In The Green Room with Rich Pavel
by Ken McKnight and Ryan A. Smith
posted 2004-11-28
AAS - Growing up and surfing in San Diego, it is a real natural place.
Rich - I've been so incredibly lucky that way. I've thrived on this area. There is a certain solitude, as Shaun Tomson so aptly names his clothing line. Around here you can tap that and have a great time. And we just didn't talk about it. We just would do or be.
Photo by JP St. Pierre
AAS - And you took that vibe to Hawaii?
Rich - It was a progression that started with a sweet, innocent young boy looking down an arroyo out onto an azure blue sea, watching guys surf like Bud Caldwell, the Martins, or Jim Robb, the old dads. And they would also be diving for lobsters and abalone, and we would just be watching them, thinking, what are they doing, what are they getting? And we would casually wander out there to see what they had. This undersea world of Jacques Cousteau, it was phenomenal.
I didn't go to Hawaii to hang out with the boys. I was going to be shipped off to military academy. My parents had my IQ scored. They test you as you go through school, some for aptitude, to see where you are at. In sixth grade, I had aced the science segment of the scholastic tests, the entire thing. And the school in La Jolla was really paying attention to that. They couldn't wait to get me to the upper schools where they had the science labs. I'm scoring 12th grade/12th month level [science] in the 6th grade, and also the cross-country coach wants me. It was weird. Like they were trying to put their design on me. School, parents. And they didn't want me to pull up short; they absolutely wanted the very best for me.
Photo by Tom Keck
My father and his role and relationship with his profession, and how he pioneered surgical techniques, made him a renowned guy. He was a facial surgeon. My mom was Mrs. Father Knows Best.
AAS - You obviously swam in the right gene pool.
Rich - There were heavy expectations. I wasn't bad. I never came home in the back of a cop car. I never did anything to dishonor the family name. So, I'm looking at this application to go to the Army/Navy Academy in Carlsbad, and my signature is on it, and I didn't sign it. Here you were, looking at someone who was more calibrated to planetary motion, tides, forces of nature that are truly cosmic. Military academy, well, that is a fairly secular existence. I had my own feelings on this. I knew that some of the best surf on the planet was on Kauai, and that was how I ended up there at Taylor Camp.
AAS - You just took off?
Rich -- I went to Hawaii on my bond money from my paper route and bought the airplane ticket. I arrived with zero contacts and little, if any, money and just a few worldly possessions. That was an eye-opener as a little kid; that was radical for me. I thought I was in paradise, and I knew I wasn't going to last at Taylor Camp.
I got work from Tai Hook, digging tarot and slopping the pigs. He got me a job with Delbert Goo in Kalihiwai Valley. I got enough money together to find a room to rent and I ended up at Sherry Lynch's house. She later became the mother of Bethany Hamilton. Here I was Mogli the Man Cub and my den mother is Sherry Lynch. It was perfect for me at the time. Great person. I didn't want to be at Taylor Camp. This was '75/'76, our neighbor was Tiger [Espere]. In the lineup were Emory and Titus [Kinimaka], and they were very vital.
Photo by JP St. Pierre
AAS - It seems that the nostalgia thing was big, especially the Rainbow Bridge, living on the beach, in the tree house, on the road thing?
Rich - If you were to do that kind of stuff today you would stop at REI, buy your tent, and pick up your camping permit upon arrival.
AAS - So you finally come back and shaping just comes natural?
Rich - That was when I went and bought a planer. My crew could shape their boards, make their own fins, glass it, and ride it. If you couldn't do that then you weren't part of the lineup. There wasn't room for you. I was kind of naïve. It never occurred to me not to make my fin, not to shape my board, not to glass it also, because that was how you did it; that was how it happened. We didn't go get gloss, polish, pinline at the store; it wasn't the possibility I was looking for.
