Christian Fletcher! "The Pipeline Prowler"

The irony is that Christian embodied “radical,” one of the sport’s most sacred expressions. But when he took the pool to the ocean—that is, adapted skate tricks for surf—he wasn’t asking the old guard for permission. In fact, everything about him was a “fuck you” to the powers that be, including his ghoulishly irreverent tattoos and attitude to match. Christian will tell you that he was cast out of surf’s inner circle—company he never much cared to keep—as punishment for progressing.

Now that the aerial movement has become one of the more popular subsections of surf, history will recognize Christian Fletcher and his high-flying colleagues not for desecrating, but for innovating.

Dibi Fletcher: If you hadn’t been a surfer, what would you have preferred being?
Christian Fletcher: I’d prefer to have been a road racer—motorcycles. But you get hurt less and there’s probably more money involved with golf and NASCAR. NASCAR would have been a little more exciting, though.

DF: What’s the best time you’ve had sober?
CF: Probably roadracing motorcycles.

DF: What’s your greatest fear?
CF: My greatest fear is probably of heights.
DF: So you don’t want to go skydiving?
CF: That’s different, ’cause you’re so high you can’t tell how high you are. But I’ve stayed on the 42nd floor of a building, and I gotta creep towards the window very slowly and make sure I’m very stable about it, ’cause I lose my stomach otherwise.
DF: You said recently you’d like to try one of those squirrel suits.
CF: See, that’s different. You’re so high you don’t understand. You can jump off a cliff doing that, too. That doesn’t scare me as much, either. But walking up to the cliff does.
DF: So if somebody pushed you, you’d be OK.
CF: Or if I ran and jumped, yeah. But just walking up and looking, that’s scary.


DF: What was it like street-luging down the toll road at night?
CF: Never quite made it. We tried to do the toll road in the daytime and the cops flipped a U-ie on the freeway and came back up and yelled at us.
DF: Is that when he chased you and called you a moron?
CF: No, that was a different hill. He didn’t call us morons. He ran us into the curb and got out of the car and said, “What the fuck are you doing, you fuckin’ idiots?!”

DF: What do you think is the most inspiring thing about skateboarding?
CF: Probably the innovation and the camaraderie. You show up at a skateboard ramp and there’d be 50 people there and they’re still really happy to see you, and say hello. You show up surfing, there’s like two people in the water and they’re still giving you dirty looks.

DF: Is the rush of going 160 miles an hour in the turn on a road bike like anything else you’ve ever done?
CF: No, it’s a longer-lasting rush, ’cause you get the same adrenaline you do from riding a big wave or doing anything scary, like almost crashing a car or fighting—the shaky adrenaline feeling—you’re getting that from the time you start to the time you stop. You figure you’re getting that same amount of adrenaline for 20 minutes at a time, instead of like…two seconds.

DF: What’s your favorite type of music?
CF: I like all different types of music, especially now that I’m older and not so narrow-minded. But I like a lot of the Upper East Coast hardcore, classic rock….

DF: How was bullriding?
CF: Bullriding was exciting. I wouldn’t recommend getting drunk the night before and scaring the bulls around for two hours before you ride ’em the next morning, because they will remember you and try to kill you.

DF: Who’s your favorite person to skate with?
CF: My favorite person to skate with is probably my kid, Greyson, ’cause it’s like playing a video game. I can sit there and just tell him what to do and watch. (laughs)
DF: He still does what you say?
CF: Yeah, sometimes.
DF: Is it getting more or less that way?
CF: No, he’s pretty good about it.

DF: When did you get your first tattoo?
CF: I waited till I was 18 to get my first tattoo, because of you.
DF: You were at a tattoo convention the other day. How do you think tattooing has changed since you first got yours?
CF: Well, they have mechanical bulls in the parking lot that you can ride for free. And everybody has a tattoo nowadays. It’s…strange.
DF: So it’s not like that outlaw thing that you thought it was when you were younger?
CF: No, it’s almost like a preppy, yuppie type of thing to do.
DF: If your skin was virgin, would you redo the same images?
CF: Of course not.
DF: (laughs) So you’ve got a lot of monsters. What would you have now?
CF: Evil mechanical armor, probably, so that way, you’d still get the monsters.
DF: You’d just have it a little bit better done? (laughs)
bYeah. I’d have it much better done.
DF: Not so much like a tweaker’s scratch pad?
CF: Yeah, but at the same time, you don’t want it too nice, ’cause then it looks weird.
DF: It looks thought out. Yours doesn’t look thought out. (laughs)

What’s the gnarliest wave you’ve surfed?
CF: Probably Pipeline, in the middle
of the night, by myself.
DF: That’s how you got to be called “The Pipeline Prowler?”
CF: Well, they got their Pipeline Posse, and I told them they could keep it, ’cause I was The Pipeline Prowler.

DF: Where would you like to surf that you haven’t?
CF: I’d like to surf Teahupoo. I’ve never been there yet. And that looks like a really nice wave, to where you could launch an air over a boat at the end of it—get a big tube and fly out of the tube and fly over a boat. That’d be cool.
DF: So you do like to fly, it’s just on your own terms.
CF: Yeah. I like to fly remote-control airplanes, too.

DF: How was your recent trip to Bali?
CF: My recent trip to Bali was amazing. Never wanted to come home.
DF: But you did.
CF: But I did.
DF: And now in retrospect, do you think you would have, had you known what you know now?
CF: Yeah. I had to face the music sometime. (laughs)
DF: And was it as bad as you thought?
CF: Yep.
DF: What’s the worst part about it?
CF: Not being able to go anywhere.
DF: Oh, OK. Is that Peter Pan idea kind of dead? (laughs)
CF: Peter Pan?
DF: Being the kid forever.
CF: Not really. Look at Dad. Dad’s still Peter Pan.
DF: OK.
CF: But he’s more of a Peter Pan with responsibilities. It’s better than being Tinker Bell.
DF: That’s true! What’s the best and worst thing about growing up in a family that surfs?
CF: The best would be starting to surf somewhere around the time when you’re walking. The worst would be never being able to take a break. And people have all kinds of expectations.
DF: Do you think that they were theirs, or do you think they’re yours?
CF: I would say they’re theirs.
DF: And what expectations do you have?
CF: Are we talking past, present, or future?
DF: Let’s start with past.
CF: I dunno, ’cause they’re already passed.
DF: (laughs) What expectations do you have for the future?
CF: I try not to make too high of expectations. If you aim low, you don’t disappoint yourself.

DF: How do you think surfing has changed in the last 20 years?
CF: Surfing’s changed a lot in the last 20 years. I was talking to Ian Cairns on the beach the other day and asking him if like when I was 13…14…15, if he thought aerials were gonna be as big a part of surfing as they are today. And he told me he had “broad visions,” or something like that. And I was all, “Really?” He was all, “Yeah. Nowadays you pretty much have to do ’em.” I go, “Yeah. If you can’t do ’em, you don’t count.” And I go, “Before, if you could do ’em, you didn’t count.” So I guess that’s changed a lot.

Surfboard design hasn’t changed that much, though, I don’t think, in the last 20 years. The last big change in surfboard design was probably the Thruster. That was right around 1980 or something.

DF: Who’s your favorite surfer?
CF: Depends on what time period. I like the way Bruce Irons surfs a lot. I think Mick Fanning rips. I like Andy [Irons] as a World Champion. I like Buttons Kaluhiokalani, my dad. It all changes depending on what year we’re talking about.
DF: And then with big or small surf that would be…?
CF: Aaron Cormican’s amazing when it’s head-high and under. I watch that guy tear waves apart in Florida, and it’s knee-high. I barely float.

DF: You wrote a short story in which you talked about wearing Hawaiian-print shorts and a matching aloha shirt. How relevant do you think the Hawaiian-print has been in the last couple of decades?
CF: You can wear an aloha shirt anywhere. You can wear it to a formal dinner, you can wear it to the beach, you can wear it down by the river in Portland. A Hawaiian shirt’s good anywhere. Ask Jimmy Buffet.
DF: What kind of changes have you noticed in the surf industry in the last 20 years?
CF: Nowadays there’s not much difference between professional and amateur. Little 11-year-old kids are getting paid thousands of dollars a month to surf. When I was a kid, they tried to take my amateur status away from me for being in an ad for Stussy as a model, not even a surfer. And that was just being in an ad. If you got paid, you were really screwed. You could not get paid and be an amateur. It was just impossible. And nowadays, young kids are getting offered million-dollar contracts, and they’re still amateurs. It’s very strange. The targeted market is like nine to 14, which I find is very strange, too, ’cause the kids haven’t even hit puberty yet, really.
DF: How well do you think surfing has been portrayed in Hollywood?
CF: Surfing in Hollywood is absolutely disgusting. They get all the right people to begin with, and then either fire ’em or don’t listen to ’em. It always ends up pretty much the same, if not getting worse.
DF: Do you think that Hollywood had a say in how the average person viewed a surfer for a long time?
CF: I would say Hollywood kinda ruined surfing as a sport, for America. If you go to Australia, they look at surfers and surfing as athletes and a sport.

They came out with Fast Times at Ridgemont High here and everybody was stuck with [mock-“surfer” voice] “I know that dude!” Everybody thinks of a surfer like Spicoli, just a dumb stoner.

DF: Where do you see yourself in ten years?
CF: Hopefully not in Orange County.

DF: How would you like to be remembered?
CF: I’m not quite sure, but I know how I’d like my funeral to be. I guess it would be more of a traditional Viking funeral, with a modern twist. They used to send out boats and burn them with the guy on them. Me, I wouldn’t mind being sent out on a surfboard or something, engulfed in flames, but packed with dynamite!
DF: That’s the modern twist?
CF: Yeah. So you go out in flames and then explode. But, I’d like my skull and maybe my femurs to be taken out so I could have a skull-and-crossbones plaque for my kid or something.
DF: Cool!
CF: Yeah. It’d be, “Beware! Don’t do as I did!”