn’t going anywhere, what’s the worst that could happen? 

“There’re a number of threats the break faces,” he answers. “But worst case, they cut off the community’s access to the place.”

The Howard Hughes Corporation is the new developing behemoth buying up land, building high rises, and more or less gentrifying the gritty, industrial Kaka‘ako zone across the boulevard from Point Panic. They’re responsible for more than a few of those shore-blocking skyscrapers I’d seen from Dr. Kliks’ balcony. They have plans to build 30 of these high rises and have already finished 15. 

As far as the actual quality of the break goes, these buildings are tall and concentrated enough to actually block some of Point Panic’s prevailing offshore trade winds, but that’s not the main problem. This new development is supposed to bring in 30,000 new residents. Thus, the Point Panic community is worried about where all that sewage will go and, moreover, how that will affect the water quality.

There’s also the messy Honolulu Rail Transit issue, with two new stops being built near Kaka‘ako. Developers, of course, are gunning hard for commercial, residential, and office TOD (Transit-oriented development) around those stops.

Bright side? Governor Ige and the current administration have been supportive and largely anti-development regarding the land around Point Panic. The bodysurfers also have a strong relationship with the new HCDA board, describing HCDA Chairperson, John Whalen, and Executive Director Jesse K. Souki, to be particularly helpful. 

Sure, the State’s gotta make money, too, but perhaps the future is looking up. “Honestly, this isn’t about bodysurfing,” says Kanekoa. “It’s about protecting Point Panic for future generations. If there’s development, we just don’t want it to be exclusive. It’s like, we can handle some development, like a restaurant or something. But what about park expansion and more green spaces? Or a community center? Something should be Hawaiian, some sort of gathering place for cultures. Couldn’t Hokulea have a home here instead of Sand Island?” 

*

 I do not have a home break. I hop from spot to spot and when the going gets rough, or when a white-tip cruises the lineup, or when I have a few bad sessions during which things don’t go my way, I surf somewhere else. I do not know what it’s like to fight for a place, or revise statutes to define one. Or, march to the state capital telling old money and slippery opportunists to fuck off. 

I do not fully know what it’s like to love a break. To be as close to a break as sliding your entire body across its essence. This perpetual baptism. This gathering beneath the tree. This unquestionable loyalty for every single part of a place for better or for worse, onshore or off, until death do us part. Or, as the plaque by the shower proves, beyond death.

[Feature image: Photo by Keoki Saguibo.]