Eugene weekly., July 22, 2004, Page 13, Image 13

big part of what I’m doing now. If I were
afraid of publicity, my work wouldn’t be
going anywhere. Plus, I don’t think most of
the dudes I knew back then pick up GQ.”
In Arizona, Elijah met his first mentors in
the hair industry: Ali, Tyrone and Courtney,
who worked at a barbershop called Nappy
By Nature. He began to learn his trade.
When Brooklyn left him one day, Elijah
went over the edge. “I lost my mind and
drove to San Francisco.” He said. “I planned
to kill myself by drinking and working as a
motor messenger, hoping to get crushed by a
city bus.”
Strangely enough, bad news provided a
catalyst for Elijah’s development into a
human being. On Sept. 21, 2001, Elijah’s
cousin Troy McClure died, and Elijah went to
his funeral in Mt. Shasta, Calif. “My mind
was spun,” he said. “I got into a massive
physical confrontation with my stepfather at
the funeral. I took off in a 1987 beat up Ford
pickup with only $127 to my name, no
license and no insurance, and ended up in a
homeless shelter in Eugene.”
“That was the last time I saw my stepdad,”
says Elijah. “We had many good times,
the mission
My seven year old son,
Chance, has ridden three
river waves in two different
states. He’s the youngest
river surfer on the planet.
— E LIJAH M ACK
“And then I left,” said Elijah, a foggy dis-
tance in his eyes.
On return, one night before shipping out
to his first season as a smoke jumper, Elijah
gave himself a compound fracture in a San
Francisco bar fight. His injury began his
darkest years, though somehow in the those
depths he managed to find fleeting spots of
brightness: Elijah would sire two sons and
complete beauty school, but at the same time
if you were a drug dealer in Oceanside
between 1993 and 1996, and four armed men
smashed your door, stealing everything you
had and telling you to leave town fast, and if
somehow your frightened eyes strayed high-
er than the wrong side of a gun barrel point-
ed in your face, you might have seen the eyes
of Elijah Mack staring at you from within a
ski mask. In the end, Elijah had what he
called a “misunderstanding” with hardcore
gang members, and he fled with his wife,
Brooklyn, to her family in Arizona, where for
90 days he never strayed beyond arm’s reach
of a pistol.
GQ magazine recently published a profile
of Elijah and his Eugene barbershop. When
asked if Elijah worried that someone from his
past might see the article and try to come find
him, Elijah said, “Well, it certainly crossed
my mind that someone might see that. But
publicity for Mos Faded and the WRSA is a
waves to promote the sport. Not to mention
forming an organization. River surfing is the
new frontier sport, like surfing was in the
’60s. You can still buy a surf vacation and get
incredible waves, but the safari-type explo-
ration doesn’t exist in the surfing world any-
more. I’m 20 years ahead of my time. ”
Dave Grove, a former Eugenean who
just broke the world record for highest
waterfall-drop in a kayak (about 120 feet),
says, “What Elijah’s doing is like the next
thing. People used to wind surf, and now
they’re kite boarding. It’s natural progres-
sion; he’s taking it to the next level. There’s
a whole section of the industry that’s not
being tapped or touched. He’s getting peo-
ple to pay attention to the water and rivers
around them. How important is that?
There’s hundreds of thousands of people
with creeks in their back yards.”
“What I find difficult about promotion,”
says Elijah, “is that river surfing hasn’t been
embraced by the surfing or kayaking indus-
tries. Kayakers know about the waves but
don’t care about board-surfing them and
surfers don’t know a thing about it. No indus-
try surrounds it, but I’m punching a hole in
that. In the end, river surfing has more appeal
than either of its two bigger sisters. In surfing,
no one’s creating more breaks. Think about
it: The ocean’s the skin of an apple. It’s good,
but there’s way more on the inside than out-
side. There are people surfing a Snake River
wave called Lunch Counter, outside Jackson
Hole, Wyo., who have never even seen the
ocean. Never. Do you know how many rivers
When you witness Elijah’s athletic
prowess on a river full of raging water, you
know you’re seeing something special.
People shake their heads. “That guy’s going
to blow up,” said one EW photographer,
watching Elijah surf a river. It was almost as
if you could hear a wick sizzling away ...
It’s a warm summer day, three years after
Elijah surfed his first river wave, and the
president of the WRSA is standing at the
edge of the water, looking at Pipeline … in
Idaho. Named after the famous Hawaiian
surf break, Pipeline’s also a popular kayaking
wave on the Lochsa River. “It’s the most
incredible shade of blue and green I’ve ever
seen,” says Elijah, who through his avid ded-
ication to the sport remembers details from
every wave he’s surfed. “You can see right
down to the bottom. Even though it’s June,
the water is still in the low 50s from snow
runoff. Pipe’s powerful, and good for big cut-
backs. Because it has an irregular surge that
runs though the wave, it’s easy to get caught
and ripped out the back. Next year I’m taking
a board with straps so that I can use the surge
to project aerials. I know that one day straps
ELIJAH WITH HIS SONS CHANCE (LEFT) AND HURRICANE. PHOTO BY DAVE SOMMERVILLE
Homeless, Elijah crashed with some of
the best surfers in the socio-economically
impoverished city of Oceanside. Many kids
back then aspired to emulate the “straight A”
appearance of surf greats like Tom Curren
and Mike Parsons, but Elijah couldn’t have
taken a more different path.
Wendy Linden, Gary Linden’s wife,
remembers Elijah flailing in youth. “Tattoo-
man!” She recalls. “Elijah’s one of the grom-
mets who grew up on Linden surfboards,
struggling to find a niche in life. When he
went up to Oregon he was asking a lot of
questions. Eli had artistic talent that wouldn’t
be visible just surfing. I wouldn’t have ever
thought of hair for him, though! He’s found
his place. He’s just a real good kid who real-
ly struggled.”
By 19, Elijah had more than 30 tattoos and
had spent numerous nights in jail for fights, dis-
orderly conduct and public intoxication. Instead
of hanging out with clean-cut surfer types, his
friends were gang members and punks. He
began fighting fires during the summers, and
winters he drank, got tattoos and surfed.
During a short stint in Hawaii, Elijah
found himself unexpectedly welcome in the
habitually territorial, athletic subculture of
Hawaiian big-wave surfing. The spirits of
Elijah’s great-uncles must have been invoked;
one night at a dinner Elijah sat between
Hawaiian surf legends Buffalo Keaulana and
Dane Kealoha. “Surfing Rocky Point,” said
Elijah, “Johnny Boy Gomes gave me like five
waves in a row. That guy’s known the world
over for not giving anyone waves.”
despite all the shit that went down. I know he
loved me, and I know he took the bullet for
me at Skookumchuck. It was his way of being
there.”
The next day, Elijah got up from his cot at
the shelter and went looking for work. Rodney
Witherspoon was cutting hair in Eugene’s N-
DA-KUT Hair Salon when Elijah walked in,
clean and dressed in the suit he’d worn to the
funeral. “My fades are immaculate,” said
Elijah, looking Witherspoon in the eye, win-
ning himself a job.
A month later Elijah was staring at a wall
in his rented micro-apartment dreaming of
owning his own barbershop, when a memory
came over him: Walking his dog along a
riverside in Chico, Elijah was looking out at
a smooth, stationary wave rippling in the
river and thought maybe, just maybe he could
stand up and surf it. Seized in a fit of action,
Elijah jumped off the floor, grabbed his board
and ran out the door. The World River
Surfing Association was born.
will be the norm for all expert river surfers.”
One day. The future of river surfing? I
guess we better start at the beginning: At first
Elijah called up Oregon River Sports and
learned of a play spot called Clover Wave on
the McKenzie River. By the end of 2002 he
was working his ass off surfing river waves
all across the Northwest, documenting his
rides by setting a video camera on the shore.
“With over 70 stationary waves under my
belt I am the undeniable leader of this under-
ground sport,” says Elijah. “In the past two
years I have established myself as the most
knowledgeable and experienced stationary-
wave surfer in the world. There are people
who’ve been surfing the Isar River in Munich
for years, and there are people like (world-
famous kayker) Corran Addison, who kayak
and occasionally bring a surfboard, and there
are people surfing the tidal bore that flows up
the Amazon River, but no one has done what
I’ve done for river surfing on a grand scale,
going out and finding and documenting
My three-year old son
Hurricane is the only kid
in the world who screams
out ‘surfing!’ when we
drive by a river.
— E LIJAH M ACK
there are in the world, how many undiscov-
ered spots a person could surf?”
Though the heads of surf industry may
not have yet embraced the sport, some of the
biggies are at least starting to listen: Gary
Linden, of Linden Surfboards, says “That’s
where the growth is;” Bill Sharp of the big-
wave film and event, The Billabong Odyssey,
says “I like the sound of it. It’s right up my
alley” and Surfer Magazine recently took
Elijah and some professional surfers to
Skookumchuck to document a session.
“I feel it’s important to point out,” says
Elijah, “that I’ve done more for river surfing
than any of these guys who get paid the big
bucks. If I had even a quarter of the resources
some of these people have, who knows what
I could do? How far I could push the sport? I
don’t want to give the impression that they
(Surfer) took me. I took their asses.”
Though Elijah maintains the big river-
waves are out there, “I haven’t seen any-
thing,” said Bill Sharp in a recent e-mail to
Elijah, “that shows a wave bigger than 4 or 5
feet on the face. If you can show me ANY
evidence of a 12 to 15 foot barrel I’ll be there
in a matter of minutes and will buy property.”
Well, Elijah, the wick’s almost burned
through. Hold tight to that video camera and
get ready for an explosion.
JULY 22, 2004 13