Unpacked In Santa Cruz
Mike Howard talking ....
Unpacked In Santa Cruz
Episode 36: Neal Kearney: Finding Balance in Turbulent Waters: A Surfer's Tale of Life In Santa Cruz
Growing up amidst the waves of Pleasure Point, Neal Kearney's journey from a working-class family to a respected figure in the surfing and writing communities is nothing short of inspiring. Join us as Neal shares how he navigated the challenges of the local surfing scene, the pivotal moments that led him to become a skilled surfer, and the unexpected health hurdles that reshaped his path. Alongside his achievements in surfing, Neal’s passion for history and storytelling comes to light, showcasing his transition into surf journalism and his role as managing editor at Santa Cruz Vibes. Discover how he has woven together his love for surfing, writing, and yoga into a life of resilience and adaptability.
The episode also takes a closer look at the darker aspects of surfing culture, tackling difficult topics like childhood bullying and the toxic dynamics within certain communities. Neal’s reflections on past trauma reveal the struggles of fitting into hierarchical social structures and the aggressive behaviors often encountered. Through honest discussions, we emphasize the ongoing journey of personal growth and the necessity of breaking free from negative conditioning. This conversation underscores the significance of protective figures, like Darshan Gooch, and the transformative impact they can have on shaping one’s path amidst challenging environments.
Finally, we explore the intricate balance between human activity and the natural world, particularly along coastlines. Neal shares insights on the responsibilities and philosophical implications of human attempts to control nature, as well as the importance of awareness and dialogue in addressing these environmental challenges. We also delve into the profound themes of personal suffering, chronic illness, and grief, highlighting resilience and agency in embracing life's adversities. Through these narratives, the episode invites listeners to find hope and healing in vulnerability, reminding us of the power of humanizing interactions and the shared kindness that connects us all.
Oh, the light went on, the music's on. We're having a podcast now. Neil, I'm in good Welcome to the Unpacked and Naked Podcast. I'm your host, michael Howard. I'm sitting here with Neil Kearney, kearney, kearney. I think I get some stuff right?
Speaker 2:It doesn't sound like it's spelled no.
Speaker 1:That's okay, though you know, I think we all have our little hiccups in mind. Speaking American, neil, you're here. Thanks for showing up.
Speaker 2:My pleasure. Yeah, happy to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're going to discuss a little bit the front end of this thing and first of all, I really want to thank my sponsors. Pointside Market it's a great little spot. Manny has got sandwiches now and you want one of her sandwiches. And we also have the Pointside Beat Shack in the back and, as you will come to find out soon, we are in the Santa Cruz Vibes Media Library. I think it's probably going to happen next magazine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's all in the works.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's all working, but anyways, you're going to have a lot of really fun podcasts to listen to in there. But particularly right now I get to sit with someone I've known for years and Neil was a Grom when he showed up in my life. I was probably about 20 when you showed up. Well, I guess I'm 55 and you're 40. About that.
Speaker 1:About 40. So actually I was probably older then, mm-hmm, yeah. Anyways, neil's been a longtime associate and, as you've heard in the previous podcasts, I'm introducing you to people that have been in my life for a long time, some close friends, some just associates and Neil and I have known each other and been kind with each other for a lot of years. You know I don't know what your experience was like with me out in the water back when I was still a dick, but you know I've watched Neil grow up. He, in the great big lexicon of surfers, is one of these guys that has held his own this whole time but managed to be a very, very kind person to having watched you grow up and there's a lot to you and and mostly for my listeners, I really do want you to understand that that this is the beginning of a probably a shift in our relationship. You know that that Neil was very willing to not listen to any podcasts before he showed up, not really knowing what was going to happen here. But, as I have been doing and trying to explain to all of you that there are just friendships around us that exist and we don't know it.
Speaker 1:And I saw you down at the Art and Wine Festival here back in September and you were helping out a friend with a booth and we talked a little bit about your health and we'll get into that later but why don't you tell my guests a little bit about yourself? Uh, you know, I, I know that you're writing for santa cruz vibes. You, you know, wrote for santa cruz waves before that. Uh and, and we'll get into the other lifelong stuff, but generally speaking, you grew up here in town yeah, I grew up um on pleasure point yeah about I don't know um, a field goal, kick away from you know the, the ocean from the stairs at pleasure point and working class family.
Speaker 2:Um, just grew up. My dad never surfed, my mom wasn't a surfer, but I got into that when I was about seven or eight years old and during that time in the early 90s it was a different place back then in Pleasure Point. It was incredibly positive experience and yeah, just kind of cut my teeth surfing and all the big gnarly guys out there and became a pretty good surfer and got the sponsors and all that stuff and always was concentrated on school. My parents made sure that I kept my head down and did all my schooling, but they still supported my surfing and all that part of you know that lifestyle as a kid. And yeah, just became sponsored and did all the contests and I kind of was about 17 or 18 when I was starting to get some some money to surf, which was really cool. But then, yeah, I started having some some health issues early on there. That kind of threw a big monkey wrench in my spokes. But even with that going on, I was still able to graduate from UCSC with a history degree and was following that and doing, you know, odd, odd jobs, jobs and kind of fell into writing, which was a really cool thing.
Speaker 2:I love to write and I wrote for the Santa Cruz Sentinel for a couple of years. I had a surf column, I was writing for Transworld Surfer and just a couple other regional magazines and yeah, that's you know up to today, and that's what I do um part-time as I'm a I'm a journalist writing for santa cruz vibes and it's been been great. And yeah, I love um animals, like to play my guitar. I'm also a yoga teacher. Yoga is a big part of my life and so, yeah, just surfing and practicing yoga, teaching yoga, and that's kind of me in a nutshell. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's interesting, you know, because on the surfing side of things, you know, I was on the front end of this wave of what happened. You happened to grow up in the meat of what happened in the industry, which is you like a lot of us were, in essence, kind of local pros, never necessarily doing good in contests or anything like that, but there's this layer of pro surfing that emerged right at your age group. That was almost enough money to live on and and and I really haven't shared this much of my story as it pertains to that. But you know, for me it really hit the scene when I was about 25, when Mavs really came to life. You know that, that you know many of those guys were part of the crew that I was a part of growing up, you know, and I made a conscious decision not not to get involved in that aspect of things, cause my life was really different. You know I was about to have my first kid.
Speaker 1:But why don't you inform the audience a little bit about how that works? Cause I know for me, you know I was getting a stipend, you know with for any photo incentive. You know sponsorship was basically boards, wetsuits and a little bit of apparel here and there, but these are things that people think still exist in surfing and they actually don't anymore. There's so much money in surfing but not being a, you were only, you know, 12, 12. And all of a sudden, you know you have these industry honchos that are like ready to start throwing down some bucks. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that was just normal to you.
Speaker 2:It was yeah. So I think, yeah, early 90s it became this opportunity for especially Santa Cruz. There is this kind of cool factor involved with Santa Cruz. We had all these you know nickname surfers, you know dog, any type of rodent you could think of. There's this, all these, you know these kind of larger-than-life characters and yeah, guys were getting. I mean, probably there is like could probably even say there's two dozen guys in the mid-90s up to the early 2000s who were making enough at least to pay rent and live this lifestyle of just being cool guy surfers. So, yeah, it seemed like there was this saturation of money and availability for a young surfer. If you had the talent, especially if you had this you know a personality that you know was able to be profitable for companies. There is guys opportunity to make lots of money.
Speaker 2:And first started for me, I got a board sponsor when I was like 11 and then it really kind of opened the door when I started writing for Freeline Surf Shop when I was about 13 and at that time Peter Mel was, you know, like a god to me and he was one of these guys, you know, probably at the very top, top level of these local pros, who was getting paid Through the surf shop. I got opportunities to get linked with other brands that they carried through reps and stuff like that, so you kind of get your surf shop sponsor and from there they set you up with other brands. It was such a magical time because when I was 14, I started getting boxes of free products sent to my house like regularly and, um, it was just unreal. It was the coolest thing in the world, like to show up to school wearing like all the same company, like gotcha was one of my first sponsors, and having gotcha shirt, shorts and all the, all the cool stuff and cool gear. Um, it was. It was amazing and it was one thing that I just I yearned for as a little kid. All the other cool kids had sponsors and when it started happening to me, I was thrilled and it just opened a lot of opportunity.
Speaker 2:And I think that it was just a whole different time then and I got approached by Santa Cruz skateboards. They weren't doing the surfboards at the time, but they picked me up under their skate team that they were doing. They had Jamie Scribner, rat Boy and, I think, charlie Chesley, and that was unreal, because I think four or five times a year I would go to NHS with a shopping cart and I'd get to go through the whole place in independent trucks, skateboards, they had all kinds of different companies under them. So, yeah, just being loaded up with free stuff is amazing. And then that, just, you know, turned into travel budgets and um photo incentive and all that type of stuff and it was really amazing and I'm so grateful that I got to experience that. It's, uh, you know, wildly different now and, um, sometimes it makes me feel like it's a good thing that that happened. I think, you know, so many egos got bloated from that experience of just getting all this free stuff and attention.
Speaker 1:So, but, um, for me it was a special time growing up and I'm so grateful for that yeah, it's a weird kind of a pressure, right, you know, you got this sticker program sitting on the front of your board, you know, have you configured them right? You know there's all this weird pressure that you feel as a grom. Yeah, you know for to, you know, succeed out there, I mean in your recollection, do you? Do you remember how much tension there was Like out there? You know, and it's Like we all kind of go through it differently. You lived on the point, I lived a mile away so I wasn't a point guy, which was a strange thing to have to go through the gauntlet on how that existed if you didn't actually live on the avenues Right. On how that existed if you didn't actually live on the avenues Right. You know, growing up with Scripps and that crew you know they're a little bit older than you, yeah, yeah, a few years older.
Speaker 1:Yeah because, I think you're sitting behind that bubble of guys that really they went. They went very hard, yes and um. You know having watched that myself being older than all of you, seeing how gnarly that scene was for lots of different reasons you know, also including the level of pain that was being inflicted on you by older guys and how you guys collected yourself is like, if it's on, it's on, but you're getting all of us.
Speaker 1:You know that was that. I look at that crew and go and go. That was the shift where it went from one-on-one to kind of like hey, the big guys are going to come at us, then all five of us little guys are coming at you and uh, you know, just just shifts of culture. Um, you know, I watched the guys that were older than me pull back. You know I was still in the scrum a little bit at that time of not wanting to have what happened to me happen to you guys. Right.
Speaker 1:I mean, how was that for you? Just that pressure cooker of you know is competition at so many levels.
Speaker 2:Oh God, ruthless, Super ruthless. And it was, yeah, growing up in that time I felt like with the older guys, like the guys maybe 10, I think for me was a lot more digestible in the terms of it feeling more like kind of like you know, older brother torture you know, like more of a ritual than than a anger at you.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, more ritual and more kind of a tradition.
Speaker 2:Just to, you know, put Grom's at notice that you know you're younger and this is how we operate here and this is a way that it kind of keeps order around this kind of, um, limited resource that we have, which is which is waves, um, but then again, you know, there was also this like really nasty side of it too, where, like I think, some of these guys started going to prison and identifying themselves with more of like a gangster type of lifestyle and so, but that for me was was navigable or it was, I was something I was able to traverse with, you know, limited, um, you know repercussions.
Speaker 2:But what happened with me, I think, was that, around this same time, a lot of the kids that I grew up with and I was in the same age range as, um, you know, it wasn't just like they were going to hang out and check the waves and see these guys surfing, and then it was more like they continued with these guys into the party and those kids, um, my peers, it felt like they continued with these guys into the party and those kids, my peers, it felt like they were, you know, trying to emulate the kind of top-down older brother kind of I don't know abuse or torture, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it was more like if you were sensitive. I was a real sensitive, you know, person and I didn't like to like pick on other people, but it felt like there in, with that being said, I became like almost kids like me, became like a little bit of a mark, you know, like somebody who they could take their aggression out on from being pounded by these older guys and kind of turn it into more of like a bowling type of aspect. So I got kind of, like you know, pretty picked on for many years until the point that I, you know, actually would fight back like physically. You know, actually would fight back like physically. And, you know, after a certain amount of time, when they sense that strength from you, you stop getting picked on so much.
Speaker 2:But it was really difficult for me for many years and I feel like I just, yeah, I would hate to bring that kind of trauma to another younger kid below myself. It just didn't feel natural for myself. But I think that, you know, in certain ways it was kind of I grew from it and I learned a lot about myself and it also made me appreciate the upbringing that I did have, which was with so much love and support which many of these kids, you know, maybe couldn't find from their own families, and so they were looking at that kind of they're trying to maybe get love from the older guys and maybe trying to prove themselves by, you know, emulating what they saw, and it was toxic, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean, as I was expressing before the podcast, people who've listened to the podcast know that there's a lot of stories sitting under the belly of what I have shared. You know, for me personally, at 54, right, is when I got clear about the impact of, you know, being a sensei like you showing up from Tola. It was a whole different program back then. And if you, if you lived in Tola like, like you, were just a Tola rat and was a whole different program back then, and if you lived in Tola, like you, were just a Tolarat and you really had to work your way through, you know I'll share my initiation to Sewer Peak, which was I'm 13,. Decided to go from First Peak to Sewer Peak. You know we're talking about a spot that's, you know, 25, 30 yards away, and that crew was a whole, entirely different crew with a different subset of rules.
Speaker 1:And I got to Pangy's, which you know for any of you listening is just right in between the actual place where the wave breaks best and the spot I was leaving, and Larkin pulled out of a wave that he was on just to jump on my back, unzip my wetsuit, michelin me and go not yet, you know back to first peak and I didn't show up there again until I was 17 and ready to fight, like that was just how it worked. You know it was the first peak was the subset of what went on at sewer peak and sewer peak was gnarly. Back then, you know, you had your quigleys, you had all the knee borders are still running the scene, right. You know, when I was in the knee borders were the gnarliest guys out of the group, for sure you know, and, uh, you know, I think, the hard thing for me to unpack.
Speaker 1:You know, once I really realized it because it was my son who called me out on just how lame santa cruz is that way. You know that that you guys, you guys think the world operates a particular way and you don't realize, like nobody cares, like there's five spots in santa cruz where this goes down. You guys travel everywhere, you do all this shit to people as though the rest of the world is this way right you know, spare just a few spots around the rest of the world that are like that, right.
Speaker 1:But in his whole thing was like, what's normal to you is so wrong, you know, like, like it's not normal, right. And, and you know, it was christmas, gosh, you know, two years ago, where he called me out and said, look, I'm never going to raise kids around you because you think this is normal, right, and you're not that guy. You know he's like, you're not that way, anywhere in the water, for sure. But it was over a particular incident with, let's just say, a kid with a big mouth that was about to turn 18 and he was mouthing off to somebody and I had some guys from my club that were going to come beat him up, you know, and I got him out of the gym and you know, my, my, my son was so precise, you know, I'm like, is this about that thing? He goes no, it's about the fact that I was out for a half hour and the moment you hit the water, the whole temperature changed. Everybody's afraid of you. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'm like what? Everybody's not afraid of me? And he's like oh, you don't even know you like, like people know, just don't even invest in in how things are going to go next Right yeah. That that you are the one that changed the temperature. That's why that kid did what he did is to respond to what was coming out Right, and it was like, oh, just my, the pit of my stomach Like, okay, I've worked so hard on this thing for 30 something years to not be this way, and yet I can't undo how I'm known Totally not be this way, and yet I can't undo how I'm known totally and that's just how you're known.
Speaker 1:Yeah, was there a traverse point for you? Because you know we've talked enough out in the water about the anger side of of santa cruz and, of course, over covid.
Speaker 1:We all know about the incident yeah you know with with a certain gal that, that it went from we were holding it down all of a sudden the middle of covid to everybody's getting citations and restraining orders over one moment. That was, unfortunately, well deserved from the person that received it, but you know, the the person who initiated triggered something where now you can't so much as look at somebody sideways and they'll be a sheriff, right, right, you know, up on top of the hill Were you working on that stuff before? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Things settled in. You know cause? I know I was trying, but I didn't see it until after it was all done. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, and it took my son to go, like you suck Right, like whatever this world is where you're some mob boss, that's the that's what he called me because you're a mob boss like this is a mob, right, you know, and you know, and he's tough as nails and he's like, frankly, I can kill all of you, but like I don't, you know, like this is just dumb, like nobody cares about you guys, right totally.
Speaker 2:yeah, you know I think that, yeah, just like I would, I would always be like you can't ignore conditioning, right, like you're, you're grown up in a certain environment and no matter how much you don't think that's you or you don't think it applies to you, like at least the negative sides, it's going to be. You know, you're born, you're born into it kind of, and it's spread into your dna in a sense. But I feel like that little part of me, that sensitive, diminutive kid who got so picked on, was always in the back of my head and kind of guiding how I treated others and I feel like I've done a pretty good job throughout it all of not wanting to, you know, keep that cycle of abuse going. But with that being said, I still struggle with it.
Speaker 2:Just today, a thing happened in the water today with a kid who just caught a wave and you know he's 15, 18 years younger than me and I was going to go and until the very last second, until I had to, like physically you know, yell at him to not go. He didn't back off and you know, as I was standing up, said hey, beat it. And I was just frustrated. I only had an hour to serve and I wanted to get a couple waves, but that's about as far as as it goes. Um, you know, I'll still bark every once in a while at people, but you have to be kind of blowing it pretty hard.
Speaker 2:But I think there's an undercurrent of frustration that still happens. I just do my best to try to apply all the lessons I've learned from everything that I've gone through about trying to maintain my character and dignity and honor that person who I feel like I am deep down inside, and that doesn't gel with a lot of the conditioning that I've received. So it's all an unpacking process over time and I'm still working on it. So, to answer your question, I feel like I'm still working on it. So, to answer your question, I feel like it's just been something that I've been processing the whole time as an adult and I've never really gotten physical out in the water with kids, younger kids and stuff like that, who may have deserved it, may have not, but it's just a process. Yeah, I'm still learning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is going to be a little bit personal question for you to answer to me, right, right, like whether my vision of myself is true, because I've been doing a lot of shadow work and when I experienced what you experienced, when I decided to get tough, you know which, which is kind of the weird response you have to have as as a you know person growing into adulthood, you know, if you can't engage in the fight, then it's just not going to happen for you. And if you want to serve, you have. At least when I grew up, you had to know how to fight. You had to be for you. And if you want to surf, you have. At least when I grew up, you had to know how to fight. You had to be talented and you had to be ready to compete every day. And you didn't know what competition was coming towards you, whether it was surfing or fighting, whether it was paddling, whatever schisms you got with, whatever crew show up all the various dynamics that happened. I remember when I had the opportunity to step up to the guys that picked on me and level it out, I thought that I had purposed myself Okay, I don't want other kids to go through this.
Speaker 1:When you look back at the first times that you saw me, you began to know who I was of that crew. That's my age. Did I even appear like I was trying to protect you guys? It's strange because I can tell you at least three or four times a week I stepped up on my friends because they knew I would beat them up if they picked on you guys. But I don't even know. You know cause you're speaking to this culture thing. I don't even know if that energy was felt by anybody and that that was again one of the things that my son really was very careful about. It's like look, I know what you're doing, you know, but you still understand, everybody's still afraid of you and it was you know. So this is a pretty vulnerable question that way. Like, did I even appear to be the guy that I thought that I was being out there? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, no, I never, really never think I picked up on you being, at least to me, like someone who is scary, in a sense, where I felt fear from you, but I definitely felt, you know, um, some kind of like protective energy around coming from you, and so I was kind of putting that out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I'm like this. This has been the hard part, because I don't know myself, right like I, I don't.
Speaker 2:well, it's hard, part Cause I don't know myself, right, like I don't. Well, it's hard to see, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like was I ever the person that I thought that I was out there trying to like make sure.
Speaker 2:I felt that that vibe from you and and and for sure you know whether or not I was privy to any conversations or energy that you gave other people who are being, you know, jerks out there I just I always felt a um, you know, a, a protective energy around you surfing. So I think that, yeah, it's hard to see we're in our own heads all the time.
Speaker 1:So I was totally, I totally in my head every time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, but no, I felt that from you. I was totally in my head every time I surfed. Yeah, but no, I felt that from you and I think that I always appreciated that about surfing with guys like you, and there was a number of guys who really exemplified that protective energy. Like one person that sticks out for me is like Darshan Gooch. Like one person that sticks out for me is like Darshan Gooch. You know, depending on your experiences, some people you know think he's the most soft core, I mean like the most mellow, kind of cruisy, positive guy in the world, and there's other people who, you know, might not feel exactly that same way no, the other side yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, and that's just human, we're all like that, like in our conditioning. But I think that for me especially, darshan was one of those guys who took me under their wing at a really young age and he physically like protected me a couple times from being like jumped, like. He walked me home one time from surfing when another one of my friends at age 15 was drunken on meth and was trying to, you know, attack me in the water. I had the physical fist fight with him in the water. I didn't do anything, like he was just so spun out.
Speaker 2:And then he came in from surfing and was waiting for me up on the, the railing and there's like four other dudes with him egging him on and I actually was coming in and I I was like crying. I'm like Darsh, can you help me, can you walk me home? And he walked me home and we were about halfway there and then, out of the corner of my eyes, you heard the ch-ch-ch-ch. It was like a skateboard and I looked around and one of the kids was on a skateboard and the kid who was really, you know, really hopped up on on drugs and you know aggression tried to like tackle me and Darshan stepped in there and, you know, really protected me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's. You know, I can look back in retrospect because of the way that I had not had to live at the point. You know, I I mean I I can say categorically the difference between me and everybody else. My age, my parents came and picked me up. I was never on the cliff, you know, like there's the one thing it wasn't that my parents were doing a great job or anything like that, it wasn't, it was just presence. Yeah, that helped me avoid what befell most of the people that were in the talent group. That were my age.
Speaker 1:Some of these are known names, the best surfers. I try to explain. You don't know them because they're dead or in jail. That's just the reality of Santa Cruz and that's really weird to think about the talent that's just lost that would have changed the world, because you think about the guys who did. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know like, but there's other guys. They were actually better. Yeah, you know like you would have seen things nobody would have seen at the time had they not gotten hooked in to the rail. Yeah, the rail was just the dangerous spot and it's so ironic every time I drive by the point now to see people walking there. Nobody walks at the point. What am I?
Speaker 1:looking at. This is not a tourist area. This is hell. This is the beginning of like. There's a lot of stuff that can go down. Once you're one block in off the cliff, it was going back there Totally yeah.
Speaker 1:Like it's, it's, it's, it was going back there Totally. There's no resemblance of it now, but that was, that was a decade, decade and a half that that happened Totally. But for years it's called pleasure point for a reason. It was, it was all where, all the gambling, all and this is Al Capone's little spot, yeah, and people don't realize that about that. That was all whoring establishments, apparently, where we're sitting right now.
Speaker 1:All the prostitution all happened on this part of the block and all that's left was a card room and a porn shop Right, and that's just weird. It's weird to know that about town and oh, it's super weird, it's so.
Speaker 2:It's so scrubbed, clean and gentrified and it's like disneyland, you know, especially when they put the seawall in there. It's like the matterhorn or something like that. You know, and yeah, you'll see. Um, you know families walking their strollers with their dog and their kids and tourists, you know, kind of like just checking the waves and not knowing that guys are.
Speaker 3:You know smoking Chiva and it's like beating up their girlfriends right there.
Speaker 2:You know it's pretty, pretty gnarly sense, I think it was. It was also pretty cool because I would be like nine years old hanging out there on my skateboard on the rail doing 360s and there's, you know, there's a 50 year old businessman just got off of work and he's checking the waves hanging out with us and then there's three, four guys swilling beers and it was. It was a weird kind of thing. It was such a tribal thing where a nine-year-old could hang out and, you know, spend the afternoon in the backyard of a 35-year-old's house and, in a sense, a lot of nostalgia with me around that time. But yeah, it was pretty gnarly, pretty grimy just watching guys get regularly beat up. Yeah, it's really interesting. One of my first memories of scent was walking down 33rd Avenue after surfing and smelling Chiva being smoked out of the back of a truck and it smelled like, um, like burnt batteries or something like that. And I still like that smell is like still in my nostrils.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to this day yeah, it is weird how those things play a role and and how you remember history. You know the the uh smell of blood you know, in the water after someone gets beat up, just that visceral, all the feelings, all the feels of the gladiator situation that is, and was surfing back then. Right.
Speaker 1:Back when it wasn't just about performance, it wasn't just about the you know, it wasn't just about the sticker profile. It was like yeah you're either a known guy or you're not. We don't. You know pleasure point the lane. You know you get to the really hardcore spots like stockton avenue if you're not a known guy, like you're done yeah like it wasn't that you couldn't paddle out, but like you had to worry about coming up the cliff.
Speaker 1:Right, you know, and and even you know I know that when I got married I was very careful to watch all the consumption levels to know where I was going to come up oh yeah, you know like, yeah, it's like a thermometer. Yeah, if the beers are flowing at noon, man, you know, and I'm paddling out at four or five. I ain't coming up that way. No, you know, because there's they're deep into the next.
Speaker 2:You know two, 12 packs right with the three guys that you're not sure whether they're ready to throw down yeah but they're sure going to heckle you, no matter what yeah it doesn't matter how well you surfed, it was just a strange and some of the guys like it was the guys who, like, didn't surf sometimes, that you had to watch out for because they were just the, you know, the doofus lackeys who they not like, the lackey brothers, but like the.
Speaker 2:You know the dummies who they could just sick on somebody to kind of hold it down, and that they didn't weren't able to hang because they were ripping on the waves. They're able to hang because they would, you know, do the dirty work yeah, well, they would fight and deal drugs.
Speaker 1:That was.
Speaker 1:That was the whole reason why they were there, right, and uh, you know, my investment in the scene was very light at that point you know, I saw how it was going and I was out you know, and you know clearly there's not a real big career for me to make in pro surfing, but but just even being in business, which I was at the time, was like I don't even know if I want to be in this business. Yeah, like it, it just. Whatever this underbelly is, it's not what's being portrayed and I don't like it because it's not. It's not who was celebrated. It was why and it's one of those things where it's like you know, without methamphetamines we would not be seeing what we're seeing in pro surfing. Oh yeah, like there's just a reality to it mavericks will not be ridden the way it's like like the harbor.
Speaker 1:You just go down the list of those moments and the premier waves. Those guys are so yoked out. Oh yeah. I remember paddling out the harbor and, like you know, just everybody, just people's, all the way, oh, like this is how you surf here, like you have to completely be invincible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, basically yeah be invincible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, basically yeah and uh. You know, what most people don't know about surfing is is that you know? You asked this question back then. Like are those people on drugs? The answer was yes oh yeah, that's kind of what it took to advance it that way, and we can all celebrate it now and people can be clean now. Right, but that's not what it took to get there. What? It took to get.
Speaker 2:There was a meth pipe yeah and getting all that energy focused on one thing and determined yeah and you know it's an unfortunate side effect, but we sure do love to celebrate what it is now yeah, it is kind of strange the the forgetting that happens, you know, because a lot of these guys turn their lives around. Oh, I'm not doing meth anymore, I'm working with kids and I'm I'm doing this for the community now. And oh, this Phoenix rising kind of rebirth story and for me I'm like, but that guy tried to run me over in his car when I was 13, you know like it's.
Speaker 2:You know, they say elephants don't forget and I don't forget a lot of this stuff that happens so sometimes when you see, yeah, the glorification of the past. Oh, that guy was like tweaked out on math and he's being a jerk, but like he's a great guy now and I love to open the possibility for people to, you know, become a better person and to learn from their mistakes. But yeah, it kind of is a little weird sometimes it's a strange paradox, you know.
Speaker 1:You know, I guess, because with my church background I'm more amenable. You know, because mostly I was out of it right, but at the same time it's like, you know, yeah, second, third, fourth chances, that's great if you're really working on it yeah you know, but it is a strange existence and that that I'm really glad that you're really working on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it is a strange existence and I'm really glad that you're sharing this view. Yeah, you're one of a few now. That's like yeah, it was cool, but it was not cool the way everybody thinks it is Right, totally so I need a little pee-pee break and I'll be right back. Okay, we're back. The 55-year old prostate has been relieved.
Speaker 1:Well, you just use that segue a little bit to talk about, um, your writing yeah and uh, you know what you're up to with vibes magazine, and and uh, let's, let's talk a little bit about that side of you yeah, um.
Speaker 2:So yeah, as I mentioned, I got a history degree at UCSC and, as you probably would imagine, there's a lot of reading and writing that goes into that. So it just was kind of natural, you know, going on surf trips and stuff with my sponsors, I started kind of just writing some little articles about my experiences and started getting published and it's a great form of expression. And then that kind of turned into like a journalist type thing when I worked for the Sentinel and that was awesome I started just to interview local people about what they're doing local events, people making waves in the surf industry and I just fell inator of that process of explaining the surfing lifestyle and everything that goes into that. And so I did that for a couple of years with the Sentinel and then, as I'm writing for Trans World Surf doing some articles here and there you know, as I'm writing for Trans World Surf doing some articles here and there, I think in 2014 it was Tyler Fox started Santa Cruz Waves. That was awesome. He got me in there in the first issue and for that 10 years I wrote. I think I was in pretty much every issue writing and, yeah, same thing Just being able to interview people doing cool stuff and being a storyteller, being able to read your writing in a magazine and also being known for that and um, I think it was in a way it kind of supplemented that stoke that I got from being a talented surfer.
Speaker 2:I was still in the surfing world, I could still surround myself with that and be part of these stories that were coming out and more from the side of telling them. And, yeah, I just got to meet so many cool people from all sides of town. As you know, we can be pretty segregated. I mean I only surf Pleasure Point. I would maybe surf the lane for a contest here and there, but there was all these people who are in that community, who I knew peripherally community, who I knew peripherally but then being able to kind of step into their world and tell their stories just made so many really valuable friendships and got to help people and you know, help people tell their story there or promote their business, you know they're, they value that and so feeling like I became really immersed in the whole Santa Cruz culture as opposed to my little bubble on Pleasure Point. So that was amazing and just kept it going.
Speaker 2:I think Santa Cruz Waves they folded Not really folded, tyler just decided to put the kibosh on it and once that happened, you know, my friend Brian and I had some conversations about maybe trying to fill that space and that kind of turned to Santa Cruz vibes and so now I'm in the opportunity where I'm the managing editor, so I got a lot more involvement behind the scenes. I feel like I was one of the first people in there to kind of put that whole idea, to get it going off the ground. Basically, and I'm currently doing a lot of writing every week I do two online articles. I have complete free reign to write about whatever I want and so far it's been great. And Brian, who's the editor, he's hasn't had an issue with anything I've written. He's publishing it all. He trusts me. That's a really great feeling to have your boss trust you, you know so openly with what you want to put across and it validates my vision and for the stories that I want to tell, and it's been great. Yeah, we we're four times a year and I get to write about really cool stuff.
Speaker 2:We just did an article about something called.
Speaker 2:Or I just wrote an article in the newest issue, the fall issue for Vibes.
Speaker 2:It's about managed retreat, which is the kind of the idea or the reality really that all these coastal communities with, especially in santa cruz, with so many you know, really um, expensive, um, beachfront properties, with these people who want to keep the property just the way that they like it and have come to know and love it, with the reality that the ocean here is.
Speaker 2:Even if you want to separate climate change, if you believe in that or not, the ocean is a destructive force and erosion it doesn't matter how much the sea level rises I mean that contributes to erosion, but that force is waves crashing on cliffs. Over time it's going to destroy them, and so these houses are going to in the infrastructure, access to beaches and all that stuff roads, sewage, all that stuff is going to be compromised over time. So that's talking about like long-term plans, about how to safely and intelligently really, you know, literally walk away from the edge of the cliff, and so that was really cool article to write about. It's an inconvenient truth for many people who have oceanfront property especially, but it's something that needs to be talked about. So it puts me in the position where I can tell people about this and inform them, and that's something that um is is amazing.
Speaker 1:I did a surfing etiquette one, uh, the issue before this, one or a couple issues back and yeah, just it's great yeah, so you're feeling like you have a voice to the things that you're actually observing and, as it has been with this podcast, like just oh, there's a voice and there's other people who have voices.
Speaker 1:You know, let's a voice and there's other people who have voices. You know, let's, let's expose the conversation, you know, let's expose what we're really observing and, and you know, in this case you bring up something like you know the amount of money that's forming on the cliff and it's a lot of money and that influence is it's strange to observe. You know what you know, I don't, I don't think there's any ill intent, you know from anybody who does it, but the reality is that like, yeah, this is all supposed to erode and you know, I remember I was judging a contest with steve coletta back when I was like 18 for NSSA, and he was talking about, like we don't know, the impact of the lifeguard truck driving by and moving the sand seam, you know, and just the fragile reality of what is the ocean, this super mighty force yeah and not that I'm super into environmentalist.
Speaker 1:You know perspective, you know I like to think of myself as one, but but you really wouldn't know it by how I actually live. You know, uh, great, I'm better than my neighbor, whatever that means, you know, like you know, and the compare and contrast part of it. But the reality is is that these things that we're doing do have an impact, whether we want them to or not. And it's not just one house, it's you are one of. You know 200 houses from. You know, from Capitola to Pleasure Point that is having an impact on the way the coastline is going to be formed and shaped.
Speaker 1:And, like you said, global warming or no global warming, whether the sea level is rising or not, guess what? You're still having an impact, right, and what to do next is always the hardest thing. Yeah, but at least starting the real conversation. It seems that I don't know how it's been for you in this town. There's a lot of good intent.
Speaker 1:I don't know that there's actually goodwill to actually get at those real conversations of like, hey, if a house is about to fall in the ocean, then maybe it should fall in the ocean. Maybe, maybe, whatever you know, four or five million bucks you're gonna do to gird up that one spot. Maybe that's not the right call right.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, and, and on that topic, a lot of the things that we do, like putting in riprap, you know, the rocks, like at 26th Avenue, the seawall, diverting sand like they've been doing at the harbor they have unintended consequences. Where it's like, oh, this is a short term solution, toterm solution to save our little slice of heaven here, but there's so much that we don't understand and all the studying and research in the world can't prepare you for what's going to actually happen. A photo, actually, um, it was a photo that I think kim moriarty posted to facebook, like in 2008 or something that showed a, a picture, a pulled back picture of pleasure, pleasure point, from like 35th avenue, looking at the cliff as it used to stand. And I was looking at it and it was. It was so crazy to see him like. It was so much different. There was so much more sand there.
Speaker 2:And now, with that seawall, what happens when you put a seawall in? Basically, it's a solid surface. Where a cliff, there are little divots, there's, there's space for the water, that energy that comes and bashes up. It's the cliff. It gets dissipated by these, um, you know, irregular irregularities in the cliff surface. But when you make that smooth. What happens is that it absorbs all that energy and just refracts it back towards the ocean, and so what that does is it totally screws up the natural um nature's natural buffer against erosion, which is um sand and sand sand coming off the cliff anymore.
Speaker 2:no, and sand takes eon. I mean, you think of a grain of sand that was a huge rock at some point and it takes eons for that sand to get built up. And it's like with a snap of a finger and the signing of a document. Now it's like, okay, well, we're just going to completely change and inadvertently undo all this natural protection that we had from from nature and and so, yeah, that's that's alarming and yeah, it really makes you you think about the folly of man and the hubris of our ability to be certain that we can control these issues, that are these factors, and yeah, we're so out of control that we can do damage in the long run.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've taken to watching kitty cat videos the last year on Instagram, which I'm a little late to it on Instagram which I'm a little late to it, but you know watching animals now and how kind they are when they're really allowed to interact with humanity and be themselves without having to have their guard up right.
Speaker 1:You know, on the kind of existential side it's strange, you know, to come from a belief system where the reality is is that, you know, man somehow became the apex predator. You know we have the skills to in a way control parts of the world and the damage that that can do and the damage that that can do, that's a really like. You know, for me on the Christian philosophy side. You know realizing, you know, if it was God that gave man control over everything, the responsibility of that, and how dismissive you know, at least in the forms of Christianity that I observe they are of that prospect that you know, whatever was, whatever authority was given to man, how we just ignore it, ignore, ignore we. We think we just can control things, not realize the implications of how we're controlling something.
Speaker 1:Right you know it's, you know it's a little, probably too big to fully consider, but it is a strange thing to look at. Well, any one of these animal groups if they decided to collect themselves like, just talk about cats alone if cats really figured it out. All it would take is five of them to kill guys. And and what?
Speaker 1:whatever, whatever authoritative structure lives inside of mammals and and and animals. You know, whatever this is that we're experiencing, it's just a very strange thing to watch, because we're the ones with the brain power and the ability to change it right and we're not taking responsibility for it for sure yeah yeah it's wild it.
Speaker 1:It is weird and the conversations seem moot. I even feel stupid talking about it just by acknowledging it. It's like I don't know if there's anything that can be done about it, except that you know. I guess talking about it at least makes you conscious of what it is you're looking at.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's all starts with the conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you know it's. You know to your writing what has been the biggest surprise to you about humans. As you've done interviews, as you've traveled with them, you know what do you feel was the surprise that has shaped you as you've grown into it, like, was there a turning point in your writing? Did it happen, gradually, that you just saw the world differently because people wanted to talk to you?
Speaker 2:yeah, you're going to write the things down totally well, I think, uh, first off, you know you can have a picture in your mind of who a person is. You know from the photos or from the you know sound bites that you hear as a pod. Doing this podcast thing is like when you actually sit down and have an open and honest, frank, casual conversation with somebody where you just you learn so much more about people on a human level. You know demystifies or um, it, it brings people, um, you know, it makes them more relatable. When you're sitting down next to them, face to face and talking and I think that was, you know, like I would have a a certain kind of um, you know perception about who a person was. And you know, talking to them, maybe being nervous, like, oh, this person's like this or whatever, and then, but when you get down to get down to it, people are, we're all human and you get to get a real insight into their humanity when you can have a conversation with them.
Speaker 2:And I think that really comes to light in an interview format and you know, as much as they want to prepare themselves or portray themselves in a certain way, that true essence of who they are bleeds through once the lips start moving and um, yeah, I think that was pretty interesting and um, showing me that people are fallible and they are, um most of the time, just all. We're all just trying to kind of figure it out and no matter how much we portray ourselves as being, you know fully, um, you know, grasping our place, um in in our society and life, that um, you get uh to know people a lot better, and so I find a lot of value in those conversations. And, yeah, making friends with somebody who I thought I would, or in my mind, I'm like I don't like that guy, like that guy's a kook, you know, but I'm still have to write about him or whatever I was assigned this um, and then being pleasantly surprised most of the time, um, about, um, the inherent kind of goodness of humans, which is interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think it is weird, you know, because when we grow up you know we hear good guys, bad guys. I think it's important, structurally you know, to have our hierarchies and kind of understand where we fit, but to have those, that reality of of good's, a very movable prospect, you know, and the things that we think, doesn't mean that that's real. And even if you're a big thinker and even if you really know people, you don't no.
Speaker 1:There's just when we're allowed to even have conversations like this and get to know each other more. I'm some other guy until the microphone's on, so we get to talk this way. I live in a memory bank, that's. You know, it's probably not deep in your lexicon, with all the people that you know, but you know, I've lived there, but I live a particular way and it's just words between us for a couple hours. Right, changes the whole thing of how you see somebody yeah and you know at least least with.
Speaker 1:What I've been trying to do is, in this format, expose what I view as everyday, normal people, that I've been able to be around all this time but I haven't known them yeah.
Speaker 1:I just want to get to know people. That's really the curiosity that's come out of me. I wanted to tell my story before now. It's like no, there's just a lot of really great people around me that I haven't known. You know, how can I get to know them? Right, like like these are great moments and they get to live and people get to be known and and that's a beautiful thing. Yeah, because, it makes us feel a little bit less alone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know you can kind of demystify those preconceptions that, um, you might have about other people, when now you can listen to a free form interview and be like you know what. I didn't know that about that person or that's, or that explains this about them, or that's why they seem this way, and now I can really get the full story or at least a deeper understanding of where they're coming from. So I think humanizing people who maybe are larger than life or maybe, in your opinion, maybe not as admirable as you thought and you might see, oh well, that's why I feel that way about that person and in reality they were acting this way because of A, b and C, and I can relate to that and so, yeah, it's a great thing these conversations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we act upon what we're celebrated for. There's just the reality. But what we're celebrated for fits in a weird market. Depending on what market you're in, Like if you're at Pleasure Point, you're tough and you can surf, you're celebrated. Yeah. Why? You know various reasons, 100 guys out, 100 different answers. You know or hated for the same things.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, it's just the reality of being human. Same things, yeah, you know, it's just the reality of being human. And and I'm of the persuasion that, if we really get to know others more and see the kindness in people that we think are ruthless, because, you know, thinking of all the other guys that I, you know, I had to get past when I was young, and seeing them now old, and how much kinder they are, yes and yeah, it comes with age, you know, because you can't beat guys up the way you used to and sometimes you just own more shit, so you're not going to do it anymore yeah
Speaker 1:like there's various reasons for that, yes, but you know, joking around about larkin I can use his name because it's an ongoing joke every time I see him, you know, because he always says gentler times, our gentler times, yeah, referring back to that 13 year old. Well, it sure didn't feel gentle. But the larkin that we know now like does not resemble the larkin that I knew growing up, or the larkin of 10 years ago, totally like, he's just this big gentle soul.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know, again, he's an easy person to posture around you know because of the figurehead that he is Right, you know, and how much he's changed so fast. Yes, we not. Or had I not treated him like the bully I thought he was? Behaving away only for 10 seconds the first time I met him. Had I not had to do the tough guy routine with him and step toe to toe, how different the dynamic would have been for now, 40 years. Yeah. Or 42,. You know it was my first encounter with him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that it's more socially acceptable, like with the gentrification of our area and with, you know, surfing and, and you know as much as I kind of bemoan the fact that you know if you say the wrong thing or if you, um, you know, lift a a hand towards someone. I don't endorse violence at all. Sometimes some people need to get smacked.
Speaker 1:You know, it's like come to jujitsu and work it out. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:But you know, with that being said, there's more acceptance about seeing people as they truly are and that people are more encouraged to let that, that their guard down and be really kind people.
Speaker 2:I think, like I think that you know, I think that with humans, I think that it's a nature versus nurture thing and we're all born into this world naked and afraid but inherently good and that kind of the evil or the darker side is something through nurturing and I don't think that reflects our true nature. So I think there's more of an acceptance of, you know, leaning into being a nice guy, which is one of the cool things where you know, sometimes I meant I did mention earlier about these people who are just complete, you know pieces of work before and you know, and I kind of said, yeah, it's weird seeing them being celebrated, but I can't find any fault with somebody, you know, dropping the act and leaning into kindness and trying to foster that within themselves or change or rewire their brain or whatever it is, and I think it's a really positive thing. The one positive I can find through this gentrification is that people are able to be less afraid to be themselves, which I feel like most of us want to be loved and be kind and good people. There's nothing wrong that feels good. Yeah, you know right, totally.
Speaker 1:It's so much better than than going home angry, you know, and you know, at least for me, having let go of surfing which which is what I did I'm just now kind of coming back to it. I just didn't want to be mad anymore, you know, and and realizing, realizing boy, because I don't know if I told you this, but when I was in Hawaii last January, it was the biggest swell I've ever had there. I was out on a day on the front end of it and knew it was going to get weird. Then it got really weird and I realized, you know, I've never actually liked this. I've only ever done this just to be competitive with other people.
Speaker 1:All I am is competitive Right, like there's no engagement. I never got any dopamine response from catching big waves or doing all the things that people are like wow, that was amazing. It's like that never happened. I just wanted to be better than, or do something dumber than, the dude next to me, and I can't function unless there's other guys doing dumb stuff. It was horrible to find out that I've wasted 42 years of my life pursuing something that.
Speaker 1:I never liked it. I was just on this weird edge that I never liked it. Right, I was just on this weird edge and it was mostly just a weird cortisol response that didn't have a positive thing. It just was like well, I overcame that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's the other beautiful thing about the gentrification is the ability, or being forced, to fall in love with being in the ocean, surfing for all the right reasons. Yeah, and I think that for many of us it's going to be a process that will maybe never ever really shed those shackles of conditioning that we've been kind of brought into our lives or been restrained by, but the possibility and the opportunity is there for you. If you want that and if you want to learn to love to surf for the right reasons, now is a better time than ever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's funny because, know, and we'll kind of tie this aspect up here the groms are getting old enough now where they kind of and I guess the age range I'm talking about is like 15 to 25 know where you have the tail end of Gen Z, whatever we're calling next generation Gen Alpha. Yeah. And there's this uneasy tension and I'm hearing the rhetoric, kind of, from the 30 year olds, which didn't experience anything you and I experienced, talking about how it was and the conflict of like.
Speaker 1:You know how it was sucked. Every day, twice a day, I showed up on this cliff to come out and surf and I didn't know if I was going to get good waves, get in a fight, get in some situation that was going to last two years, right. So-and-so, paddled out with another guy and them together is not good for my thing. It wasn't cool. It seems cool because you have this outcome now, where everything's cool now.
Speaker 1:It's like the process was not, I don't know if it was worth it. And so I tell the kids because they're genuinely asking now, what was it like to grow up there? And like you know what, this is better, this is better. You know, like without the tension, without this thing that was in the air Totally. You know, like I look back and like boy, I thought it was good and it sucked yeah, cycles of abuse.
Speaker 2:You know it's just like they say with child molestation or, you know, domestic violence. It's this, this cycle of abuse, and um, you know for how much we want to glorify the past. It wasn't cool and I was traumatized for it. So, it's like if a kid can go out there and surf and not have to worry about getting his wetsuit peeled off, like one time I was 14. I got in a guy's way at first peak lifts.
Speaker 2:I won't name any names, but, dude, he peeled the wetsuit off, completely off a 14 year old child in the water in the dead of winter and paddled this, my wetsuit, out into the kelp beds. And I'm there naked, you know, floating with my little, you know, one incher, dangling in the cold water and just petrified, and that's a traumatic thing, you know. Yeah, so it's great that that's not really happening anymore, you know. But, um, yeah, there's pros and cons with it all, I think you know.
Speaker 1:Um, there's a little less order, the way we've understood it right. You know and you get a lot of. You don't own this. It's like you don't. You don't get to show up here six months and act like you live here yeah you know that thing. But the the paradox is like well, how do we do this now?
Speaker 2:well, we have to live with the chip on our shoulder, knowing what we had to go through, and when people you know, a younger generation, they can kind of bypass that respect. That should automatic, been automatic, it's. It feels like a personal affront to your character, your dignity, and so that's in itself is a test and a learning. Um, you know, watershed moment for yourself to kind of like really, um, you know, reflect on, you know how, how beneficial was that and can I, can I let that go? And this is how it is now and overall it's more positive. So I'm going to stick with that, yeah that's okay.
Speaker 1:So a big question here at the end. Answer it, however you want to. One of the things that sticks out to me about your character that that you know, having watched you grown up, um, who you've become as an adult. Uh, the kind person that's sitting in front of me. There's this other element that that's sitting in there and it's a simple word. It's a hard word suffering, um. You've had some autoimmune issues for how long has it been now?
Speaker 2:um, I think I started having um pretty like really significant chronic pain by the time I was about 17, so over 20 years now.
Speaker 1:And you know one of the factoids I think about having impact with people. You're never going to have impact with other people without suffering yourself, but you've been forced to, in a way, embrace suffering for suffering sake, which is its own discipline. Yes, you know that.
Speaker 1:How you encounter a morning every morning, how you encounter sleep, how you have to encounter life, yeah is through a singular lens, and one of the great strengths that I see in you, one of the things that makes me admire you, is how you have embraced that lens and encountered that lens, been vocal about that lens where other people are not willing to be. Yeah.
Speaker 1:They mostly suffer in silence. Right, they mostly suffer in silence. Right, not necessarily in a rational way, am I? Asking this question more in a spiritual way. Yeah, how you know, look for anybody listening, anybody who has what Neil has. When you're in this chronic phase with with um, with your, you know basically your body just betraying you. You know, like, like there's, you cannot trust your body, right like that's, that's, like you don't relate to it, unless, I mean, I guess you could get significantly injured at some point right and kind of relate, but those injuries generally go away.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But they don't change your whole life necessarily. Totally. You have had a life-changing event that has changed the lens of how you see life. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Period Totally, and so I really want to be clear with my audience that it's very important, like this portion of the conversation is as important as anything you're ever going to hear in your life. Yeah, how has suffering shaped the way you view life. Yeah, and for anybody who has chronic illness. You know, if you haven't been around someone who's chronically ill, you don't know what it's like. No. I happen to live with it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know I've had to watch my wife go. Not what we've lived through for 25 years of like holy shit, I'm gonna make it through the day, and that's the first thought you know when you wake up in the morning after a horrible night's sleep, and that's how it is for people who have autoimmune issues yeah you know that, that you don't know what a day is going to bring, and it's not a fun thought, right?
Speaker 2:no yeah, well, yeah, just to like um really quickly in a nutshell, just to kind of explain how that all happened was, you know, I was getting to this peak performance level with my surfing and I started really having some significant back pain in high school. And trying to sort it all out, um, I went to a doctor. They they did some MRIs of my spine and in my thoracic spine they found a juvenile disc disease and that's called Sherman syndrome and it's. You know, you can't really treat it, barring putting yourself in a back brace while your spine is developing, but I was a little bit too late for that. So it was causing significant pain in my thoracic spine.
Speaker 2:You know doctors like, well, you know, stretch and do this and that, and the other thing which I did, it just got worse and worse, started having significant pain in my, in my hips and my legs, and it presented itself, as you know, deep joint pain and then also a significant amount of what you might call chronic fatigue syndrome, really tight and sore all the time. So it got to the point, you know, all the way up into my neck, my arms, my legs, my whole body. So I would wake up in the morning and I just felt like I got hit by a car and so throughout my day you know, this is when I'm in my formative years, I'm starting to get some dinero for surfing, I'm trying to figure out my career with college and I would be sitting in my college classes and just be, just couldn't concentrate. The pain was so severe and, you know, as a young person, when you're used to doing whatever you want to with your body, this is very disconcerting and it's like you know, flipping the table upside down with all your stuff on it. You know, all the stuff that you hold dear. So in the beginning that was really difficult for me, you know just to accept and you know this is my life. Will this go away? What's wrong with me?
Speaker 2:Like trying to find answers, um, and you know, to make a long story short, and in you know, in the in the 10 years from when I first started having pain, I was misdiagnosed a couple times. The first time was with a um rheumatological disease called ankylosing spondylitis, which um sounds as bad as it, you know, is pronounced. It's this really severely painful rheumatological disease where you can um, your, your spine can fuse and you can get this bamboo spine, what they call it Um. And also I was having arthritic changes very young, to my hips, and so I was in a study group at UCSF. I was injecting myself with these biologics that were supposed to suppress my immune system. And then also, what year was that? By the way, that was probably like 2008 or something like that, because we were up there for a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And then so you know, oh, you've got pain. Well, you know what they're doing for pain around this time of you know, the medical history was here's Oxycontin, here's Xanax, here's all this stuff. And so that part of me that was in a lot of pain found relief from the medication. But also there's that part of me that was so like unbelievably grief stricken, and you know, it just allowed me a way to check out, and so I was just taking a lot of medication, and that changed me.
Speaker 2:I became way more depressed. Depressed. I didn't know how to deal with my emotions, and so this was like a little um, a way to throw a huge band-aid over it, over all this stuff, and ignore dealing with my emotions. Um, so that was a struggle, um, and then, you know, not too long after they decided that that's not what I had, I got, um, diagnosed with lyme disease and um, that's a very nebulous thing to put a finger on and wild world of lyme yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's rough, and then not only you know having to go through all this treatment intravenous antibiotics, um, you know did you?
Speaker 1:did you just have them in their arm, in your arm, or did you get a stent in your heart too?
Speaker 2:no, I got. Uh, I would go up to redwood city once a week and I would get a stent put in my my forearm, and then they sent me home with like um rosephine bunch of rosefin, which is a really powerful antibiotic. I was, um, you know, shooting that up. Basically I couldn't surf, you know, I'd have to, like, wrap it up when I took a shower. All this stuff and, um, antibiotics, are not great for your body no, no, no.
Speaker 1:How are the herx's too?
Speaker 2:I didn't herx, because that was part of the thing, that kind of hercs because that was part of the thing that kind of clued them in that. You know, this diagnosis was already kind of like spotty. We, there's a blood test, hygienics, the western blot test. The way that they read it, they're like well, you have chronic lyme disease. But there was a lot of wiggle room there and so, um, after like a couple of years of doing all this, antibiotics without herxing or anything like that, they kind of came to the conclusion well, you know, it's a good, really good chance that you don't have Lyme disease. And so that was like, okay, great, like I thought I had this.
Speaker 2:You identify with something. It becomes like your world and yeah, I've got Lyme disease, I've got this and that world. And, um, yeah, I've got lyme disease, I've got this and that and um, which is comforting in the sense that you can put a, a title to something that you're experiencing. But when that gets taken away and I mean that's where I'm at right now like I don't know exactly what's wrong with me. Um, the immune I don't have, um, the inflammatory markers that would signify an autoimmune disease. I've been diagnosed with fibromyalgia.
Speaker 1:That's what they're giving me right now, but the destruction in my. That's the worst one than mine. It's like we don't know. So here you go. Exactly yeah.
Speaker 2:And then the destruction of my joints. I had to get both of my hips replaced at the same time three years ago. So I've got fake hips. The spinal issues are still going on, my neck's all messed up. So, yeah, I'm pretty much always in pain, like it's that's part of my life. But to answer your question to you know roundabout come back to that I think that I still wouldn't take back anything that happened to me because it made me the person who I am today.
Speaker 2:The suffering I have, a kind of a little saying that I this is just my intuition that has led me in my experience to kind of put it this way is that I feel like um, pain is um unavoidable if you have pain, but suffering at some point becomes a choice, um, you can open yourself up to suffering. I'm sick, I have this. Oh my God, when you know like, know like um, it might be justified, but at the same time it's not um, it doesn't help you to wallow in your misery. It's a natural, um kind of reaction to being in this state of distress, but there comes a point where it's not productive and so you have to take active measures in your life to control the things that you can control. We've got so much wiggle room and ability to control things that we can control and so I was just pushing all that aside. You know. But in you know the past, you know five, eight years, I've really just taken the bull by the horns and, you know, maybe I have all this pain and it limits me physically in all this way, mentally it limits me, my attention, but I have the choice to still be a grateful, productive and the ability that I can and positive person and that will only do you good and you can really learn from that. And yeah, I got into teaching yoga about five or six years ago. I teach chair yoga to old folks at Dominican Oaks it's an old folks home.
Speaker 2:I teach a lot of like restorative and gentle yoga for people who have issues with their bodies, and taking my misfortune and turning it into something that can benefit somebody else who's going through something. Maybe they're at the same stage that I was back when I was 20 years old, when I was down in the dumps, and giving them hope and being able to send the message that, no matter what's going on in your body, that's your home, like it or not. We have to on in your body. That's your home, you know, like it or not, we have to live in our bodies. That's our home.
Speaker 2:You don't want to hate the place that you live, and so you have to find the things that are useful in your body for you and, you know, be appreciative and grateful for, you know, even the limited things that you can do, because there's always going to be somebody who's in a worse position than you. That's just the fact of the matter. Maybe there's the one person in the world who's got it the worst, maybe they can't say that about somebody else, but you have to be able to look deep within yourself and, despite everything that's going on, find the things that bring you joy, that nourish you, and really lean into that. And it's really hard work and so it takes time.
Speaker 2:Brought me to the place that I'm at now, where I can, you know, despite feeling like crap most of the time, I can still present myself as a positive and grateful person, and people are really receptive to that, and it can bring a lot of like hope and comfort from people saying, hey, well, this guy's going through all this but he's still able to, you know, enjoy life and and be, you know, productive in in the capacity that they can. And yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't take back anything that happened to me. Isn't that strange?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's. I mean those profound moments where you're stuck with the juxtapose right. Would I change it, you know, if I could let go of the things I understand now because of it, to go back to feeling better, I choose this. That type of agency is rare, you know, and not to rephrase a little bit, you know what you're saying, because I think what I'm hearing from you is that it took you years to find agency in your suffering yeah now that you've found agency, the gratefulness comes with it of being able to make choices you know soundly, even though it doesn't feel sound yeah and it.
Speaker 1:It sounds to me like there's great empowerment that comes from you and humility that comes with the empowerment of creating agency, a space for agency for others oh yeah, they can then make choices. Despite the pain, you did glance on something that has been profound to me in this last two years, which you went right past it. I'm curious a little bit more about what you think about this. You said the word grief, you know dealing with the grief of the reality, of how things really are.
Speaker 1:Are there tools that you found that helped you deal with that reality, to live in? The acceptance that I'm seeing in you? So this is what I notice is that you live with a level of acceptance that's unique because of what you suffered. But you, you've faced certain realities and it seems to me like you've accepted them for what they are and you're making the choices that you can yeah but I found that the thing in front of that generally is grief, that that's what that's what I had to deal with.
Speaker 1:You know, when I showed up at aa, as I realized I had a lot of unresolved grief, you know, and it like I said, you know it wasn't the drinking that was the problem you know the drinking was a symptom to help stop the voices from my grief, right, you know so you know, I don't know that I'm a unique in that space.
Speaker 1:You know, I don't know that I'm unique in that space. I don't have any strong attraction to alcohol that way, so I don't fit the profile well, right, because what I had to get sober from was my relationship with grief. Yeah. And suffering Totally.
Speaker 1:And those encounters and again trying to help create agency with other people and their suffering, but my codependent relationship with that suffering you know, as I think you put really good words to that, I don't want to be in a codependent relationship with this. I want a real relationship with it. Is there something that stands out to you that you might have done to tackle the grief?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think for me it just it reached a point that I was so spun out by my grief and my you know lamentation about what was happening was it started really overtaking my personality. You know, the grief turned into it morphed into frustration and anger and you know, um, you know, putting holes in my wall regularly with my fists or my head, or you know. One time I remember being so frustrated with what was going on why can't I explain what's happening, why is this happening to me? Like it was like 11 or 12 at night and I grabbed a mallet and I went outside and I used to surf Mavericks and I had this Mavericks board that just brought me so much joy and fun and I would even ride it, you know, know, on big days at the point and stuff after the fact, when I stopped surfing mavericks. But I remember just being so spun out, I grabbed this mallet, this like sledgehammer, and I went out in my backyard and I hit that um, 10-0 maver's gun like probably 60 times into splinters, just aggressively, screaming, pissed, destroyed this board. You know, in the act of just pure frustration. And you know, I was living with my parents at the time and they were just like petrified, horrified. Like you know, I never really had any, um, you know plans or you know any, I you know inclination to follow through, but I would, you know, think you know, like, wouldn't it just be better if I wasn't alive? Like what, if I just ended this all and I just did head, dove out the window head first and just broke my neck and stuff like that, and I think for me, the um, it was just seeing the effect that that had on my parents, who love me and who are feeling helpless themselves and, um, really just at a loss to how to deal with it, and seeing how my, how I dealt with it affected them, like how I dealt with that grief and how it morphed into anger and this deep bitterness. Like where I just was all the time. Like you, you couldn't bring a smile to my face if you had, like you know, a troop of clowns performing acrobats or telling jokes or whatever, and that was, you know, seeing the effect that that had on the people around me and who loved me was very sobering. And at a certain point, you know, of course, to help myself and to work through it, I just, you know, started meditating. I got really.
Speaker 2:I took three six week mindfulness based stress reduction classes and, you know, really learning to still the voices, like the frustrations, or you know why is this happening to me? And and instead of that, just sitting with what was and being like okay, like I'm feeling this way right now, but instead of pushing this feeling away or clinging to some like um ideal of what should be, can I be open to what I'm feeling? Um, you know, um, and with that comes a lot of release and acceptance and, um, yeah, you get to know yourself on a deeper level and asking the question when you get worked up, well, is it that bad? And more often than not, it's not that bad. We have a way of amplifying our suffering through mental, um obsession, and so, you know, just letting go it's, it's huge and being able to sit with how we're feeling and and returning back to that felt sensation of being in a body and having this breath that moves through us, and finding those as tools, as opposed to things that we, you know, despise or loathe, and just being like. You know, I have this body, I have this vessel that can give me so many opportunities to to heal and to help others, and that that was huge for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's. It mean you've really put the words well. You know the contrast of experiences, right, this reality that your life is one of pain, but or and you know, psychologists really start to use this term and a lot you know you're mentally ill and you're also okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like like they're. Both things are true at the same time, and to me it's getting a little bit overutilized. Sure, you know this term and you know it's like well, your behavior shitty. And you know, like like there there's other things to work on. You know we don't want to use these things as an excuse per se, right, um, but I guess what, what I'm really trying to highlight for the audience, is a level of hope that I see you operate in. You know that there's there. There's a hope beyond how you feel. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I don't know what your experience is, what I've been finding the last couple years, and my worldview hasn't changed. It's advanced, I guess from where it was before. Yeah, I always wanted to find hope in other people. Right. I'm now finding hope in other people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know in their eyes and their experience. You know not having to rationalize it anymore, just allowing it to be what it is, yeah and seeing the glimmers of hope and others, which allows me to have hope yeah also, you know, just because we're borrowing from each other yeah um. What are the things that you find hope in?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I find hope in you know my position, that I'm in with you know helping people, like you said, just find the hope in themselves. And there's, there's hope in the understanding that, you know, no matter how bad things can get, you know there's always that wiggle room to pull yourself out of the despair. And that's a very hopeful thought to know that I have these tools and this agency to. You know, make lemonade out of lemons and that's like a superpower. And we all are confronted with grief and pain in our life. That's part of the human condition.
Speaker 2:But if you know that, okay, well, I'm experiencing this. This sucks. I have to recognize that. But what can I learn from this? And it turns out I can learn a lot and I can apply that to my life to help myself and and in the process, bring other people up. And that's also ties into that inherent goodness that I think are in man and humans and that, you know, there there's, for all the shitty things that they do, people do in the world, there's always the possibility for for change, and that just instills in me a lot of hope in humanity. You know, which is a beautiful thing to know that if people are willing to do the work and really look deep inside, that they can find that agency themselves and it's contagious, and so if we can spread it out and project our positivity, then it's only going to do good things for those around us, which is great.
Speaker 1:I love that. So, neil, thank you so much for sharing just part of your story. I really appreciate you taking the time. And just for the audience where do you do yoga at? Where do you teach yoga at?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I teach yoga at InShape. It's a gym on 41st Avenue. I teach yoga restore Tuesdays at 1, friday at 1. I teach at Pleasure Point Yoga, that's slow flow 7 am. And then I also teach at Village Yoga every other Thursday for Yin Yoga, which is like you hold the poses for a long time and it's a real restorative practice. I do that every other Thursday at 745. So that's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, thanks a bunch for doing what you did here. I love you a bunch. I don't know if you know that? Yeah, that. I've really enjoyed watching you turn into the human that you are. Thanks bro, I just appreciate you. So, anyways, love you all who are listening, and you guys have a good rest of your day. Thank you, yeah, buddy Cheers.