How Meth Almost Sank the Sport of Big-Wave Surfing
Playboy Magazine US|January/February 2017

Big-wave surfing was the world’s most dangerous and thrilling sport, until crystal meth nearly sank it.

Peter Simek
How Meth Almost Sank the Sport of Big-Wave Surfing

By the time Vince Collier pulled his truck out of Santa Cruz and onto California Highway 1, Shawn “Barney” Barron and Darryl “Flea” Virostko could feel the LSD taking hold of their brains. They drove north. To the left, the Pacific Ocean looked cold and gray under a winter sky. Metallica blasted from the stereo, but the mood in the truck was subdued. The four surfers in the car—Collier, Barney, Flea and Zach Acker—had all heard the stories. Underwater caves. Shark- infested waters. A half-mile paddle out to a wave that, this time last year, was better known as an outright danger for fishing boats than as something anyone in their right mind would try to surf. Barney, Flea and Acker were three of the best young surfers from Santa Cruz. Now they headed toward a rite of passage that actually meant something to them: surfing the big waves at Mavericks for the first time.

It was early afternoon, February 1990, when they reached Half Moon Bay. Collier turned the truck off the highway and zigzagged through side streets until he found the small parking lot at the base of a cliff. The white radar dish of the Pillar Point Air Force Station hovered high above. From the back of the truck, Collier produced a collection of oversized surfboards. He barked orders. Paddle close and keep away from the “bowl,” a cauldron of churning, foamy whitewater that would sit on your chest and hold you under as it dragged you toward an outcropping of jagged, toothy rocks.

From the shore, it was difficult to make out what they were paddling into. But as they drew closer, it began to look less like a wave and more like the entire Pacific heaving upward and flopping over on itself. It was a real monster—20 to 25 feet high, with some sets coming in bigger and faster. They sat on their boards and watched with glassy eyes as waves rolled over into barrels that spat like Yellowstone geysers.

This story is from the January/February 2017 edition of Playboy Magazine US.

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This story is from the January/February 2017 edition of Playboy Magazine US.

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