In 1994, Peter Mel and Darryl “Flea” Virostko, both from Santa Cruz, became the main players at Mavericks. They stayed on top, together, for a decade or so; Peter the friendly and smiling Gary Cooper-ish gentleman killer, Flea with his poisonous charisma, the guy most likely to make the dawn surf check holding a red Solo cup of whatever. They weren’t a team, exactly. I’m not even sure if they were close friends. But they for sure drafted off each other, bounced off each other’s talent and ambition. They were codependent, you might say. In the Mavs lineup, the air between and around them crackled and sparked.

And thus Peter and Flea united Santa Cruz. Not just the Westside-Eastside divide (Virostko was from the former, Mel the latter), which was never all that deep in the first place. But also in in terms of style and approach. Mel, in his pre-Mavs years, had a decent air game and could murder a forehand turn with Kong-like power, but he was always surfed within himself, like Richard Schmidt before him, like Robbie Waldemar, like Joey Thomas—three or four generations’ worth of graceful Santa Cruz surfers were lined up behind Pete. 

Young Darryl, on the other hand, was from the Kevin Reed School of Rad, where the object was to experiment, to explode, to do what hadn’t yet been done, preferably above the lip. The aerial revolution in Santa Cruz in the ‘80s and early ‘90s was not a dinner party. Things got ugly. Style wasn’t the enemy, per se, but it was usually the first thing to get thrown overboard. By such means, progress was made. Santa Cruz, in the 1990s, became the air capital of the surf world.

Mel and Virostko had to drive up the coast to Mavericks to bridge the gap. Flea’s air-drops at that most horrifying of all surf breaks were a thing of delicate beauty. Pete’s fetish for huge double-up tubes had a Flea-like whiff of fuck-off aggression. “I needed a guy like Flea at that time,” Mel later said. “I could use him, and he could use me. We pushed each other to our limits and then past our limits.”

Methamphetamine took both surfers down in the mid-‘00s, and at that point the differences between the two again came to the fore. Mel checked into rehab, quietly, of his own volition, with the support of his family. Flea kept the party rolling for two more years, fell off a cliff while high and nearly died, and called bullshit when friends and family staged an intervention. When he did finally agree to get help he walked drunk into the facility, weed stashed in his shirt pocket, ran his bloodshot eyes around the joint and said “Where’s the bitches? I thought there were chicks in rehab!”

One similarity—they both got clean and remain so. I wonder if in some small but important way they're still using each other, bouncing off each other. Channeling the same mix of affection and respect and half-kidding bile. “The little fucker is still clean? Then 

 staying clean.” Repurpose the skill set, in other words. Mel's gone nine years without a slip, Flea seven. Whatever it is, it’s working.

PETER MEL AND DARRYL VIROSTKO: ROAD TRIP TO HELL AND BACK

Subscribe or Login

Subscribe or Login

Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

Interviews

Videos