 world tour career was bookended by two Pipeline Masters contests. The first was in 1978, and if you were a teenage American surfer at the time—even better, if you had at least a passive acquaintance with Joey, as I did—it was a shocker. This raggedy-haired 17-year-old high school dropout stoner beat Rory Russell in the prelims and made the Masters final, where he finished one place behind Gerry Lopez and one ahead of Dane Kealoha. We sputtered all over our Supertramp LPs. Joey Buran! 

 Sure, he’d been slaying the WSA opens for two years, and a couple of months before Pipe he’d won the California Pro (his $3,000 winner’s check bounced like a piece of flubber; contest haters were chortling for weeks), but so what? Who among us West Coast plebes, in that beatdown period of localism and all-purpose single-fin guns and the endless kowtowing to our Australian and Hawaiian betters, had the drive, the stones, the 

, to surf their way into a Pipe Masters final? Nobody but Joey. We were in awe.

Buran went on to have a solid mid-level pro tour career. He won the Waimea 5000 in Rio in 1980. Won the Katin. Got plenty of 9ths and 5ths, and had a comfy spot in the lower reaches of the Top 16. Not the smoothest guy in the water, never quite a world title contender, but year after year, heat after heat, Joey was in the fight—his favorite song, and no irony involved, was the theme from 

—and he was always fun to watch. Loud and confident and blond and funny, with triple-espresso energy. For four years after that ’78 Pipe final, he drove the length and breadth of Pacific Coast Highway secure in the knowledge that he was surfing’s one and only California Kid.

Then Tom Curren floated in on a golden cloud with bluebirds holding a banner aloft reading “Future World Champion,” and Joey—by God, Joey reached down inside himself to gather every molecule of overachieving energy and skill and put together his best year ever. He finished #7 in 1983, one slot ahead of Curren. Decided to go out on a high note, and quit the tour. Then decided to give Pipe one last try, and un-quit the tour.

Which brings us to the 1984 Masters. The contest had been demoted to a “specialty event,” which meant that not only was it removed from the end of WCT schedule—that year’s tour extended all the way to the ’85 Bells contest—but it didn’t count toward the championship. (The 1980s will always take the prize for connoisseur-level world tour idiocy.) Even so, the Masters had more juice than any contest in the world, and every pro heavyweight from Gerry Lopez to babyfaced ASP sophomore Mark Occhilupo was taking aim at the podium. Buran wasn’t a longshot, exactly, but considering that he was semi-retired and that no Californian had ever before won a Masters crown, he wasn’t on anybody’s shortlist to win.

Daybreak for the one-day event revealed what SURFER writer Leonard Brady called “15-foot take-off-and-die Pipeline.” Riding a throwback single-fin pintail, Buran became Rocky. Better than Rocky. No wipeouts, no falters, no close calls. He won all three heats he surfed, hands down, and beat Tom Carroll, Derek Ho, Wayne Bartholomew and Occhilupo in the final. He looked stunned, then transported, then ecstatic on the winner’s stand, where he announced to one and all that “dreams do come true,” and somehow made the cliche ring with joy and truth. A victory for the ages.

Year later, Buran himself added a postscript to the day's events. Moments after he hoisted the trophy overhead, the skies opened up and a Biblical rain poured down. Fifteen minutes after that Joey was alone on the beach, deflated and hollowed out. He'd done the thing he most wanted to do in life. And in the larger scheme, he realized, it meant nothing. He flew home, hit the bottle, hit bottom, found Jesus, turned things around, and went on to help others through his work in the ministry.

I will not quibble. I will humbly point out, though, that Buran in fact returned to defend his Pipe title; that the waves in '85 were even bigger and more hairball than the year before; and that Joey, with all his skill and bravery and drive intact, powered into the semis. I watched from the beach. Awestruck, again.

AND LO, JOEY SLEWETH THE PIPELINE. AND IT WAS GOOD.

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