In that mass of humans, there are a whole bunch of some of the best Pipe surfers on Earth. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
Surfing on the North Shore can be two things: incredibly fun and incredibly intimidating. Fun, of course, because… well, because surfing. Intimidating not only because of the waves, but because at some points in the year, you’re likely to be sharing the lineup with a handful of top-level pros.
Imagine, if you will, you decide to go and play a game of half-court pickup basketball at the court down the street. You and your friends are messing about, missing threes and flubbing layups, when suddenly Nikola Jokic, Jayson Tatum, Steph Curry, and LeBron show up and take the other end. They might not be playing with you and your friends, but you sure are going to notice that they’re there. That’s akin to the feeling one might get when flopping around at somewhere like Rocky Point or Pipeline. All of a sudden you suck ten times more than you already sucked. All of a sudden the waves are bigger and meaner and scarier. The reef becomes shallower. It’s dumb, but I can’t be alone in that feeling. Right?
Anyway, the video you see here is testament to that. The North Shore — and Pipeline in particular — has been on a consistent run of stupidly good waves for a long time now, and since it’s Pipeline with stupidly good waves, the lineup is full of stupidly good surfers, many of whom appear here.
Jamie O’Brien, Billy Kemper, Barron Mamiya, Makana Pang, Ivan Florence, and more were there to play, and the waves certainly showed up to the game.
