WHAT'S THE POINT?
A QUARTET OF THE MID-ATLANTIC'S FINEST ANSWER THEIR OWN QUESTIONS IN CENTRAL AMERICA

By Matt Pruett   

"What are we gonna name this trip, "Point-less?"  

Laughter permeates the acrid air, but everyone here knows that no surf trip is ever really pointless. Even when you're placated with a fickle, tidal beachbreak in a Central American outpost otherwise known for its fast, barreling righthand pointbreak to end all righthand pointbreaks. When good, a 300-yard-long, brown, spitting king cobra of a wave. Kirra with cholera. 

But point or no point, everyone is upbeat about our decidedly bleak situation; after all, these sectiony, shoulder-high peelers are still way better than anything we had seen for a couple months back on the East Coast. But when this country's most respected surfer admits that, in 25 years he's never seen the point so flat for so long... well, that's evidence enough that divine intervention or some sort of karmic balance had to be conspiring against us here. Sometimes, though, less-than-appetizing surf forces a trip's players to engage in other ways; to embrace the institutionalized group therapy as more than just a perk of the trip, but a statement of our subculture as a whole. It's these moments when other people's defenses retract and the true colors accentuating their individual personalities mix with our own to paint a more humanizing portrait of the group as a whole. Suddenly, a week later, you realize there's no better crew in the world to get skunked with than the one you're with right here. Then a little later, upon returning home, you realize you never really got skunked at all. 

The next time you go on a surf trip and have some extra time on your hands to piss away, try taking a moment to look -- really look -- at the person sitting next to you. He may be your BFF or just some guy-guy your sponsor or a magazine stuck you with, but there's a bigger, more supernatural reason you were both brought together and deposited here at this particular moment. Maybe put the iPod or Game Boy away, buy a round or two, and actually take the time to listen to his story. Because he definitely has one.  

We all do. 

When not ripping the masonite out of Hampstead Skate Barn’s kidney bowl, Wrightsville Beach, NC, youngblood Mark Yonkers still likes to push his frontside boardslides to the limit — even if he has to do them in more forgiving terrain. Here, Yonkers shows shades of Chet Childress a long way from home. Sequence: Hill

"Why did I move back to Vah Beach? That's what you want to know?"  

It wasn't an absurd question. Hell, he admits to asking himself the same thing from time to time. Virginia Beach has a lengthy history of permanently exporting some if its most talented local surfers to bigger and better wavescapes around the country -- the North Shore, Southern California, but more often than not, just an hour and some change south to the Outer Banks. But not too many guys ever really move back to Virginia. 

Like many before him, Jeff Myers answered the siren and relocated to North Carolina in late-1994, immediately turning the beefy Kitty Hawk ramps and Pea Island pipes into his own mission control station -- where he would coordinate, facilitate, and execute his nefarious plot to become a professional surfer. Keep in mind this was a time when even the notion of Mid-Atlantic guys with names like Hammer, Snyder, Keenan, Griffith, and Bourgeois actually traveling around the world and cashing in on the same photo incentive game California guys had been playing for years... well, that was just starting to be cultivated over here. But today, Jeff carries the unique distinction of remaining a marquee East Coast player for nearly half his life, proof that he can work the angles as well as anyone, or at least as well as any homeschooled SoCal hotshot. With no less than a dozen quality video segments, two major magazine covershots, and countless ads and editorial spreads filling his resume throughout the '90s and '00s, Myers knows he has North Carolina's Outer Banks to thank for a majority of it. However, a full decade after his initial descent into Dare County's fountain of prosperity, the physically and psychologically numbing off-seasons had taken their toll, and he wanted out. "Everyone knows how the winters on the Banks can just drain the life out of you," Jeff explains. "A bunch of my friends had already moved down to Wrightsville Beach, NC, to go to school and whatnot, and there was such an active surf scene there, so I felt like that would be a good place for me. But after a year or so down there, I was seeing pics of all these great waves Wes (Laine), Brendan (Petticrew), and the boys were getting up on the Outer Banks, so moving back to Virginia Beach seemed like the obvious middle ground -- close enough to the Banks to catch every good swell, but somewhere I'm not so isolated and close to the airport."  

Growing up under the oft-twisted tutelage (or "Wes Wing") of VB kingpin and former ASP World Tour threat Wes Laine, it's no wonder that Jeff has inherited the merry prankster trident from Wes, abusing its power in far-flung destinations across the globe while happily taking his share of practical jokes on the head. Though he has proven himself to be the first guy on any ESM trip to get the keeper video clip or usable shot, no matter what the lineup may be withholding, Myers is also the first to make an ass of himself. Maybe because he knows the minute he gets too big for his britches is the minute we start pulling out all those ancient slides of him drop-kneeing on his boogie board at First Street Jetty, sheathed in a hideous neon shortjohn, cheeks puffed and eyes narrowed in complete, unbreakable concentration.  

Though now, 13 years later, Jeff Myers once again calls Virginia Beach home, he still proudly rocks "OBBS" (Outer Banks Brewing Station) stickers on all his surfboards, photo incentive equaling beers for the boys -- testament that everywhere we go in life, we leave a little piece of ourselves there. And take a little bit with us at the same time. Just enough. 

"What did I do to deserve this? It must've been something really bad from our Pirate days."  

And on the sixth day (of the trip, not The Creation), Roger William Hume, III gazes out at the disturbingly familiar swell lines that rise defiantly before meeting their end as an awful, closed-out mess. The only difference is this particular session arrives on the heels of a battle ultimately lost at the airport -- where Billy assisted ESM photographers Tom Dugan and Mark Hill in pleading our case to the counter agents. We just had to extend our tickets so we could catch the infamous "Point Kill Yourself" firing once the promising six-foot swell hit, which was forecasted for the same day we were set to leave. But thanks to a shortage of outgoing flights, exorbitant changing fees, and Murphy's Law in general, our fears are realized. The beachie is the only game in town. And this is as good as we're gonna get it.  

This unsettling thought returns Billy to his teenage years, when he and his debaucherous Outer Banks cohorts who called themselves "The Pirates" constantly terrorized seasonal college kids with their peculiar brand of beachside mayhem... all in the name of cheap kicks, boredom, and local entitlement. But during those "Pirate days," if there was ever a voice of reason, it was probably Billy, who always first questioned the proposed method of sabotage ("Durrr... I dunno, y'all really think this is a good idea?") before joining the shenanigans himself. But with age comes maturation and with maturation comes wisdom. While some of the Pirates found God, others found families, and others found drugs, Billy merely went with the flow, following a somewhat predestined path to happiness carved out by loving, salt-of-the-earth parents Julie and "Big Bill" and some very faithful sponsors. Suddenly, the Pirate days seemed a million lifetimes away for Billy. Until now.  

Despite his non-contrived, unharshable mellow aura on land, don't let him fool you. This power surfer is no stranger to punching his board with all the requisite curses when a grovel session in mediocre waves doesn't work out to his liking. But loyal, honest, and equal parts hip and hilarious, Billy's one guy who has afforded himself the odd freak-out. The kind of guy who could set off jealousy alarms left and right, if he weren't so damn likable. Most Popular Kid. Righteous Bloke. Alpha Dog. In fact, in one particular segment of the new surf video The Dirty South 2, the director spends no less than 20 seconds coagulating lifestyle clips of Hume waking up, grabbing a board, loading it in his pickup, having a smoke while driving to the beach... which evokes plenty of ribbings from his ball-busting buddies, "Hey, they forgot to film you on the toilet, Bill."  

But image aside, Billy is one of only three Outer Banks surfers (along with peers Jesse Hines and Matt Beacham) to arise from the spray of Noah Snyder and turn professional. And like Beacham and Hines, sponsors never compromised Hume's deal with competitive obligations. His contracts are based on his talent, personality, and visibility alone. But a face that could put Matthew McConaughey on the B-list and a marketable State of North Carolina tattoo on his left bicep certainly doesn't hurt the campaign. "Any pro surfer who says he's not trying to milk it for all it's worth is full of crap," laughs Hume. "I'm no different, but I don't feel like you should have to screw people over to move ahead in life. I just want to surf, travel, and wind up a good person at the end of the day... just like Big Bill." 

Twenty minutes into the last session of the trip, Billy considers that morning's airport debacle and his dejected musings afterwards. Then he looks over to this writer, smiles wide, and says, "You know what? Forget everything I said before. No way we got skunked!" Then, somehow, Billy snags a standup pit that throws out as wide as it is tall. And just like that, the climate changes. By the time the session is over, every surfer in the lineup has gotten utterly and severely piped.  

What did he do to deserve that wave, this life? Nothing at all. But it's clear that surfing needs Billy Hume more than Billy Hume needs surfing. 

"Where am I?" 

Mike Gleason looks lost. He wants action. Like all the other badass New Jersey regularfoots that frequently come to mind, this Long Branch kid surfs like a runaway locomotive -- loud, fast, dangerous, capable of blowing the smokestack at any time -- which made him an anticipated favorite going into this trip given the punchy, top-to-bottom pointbreak surf the place had to offer. Or so we initially thought. Like everyone else here, Mike hasn't ridden a real wave for a month prior to arriving in Central America. Confused by his misfortune, Gleason's nonetheless eager to get some work done, or at the very least shake off the cobwebs before Hurricane Season starts heating up back home. But he isn't faring as well in the soft, crumbly ramps as the comparatively lighter Myers or Mark Yonkers, and his engine starts losing steam.  

At only 22 years old, Gleason is different than most surfers in that he's never really been a grom. He's surfed maturely -- strong, committed, combustive -- from the day he first learned the nuances of a real turn. But he can probably count on one hand the number of contests he's ever entered, so Gleason remained a ghost to the surf media until 2003, when Mike Guarino relocated to Newport Beach, CA, to take over the Team Manager position for Volcom -- but not before relaying to Eastern Surf word about this 17-year-old who went berserk at heavy Log Cabins during his first trip to the North Shore. A telltale batch of slides accompanied the letter, where Guarino proclaimed his newest Volcom teamrider as, "the real deal... sure to be the next big thing from New Jersey." 

It didn't take long for Gleason's power-positive surfing to light the country on fire. Set upon set of brow-raising photos started rolling in like a winter swell in Bayhead. In a single submission, Gleason's video clips made the New Jersey segment in Always Right go from a B- to an A+ overnight. He was everywhere -- Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Nicaragua... all the usual haunts -- but also Scotland and more frigid, off-the-chart locales dotting the Northeastern U.S. and beyond (many of which require a blood oath of secrecy from the tightlipped crew devoted to making East Coast history at these slabs). Gleason is one of the select few allowed to participate in the ongoing experiment -- signed, sealed, and approved by unofficial mentor and Lavallette neighbor Sam Hammer. To punctuate Guarino's initial affirmation, Gleason even unseated Hammer in 2006 as the Garden State Grudge Match champion. 

Mike Gleason — eye of the tiger, man of the moment, turn of the century. Sequence: Dugan

"All due respect to Dean (Randazzo)," says Gleason, "but Hammer is the best surfer ever from New Jersey. No one wants to say it, but it's true. He's never made the 'CT like Dean, but when you look at photos, video parts, or watch him surf live, he's the guy from our state really setting the standard today."  

But like Sam, Mike admits that it takes a little more girth to get his motor running. Two days into this trip, his muffled comments about how fun the point could be indicate that the soft-spoken Gleason is losing interest. There's no negativity in his voice whatsoever; but you can see it in his eyes. He wants to demolish something. And poor widdle, iddy, biddy, helpless beachbreak just isn't threatening enough to invite such destruction. Then, during a session like any other, Mike suddenly wakes up. He takes off on an otherwise average wave, races down the line, and affixes his eyes on a bump with a crest turning white by the inch, the trough dropping out ever so slightly, taunting him with a symmetry that seems to say, "Whaddayouse lookin' at, ya hairy Jersey fuck?" 

You can practically hear his incisors grinding together as Mike engages his rail. Later, when checking the footage back at the hotel, we sit in slack-jawed amazement as the sequence conjures up terms like "Sequence of the Century" and "ESeMMY Awards." In one single weight displacement, Mike Gleason changes the tone of the trip. He becomes animated, jovial even. "Hey, oh!" he shouts to the rest of us, that untouchable Jersey accent we've all been waiting to hear now sounding off in full. "Now dat's a freakin' wave! Lemme get a'nutta one ova' here..." 

Some things -- like wind, swell, and tide -- are beyond our control. Maybe it's best to approach life like we would a beachbreak instead of a point, looking at what's right in front of us rather than what's down the line. For a promising young pro like Mike Gleason, who has an entire state's eyes on him, it's not what he's done or what he's capable of that's important. It's right now. 

Where are you? You're right up there with the best of 'em, Gleason. So by all means, proceed. It's damn fun to watch. 

"Who else could possibly be having this much fun right now? 

Funny coming from Mark Yonkers, who only moments earlier had said, "You guys scared the piss out of me... literally!" after Tom Dugan corralled a Mariachi band into the pitch-black room to rudely awaken our slumbering crew from their midday siestas. With glazed eyes and a dark puddle streaming down the inner thigh part of his shorts, Yonkers simply struts through the procession of horns and strings while waving an imaginary conductor's baton, and grabs his boardshorts. 

Like Gleason, Yonkers is a bit of an enigma in a day and age where kids are sponsored from the first time they get their fins out the back. Though growing up nipping on the heels of close friends Matt and Richard Gilligan -- the ultra radical brotherly duo who looked poised to carry on the Benny Bourgeois torch for Wrightsville Beach, NC, in the early '00s -- Mark's ascension has been a lot slower to take hold in the collective surf consciousness. In fact, this is the 23-year-old's first-ever magazine trip -- the first trip he hasn't had to shell out his own cash to get on. But what Mark lacks in non-palpable notoriety and glossy ad spreads, he makes up with a hyperkinetic approach to waveriding, a magnetic personality, and an inward-driven sense of purpose. From Session #1 to the final go-out of the trip, Mark never stops moving, easily tripling the wave count of every surfer in the water. He constantly surveys every ripple coming through, paddles quickly but calmly to every peak within catching distance, and attacks every section of every wave like a skateboarder, not a surfer -- fully aware that in surfing, like life, the straight line may get you to the end quicker, but it's the transitions that make the whole ride worthwhile. Mark actually carries the reputation of being quite a good skateboarder himself. The best thing about skating, he'll tell you, is that you're never sitting and waiting on Mother Nature's impetus. And the halfpipe is always six-feet and glassy.  

Though six-feet and glassy these waves are not. But that doesn't bum him out in the least. If there's anyone getting all he can out of this trip, it's Yonkers: 95-percent success ratio on his air-reverses, hyperbolic lipslides, layback snaps a la Cory Lopez, gelatin-smooth backside verts... It's a terrible, glorious sight. Because frankly, Mark Yonkers was never supposed to be this good. Sure, his cool-as-Fonz personality, quick-witted comebacks, and youthful exhuberance make him a perfectly marketable industry darling. And he's got all the tall, dark, and handsome features action sports execs drool over. In fact, after snapping one particularly exotic portrait of Yonkers washing off the grime in an outside shower, Mark Hill asked the kid if he had ever done any modeling, before setting the photo aside to run in this feature. However, once this writer's girlfriend saw the same portrait weeks later and commented on Yonkers' striking looks... well, that photo disappeared quicker than you could say "inferiority complex." 

As for his surfing abilities, one need only look at his parts in the East Coast videos Headfirst or The Dirty South 2 to get an idea of what he brings to the table: well-rounded in the fundamentals department, full bag of tricks, no wasted movement whatsoever, and -- as he's proven at massive, deadly Pipeline over the past couple winters -- the kid fucking charges. Which leads up to the inevitable question.  

"I know what you're about to ask me," Mark interrupts, his voice, as if on cue, immediately dropping an octave. "Don't be embarrassed. My best friend Rob (Brown) asked me the same thing a while back: 'Why did I suddenly get so good right after my mom died.' Because, let's face it, that's when I really started improving. I dunno, I spent so much time going through hell after she was gone. And it almost ended me. But deep inside, I knew that this is what she would want me to be doing -- going all-out to live my dreams, and being happy while doing it. Once I got that through my head, everything became so clear."  

Today, Mark has a tattoo on his right arm that reads, "In Loving Memory Adeline G 1944-2003." It's not so much a memento of a loved one lost, but rather, a reminder of the light guiding him to the really important things in life. Being an East Coast surfer requires a certain amount of quixotical detachment, where you must be willing to take the bad with the good while pursuing the waves of your dreams. Yonkers is living, laughing testimony to that. And in that sense, he's the most successful surfer who's ever lived. From First Reef Pipeline last November to this titty-high beachie we're surfing right now to Happy Hour later on tonight -- nobody's having more fun with the cards they've been dealt than Mark Yonkers. As he says time and time again on this trip, "That's the whole point." 

Point taken. 

The entire crew wishes to thank Reggie Barnes, Subhan Anwari, Jocelyne Tracy, and the rest of the gang at Eastern Skateboard and Surf Supply for all their financial and organizational assistance in making this trip happen. Visit www.easternskatesupply.com or www.easternsurfsupply.com for all your surf and skate distribution needs.

Billy Hume surfs like ASG plays music — fast and hard off the opening set, stylish through the middle, and punctual at the encore. Sequence: Dugan