Fast Eddie's Last Stand

[kayu]

Fast Eddie’s Last Stand

By Chas Smith Photography by Robert Maxwell July 19, 2013
Fast Eddie Rothman is standing on the front deck of his perfectly tropical Oahu house, blocking the perfectly temperate 75-degree sun, waiting for me. His hands, gnarled and scarred with the memories of many teeth, are balled up into tight fists and he drums the deck’s railing.

His fists have drummed often. There was the time they drummed the teeth out of the big Australian surfer’s mouth. There was the time they slapped the vice president of a major surf brand 11 times for bald-faced lying. There was the time they bashed the head of a pervert jacking off in the tropical bushes near the bike path. Or, wait—those weren’t his hands proper, those were his hands gripping a piece of rebar. There was the time they landed repeatedly on the sunburned cheek of a man who had partnered with a local podiatrist to smuggle pain pills by strapping them to children. This man threatened to blow up Rothman’s house with a grenade and bounced his secretary’s head off a rock wall. Rothman gave him a drumming so solid that the man spent a week in the hospital, because like the Australian surfers, surf-brand vice presidents and perverts before him, he had it fucking coming.Oahu, the most mythical island in the Hawaiian chain, is not commonly associated with bloody beatings and broken teeth. It has, rather, been etched into the subconscious as an island paradise since the turn of the 20th century, when wealthy families, inspired by pastel-hued postcards, steamed across the sea on coconut-scented winds and basked in its flawless climate. GIs followed on their way to World War II’s Pacific Theater, gaped at hula girls, got lei’d under a tropical moon and thought, Thank you, Uncle Sam. And their sons became surfers and went in search of their fathers’ dreams. They found them on Oahu’s North Shore, where the waves were massive and perfect if you had the courage and skill to ride them. They were joined by men with names such as Da Bull, Butch and Duke, and they too etched Oahu into the subconscious. As the 1950s turned into the 1960s, surf-ploitation films about exotic Waimea Bay and the Banzai Pipeline became the rage, and the Beach Boys crooned about riding the wild surf.

But the decades between then and now have been marked by immense struggles for the men who were born into this paradise or who arrived and never left. Men like Eddie Rothman. Today I walk down a dead-end road not five miles north of Waimea Bay, where he is waiting for me. I turn left and push my way into his million-dollar beach compound. Rumors and whispers about his penchant for violence haunt the North Shore. Brave surfers speak of him in hushed tones, afraid they might turn around and see him standing there and then see the darkness of a knockout.............................http://www.playboy.com/articles/battlin ... tech-giant

[rmb]

Be very careful discussing surfing sub-culture on the general surf discussion pages may be banished to the tangents.

[Trev]

Rmb you know as well as I do, it was the deterioration of the posts which caused that.
It's simple. If people abuse the forums, Don will just turn them off, so a little bit of common sense will go a long way.

[kayu]

.....are you serious ? .....surfing sub-culture is now a taboo subject ?..... it's mainstream everything or total censorship ?......

[otway1949]

Worth reading the whole article. well beyond a forum mudslinging festival.

[Trev]

.....are you serious ? .....surfing sub-culture is now a taboo subject ?..... it's mainstream everything or total censorship ?......

Kayu, it'll go back when I can read it on a PC.
Using my mobile, weird sounding story, odd looking pics. So I just moved it out of the mainstream until I could access it properly.
Yomorrow afternoon, if there's no issues it'll go back in GSD.

[alakaboo]

I read it Trev, it's fine. Not a bad piece.
First time I can legitimately say I was reading playboy for the articles.

Man, playboy is a lot less interesting since I turned 15

[Beanpole]

Good read.

[andy2476]

Jan and dean sang ride the wild surf not the beach boys. What a knucklehead.