Hawaii with Omar

Thrasher Magazine, July, 2005 by Joe Hammeke

OMAR HAS BEEN ON this party kick lately. Maybe hanging out with G Man at Washington Street is a bad influence. One night at an art opening Omar was really going for it. Ramo, as we like to call his drunken alter ego, was slamming beers, ordering rounds of shots, and making sure everyone around him had a drink in their hand. Between moments of repeatedly introducing me to the Hosoi family, he mentioned we should go to Hawaii and that he would buy the tickets. Usually I don't hold people to their drunken promises, but I was going to try and make him keep this one. And he did. Turns out he promised tickets to Pat Meyers and Nicole Zuck as well, and sure enough the next week all four of us were on the H2 in a rental car en-route to the North Shore.

STEVE ELLIS has had several mini-ramps on his property for years now and his wife had been telling him if he built another ramp she would leave him. So what did he do? He hired Dreamland to build him a big bowl--a really, big, concrete bowl--one that will most likely outlast his marriage. Our days were spent watching Omar surf Pipeline when the waves were small and watching the real guys do it when the surf was gargantuan. Each afternoon Hawaii locals Grant Fukuda, Gary Owens, Jay Adams, and a handful of others would show up to session the bowl as the sun would set. On our last morning on the North Shore Jay came by and offered to take Omar and I to the Pearl City skatepark. The adventure really began.

WE WALK OUT to where Jay had parked his truck, an Escalade pickup given to him by a Los Angeles-area Cadillac dealer. He's only had it for about seven months and it already looks like a work truck: dents here and there, and the right rear panel says "Like I give a fuck," in magic marker. We pull out of the driveway of the Quiksilver house and onto the highway. Jay floors the Escalade pickup. In no time we're tailgating another car. A quick pass and we're hitting close to 75 and coming to a winding section of the road. Jay slows it down a bit, takes out a few road cones and laughs. "I took out 20 of those the other day." Omar and I are looking for the seatbelts at this point. Mine's buried. Oh well. I look up and Jay is veering into the turn lane playing chicken with an old lady trying to turn left. She chickens out. He won. Time to fill up with gas. Jay goes in to prepay and comes out a couple of minutes later.

"We gotta go next door for gas. I told the lady here to fuck off." Apparently she couldn't figure out which pump we were parked in front of. A quick fill up and we're back on the highway. Jay doesn't use turn signals when switching lanes. It's easy to cut people off when you're driving a truck full of dents. It's the old "Who cares about their vehicle more?" game--and Jay wins every time.

We pull up to the Pearl City skate-park. It's an alright park, but not very deep in any spots. Actually, it's right on par with most of the public parks scattered across the country. It's also located next to the DMV. Jay points to the building and says, "I should go there and get my license next time I skate here."

"You don't have a driver's license yet?" Omar asked.

"No, but I got a Learner's Permit," Jay responded, "So we're cool as long as there is a licensed driver in the car."

I wondered who would get the ticket if we got pulled over? The driver with the Learner's Permit or the licensed passengers in the truck?