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Heavyweight goofyfooter from Sunset Beach, Hawaii; a Pipeline ace for most of the 1990s, and winner of the 1995 Tavarua Tube Classic, but best know as the greatest risk-taker, on both water and land, of his generation. "Crazy people in general are stupid," Hawaiian big-wave surfer Brock Little said about Briley in 1994. "Shawn is relatively intelligent and yet he knows what he's getting into, which in a way is even crazier."

Briley was born (1974) in Oceanside, California, spent his early childhood in Montana and Honolulu, began surfing at age four, and moved with his mother to Sunset Beach in 1981. Briley's parents split before he was a year old, his father was in and out of prison, and while in Hawaii his mother—younger sister of fabled '70s surfer Owl Chapman—was on welfare. "There were times when I was a kid," Briley later told SURFER Magazine, "where we couldn't afford toilet paper."

At age 12, Briley began riding Pipeline; by 17 he'd earned a reputation as one of Hawaii's hardest-charging young tuberiders, and as a surfer uniquely dedicated to high-risk excitement of any kind. He went left at Waimea Bay, and had a habit of pulling into huge, hopeless Pipeline closeouts. Signed to a contract with Quiksilver while still in high school, Briley spent a good portion of his newfound money on indulgences, including firearms, gambling, drugs, and strip clubs, and had a long record of car accidents; less than four months after breaking his back in a dirt-bike pileup in late 1997, Briley rolled his truck down a cliff face. "Nothing could stop me at that point," Briley later said. "I'd wake up still loaded from the night before, take big bong hits and go surf Pipe." Briley's vices had no visable effect on his surfing, and by the mid-'90s he was touted by no less an authority than Gerry Lopez as one of the very best Pipeline surfers.

Not interested for the most part in surfing competition, the plus-sized Briley nonetheless raced to a win in the 1995 Tavarua Tube Classic, a novelty event in which surfers were scored solely on the amount of time spent inside the tube. He was also invited to the 1995 Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau big-wave contests at Waimea.

Briley downshifted in 1998, and for the most part dropped from sight. "I knew that if I continued on the path I was on," he said later, "I wouldn't be sitting here today." He also noted that, by "throwing away" his surfing career, he ended up "basically homeless."

But in 2011 he showed back up at Pipeline and Indonesia, bigger than ever, still eager to pull into any tube section.

Pipeline charger Kalani Chapman is Briley's half-brother.

Briley was featured in more than two dozen surf videos in the '90s, including

Briley, Shawn

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

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