"Outraging the Code of Cool" is the well-chosen title of 

 article on Alec Cooke—Warren, on principal, refuses to call him 

. Bolster and Cooke were partners in two of Cooke's most memorable big-wave adventures. There was the 1984 "Kanea Point Challenge," when Cooke, looking New Wave regal in a bright orange shorty and a crown of bushy-bushy blond hair, jumped from a helicopter to ride Oahu's most notorious big-wave break. Made a show out of it beforehand, too, printing up, on his own dime, a box full of commemorative "Ace Cool Kaena Point Challenge" T-shirts. He rode a couple out at 

, but it wasn't quite big enough to catch the interest of the 

 people, which frustrated Cooke no end. A year later he again jumped from a chopper to ride an outer reef beyond Pipeline, and this time it was huge, and Warren got the shot, and for the next 15 years you couldn't bump into a Waikiki postcard rack without Ace's "The Biggest Wave" card dropping to your feet.

Cooke never was one of the big-wave cool guys. 

 told him, publicly, to "speak less, surf more." With great pleasure, 

 once described to me in detail how, since Cooke didn't really know the Waimea lineup, he and the other old bulls would paddle too deep, let Alec wiggle his way to the inside, pretend-paddle for the next set, then back off at the last moment and let Cooke throw himself into oblivion. And what would happen? Every time, Cooke would come up smiling, swim to shore, pull his board off the berm, paddle out and try again. "It's amazing how much punishment a human being can endure," Bolster said of Cooke. "In my 20 years of working in the sport, Alec has survived more than anybody else I can think of, by far."

In an eye-rolling kind of way, Bolster liked Cooke. "Sometimes he's a friendly but clumsy puppy that you have to constantly push off your leg," Warren wrote. "Other times he's as abrasive as a boardwalk barker. Which Cooke you have to deal with at any given time is always the flip of a coin." But that was the point. Cooke was his own man. Gave not one fuck about surf fashion or etiquette. Bolster asked the right question. "Are we supposed to ignore unique characters, and record only those events that cater to the most people, or the fewest, or the coolest? The sport is so many things to so many people, and if someone's religious view of surfing is offended by Cooke . . . well, I'm sure he'd be the first to say he's sorry."

ACE COOL NEVER CARED MUCH ABOUT COOLNESS, GOD LOVE HIM

Subscribe or Login

Subscribe or Login

Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

Interviews

Features

The Sunday Joint