Hey Fat Ass
obby Martinez
sure don't conform to the strictures of surf fashion. Readying himself for a photo shoot for Stab, the 23-year-old Al Merrick-riding prodigy from Santa Barbara and the USA's big hope before Dane Reynolds was ever on the scene, grabs a gigantic pair of size 36, raw denim jeans. He bunches the waistband up above his navel and ties the package together with a green leather belt. No shirt. White leather shoes. Head shaved clean. Earlier, he'd been sporting knee-length shorts with white socks pulled up to the hem. Pure Gang Banger couture except on this fine Caribbean morning in the Bajan town of Bathsheba (we're here for a small, but prestigous, local contest funded by his sponsor), it's Reef he's wearing and not Dickies or Ben Davis. Bobby is carved from Mexican DNA. His brown-skinned body is painted with Chicano gang tattoos. You'd be suffering a fatal lack of curiosity if you didn't point at the tatts one by one and say, hey, what's the story behind that one? And that? "What does 13 on the forearm of the homie tatt mean?" you ask.
"Thirteenth letter of the alphabet is M. Means Mexican Mafia," explains Bobby
"And the praying hands at the nape of the neck and the name Joanie?" "Mom's name."
(The hands are also a common gang tattoo symbolising the wearer "praying to god for forgiveness.") "Ocho, zero, cinqo?" "805, Santa Barbara area code." "Why so many?" "They represent me,"
It's a freak this kid didn't end up in a westside gang like the Westside Night Owls or the Lokitos or the Tinys, the Projects, the Tiny Toons, the Locotes or the Rascals. Bobby grew up in an all Mexican barrio in Santa Bruta (Mex slang for Santa Barbara) and didn't have a white friend all through school. He has aunts who are married to lifers. He was 12 when his 17-year-old cuz, Janelle, was stabbed to death in a gang fight two blocks from his crib. At the Westside Boys Club where he played soccer and basketball, sports were often called off when club leaders heard of Gang Bang shit that was going to go down in the park. Bobby's seen drive-bys, shootings, stabbings. He tells of his homie Boxer with Westside tattooed in five cm-high letters across his stomach. Run your finger between the t and the s and you can feel a still-lodged bullet.
None of his family surfed. None of his friends. "I was always in awe of (gang bangers)," says Bobby. "I liked my friends in the gangs. That shit is fucken crazy." To go from little Mexico and its gangs to riding Al Merricks with a perfect Californian style and owning the best national record in American surfing (seven US titles) and being one of the best young surfers in the world? My lord, it's a miracle! And let me tell you why...
MIRACLES HAPPEN
Where our homie rolls is pure Mexican, The shop keepers speak Spanish, the food is Mex and the local clothes store is filled with Dickies and Ben Davis. No one wears red or blue and bling is reserved for the black folks who live in other parts of Santa Bruta. Couples hook up in their teens and stay together for life. Girls spit out kids early, sometimes by year eight. Friends stick. One friend is Manny "Fozzy" Raya, at 24 a 13-year-old veteran of gangs, his being the Westside Projects, and a recent convert to surfing. "Bobby's a good friend - he pays attention to detail. Like for my birthday, he knows I like Snickers bars and he bought me a 48-pack of Snickers," says Manny, sporting a mohawk, like Bobby's other close friend JJ, because they told him they'd do it if he won a contest.
With good friends comes honesty. "No one but a friend will tell you things you don't wanna know," says Manny. "Bobby put on a couple of pounds and I can say, Hey Fat Assl Other people who don't know him will be saying, 'Oh no, you haven't put on weight at all!'"
Bobby owns two condos on Mercedes Lane there - a couple of streets away from where he grew up. His parents live in one along with his brother (Jesse, 17). His sister (Crystal, 24) lives with her kids in a room Bobby's dad built in the garage. Bobby's girl Megan, 21, and his two hounds (Leo and Oso, a labrador and a rottweiller) live in the other. Bobby dropped 500k on the condos four years ago when he was stll a teenager (albeit America's hottest young suffer), scraping together the deposit just so his family could stay in the hood. "Without my help they wouldn't have been able to stay in Santa Barbara. It was cool, y'know, with everything they did for me: taking me to the beach, buying me surfboards, I was able to give a little something back to them. I was, like, cool, you guys are back in town."
So that's beautiful, right? A house from the proceeds of his surfing talent. Parents saved from being pushed out of the barrio. But where did this talent come from? How'd the little half-Mex kid (who barely speaks a word of Spanish) get so good? How'd he even start?
Happy coincidence #1: Santa Barbara is home to a perfect righthand point. Triple world champ and awesome stylist Tom Curren is from Santa Barbara. Where Bobby lives, despite it being total Mex, was only five minutes drive from the water. On family excursions to the beach, Bobby rode a bodyboard. Looking up the beach he saw guys standing up and thought it looked way more fun than riding prone. So he said to his dad, Bobby Snr, I'd really like to get a surfboard. Hmmmm, thought Dad, I know just the guy.
Happy coincidence #2: Bobby's grandpa did time in prison with Al Merrick. So when Bobby wanted to surf and needed a board, grandpa's old buddy Al, who'd remodelled himself from convicted weed dealer to master surfboard shaper, made the kid's first board. And his second. And this third. And his 300th. At 23, Bobby has ridden forAI for almost 15 years. The best shaper in the world makes your boards; the best point in America is five minutes away from your crib. Miracles.
Oh, and hey, hey back up. Did you say Al Merrick - convicted drug dealer? Busted with fifty pounds of weed. Eight months in the pen. "You wouldn't think, huh? Weird," says Bobby.
AN OUNCE A DAY KEEPS THE DEMONS AWAY
For four years, from 17 to 21, Bobby was a chronic weed smoker, burning a SUS400 ounce every four days. Oh, except for the time he busted his shoulder on a shallow sand bank and was couch bound. Then he really learned how to lung weed. Bobby had $US30,000 in the bank and mowed through it all in a month. With his account empty, he had to ask his dealer forj> loan to get him through to his next cheque. "I started smoking weed because when I first got high I forgot about the things around me," says Bobby "I think I was 13 when I first got high, I was kinda older, some of my friends were getting high in the fifth grade. I waited until junior high. They were smoking around me. I didn't have it for years and then one day I just broke down."
Why'd he smoke? "Bullshit family stuff, family problems... And I felt like I didn't fit in where I was because I was getting shit for being a surfer, like, being called a gay surfer dude and saying I was hanging out with all the white dudes. I wasn't really knowing who was my friends and who wasn't, I loved surfing and wasn't going to give it up but at school and shit people looked down on it because I was a Mexican and I got so much shit and I didn't know where I fit in. When I smoked, fuck, when I was high it'd feel so good. I wouldn't think about nuthin, I wouldn't think of nuthin, having fun, feeling good, that's what I felt for years, no worries. There was a worry if I wasn't high, I had to get high to have no worries."
Then, on April 14, 2002, Bobby had his last hit. "On April 13, 2002, everything just hit me. Everything I tried to put off for years, it all came to me and I fucken freaked out. My mind was just, I was more than paranoid, fuck, I knew I had to get my head straight and the weed wasn't helping. So the next day I gave up. I had enough of it. I had smoked long enough and I knew I had to stop. It was hard at first, but I knew I had to. My mind was real fucked up and once I past that point it felt so good not being high. And now I can be around it and someone smoking and I don't even, like, Jones for a hit."
I ask how his personality has changed post weed. "If I was 19, I'd be in my own little world, basically, everything would be so foggy. I'd be smoking throughout the day. I don't think I'd be having much fun either. I'd be into myself more. And just being more not as as social - I'd be worrying about getting high and staying high the whole trip."
Did he ever get enveloped by the rank paranoia that takes over most career smokers? "I did at the end. But then my mind was so gone that, fuck, I was just paranoid all the time at the end because my mind was gone. And when I got high it'd make it even worse." Now he's clean. And the world is his oyster bed.
