"Mark Foo: The Ultimate Thrill," by Matt Warshaw, ran in the February 1987 issue of SURFER Magazine. This version has been slightly edited.

It’s a natural inclination for people to categorize, assign labels, simplify. So Mark Foo is now known primarily as a Waimea man. He has a slight problem with this because for every time he rides his 9'1" at the Bay, he rides his 6'2" a hundred-and-one-times at blown-out Goat Island. The point is, Mark Foo doesn't live to surf big waves—he simply lives to surf.

He draws his wave size limit at knee-high-or-less. Apart from that, he's easy to satisfy: recreational Rocky Point, chambered-out Backdoor, Sunset in pretty much any size, shape or form—or maxed-out Waimea. At the first three spots, Foo is very good. At Waimea, he’s fast becoming a legend.

And yes, if he has to be filed under one category—just for ease of reference—Mark would prefer to be known for his Waimea surfing. Although Waimea, as he'll explain shortly, may not be the final word in big surf.

Mark Foo was born in Singapore, in 1958, the third and final child delivered to a United States Foreign Service agent (father) and a first-generation Chinese (mother).

The family settled in Hawaii when Mark was four. He got his first surfboard in 1969 when he was 11: an underground special that he paid for himself, saving his wages from a paper route.

Reno Abellira was the biggest style influence during Mark's formative years. He filled a scrapbook with magazine pictures of his hero and remembers going down to an old pier near the mouth of the Nui Valley, holding up a pair of binoculars and watching Reno surf a spot called Paiko. Reno, he says today, had perfect style.

When Mark was 12, the Foo family moved from Hawaii to Washington, DC, and it was an unbearable change for a surf-crazed kid from the tropics. He ran away from home at 14, landed in Pensacola, and after some finessing with his parents the parents of a friend, he stayed for two years and surfed both coasts of Florida. Looking back, he sees the whole experience in a positive light: It gave him a deeper appreciation of how good he now has it, and broadened his sphere of influence.

At 16, Mark returned to Hawaii where he’s lived ever since. (Delinquents, take note: Mark stayed in high school while in Florida and graduated in 1975, one year ahead of his age group.)

Mark had a credible amateur career, getting some good results In the HSA in 1975 and 76, against surfers like Dane Kealoha, Buttons Kaluhiokalani and Mark Liddell. When the IPS Tour was formed in 1976, Mark jumped on and traveled to Australia. He enjoyed traveling—meeting new people and surfing new spots —but by 1980, high costs and not-great ratings had Mark rethinking his options.

You became disillusioned with the Tour, and your results, sometime in 1980. What was going through your mind?

The Tour was getting more fragmented and the money wasn’t increasing by much. And I decided, well, the reason is not that there's something wrong with the sport itself, you know? Because the sport shits on what these other muffins are doing—young guys running around hitting a fuzzy ball over a net, or old guys walking across the grass and hitting a little white ball into a hole in the ground. I mean, against surfing, there’s no comparison.

What the sport was missing was a more general acceptance; a business acceptance. And for that to change, the sport would have to change its image. I’ve had my own mother telling me, “You’re nothing but a surf bum.” I just never believed it. I believed we were athletes. We were artists and we were professionals and deserved to be called something better than bums. So my idea then, in 1980, was to do something about it. I decided I could make a bigger contribution by doing things here in Hawaii; by creating more public awareness and appreciation for what we were doing.

Sure. The point of being a pro surfer, it seems, is to live the lifestyle and surf the best waves you can find. And the Tour isn't providing that. I mean, I'm at Bells, it’s blown-out slop, I’m freezing my butt off and we hear Kirra is 8-foot and grinding, you know? And that wasn’t quite right. And it's just too long, it takes up too many months of the year. If the Tour was the way it should be—if it was a six-month or eight-month thing—I’d love to do it. But you can’t live a normal life the way, you can't make a contribution, the way it’s set up right now.

You run a house-rental business here on the North Shore, you’re writing, working with the media, giving talks . . . .

I’m trying to set a precedent for surfers to make a living within the sport, but outside of the Tour. And I’m trying to upgrade the image of surfers. The rental thing was done with that in mind. Every year surfers from all over the world come to Hawaii, and they have to grovel for a place to stay and live like pigs. So there was a way for me to fill a need. The surfers needed an affordable place to stay, with a good environment, clean and healthy. The surfers are getting a good deal, I’m making a living, and we all look better because of it.

This year I was asked by the Department of Education to speak at the career fair, on surfing as a career. To me, that’s real satisfying. That’s poetic justice after all those years of “surfers are bums.”

Before we get off the subject of the Tour, do you think the ASP ratings accurately reflect who’s surfing the best?

As far as competitive, high-performance surfing goes, yes. Tom Curren’s my hero, Occy’s my hero, Tom Carroll’s my hero. The guys who are at the top deserve to be at the top, no question. But there is a bit of irony involved, for me at least, ’cause all these guys on the Tour—all these hotshots—have this thing where they have to go out and prove they can ride big waves. And now I kinda have this image of being a big-wave rider, so now I have to go out and prove that I can ride small waves.

How did you get started riding big waves?

There was never a conscious thought. It was just a natural progression. You start at Waikiki, and then you want to do what you do there at Kaisers, then Chuns, then Velzyland, then Rocky Point, and so forth. Finally, you want to do it at Waimea. So in the beginning it was never, “I want to ride a 30' wave someday." I just always wanted to go out and surf my best. And surfing my best meant surfing well on the best waves, and I guess at some point it became the bigger, the better.

You've been saying lately that your big-wave progression may soon continue past Waimea.

I feel I’ve had lots of good Waimea, but coming up I think it’s going to have to be, “No Waimea this swell, we’re going for a new spot.” I’ve been looking at some of the outer reefs. Outside Log Cabins, for example. It looks like a perfect right to me; it looks rideable. I don’t know how big it is.

It’s just a huge, lined-up right. The wave itself, I’d say it’s faster than Waimea. But I’d also say there’s no way in the world it’s a later takeoff. So entry at Logs should be easier, but I don’t know for sure. We’ll find out.

You can paddle out. You'd just have to get through the shorebreak at Logs, but then it’s open ocean—there’s a huge channel there. Ideally, to conserve energy, it’d be nice to have a helicopter or a jet-ski to tow us out.

Bradshaw says he’ll go out, and Alec Cooke will go out in anything, especially if he’s got a chance of getting some glory out of it. But really, whoever wants to go out there with us, I’d be happy to see ’em—provided they could back it up, you know? Because when you’re out there in that kind of situation, your coconspirators can’t be a detriment to you.

Figure out the lineup and catch a wave. I mean, it's not that simple of course, but the only way to find out is to go out and try it. Chances are you’ll get caught inside or be out of position when the set comes, but the only way you can really prepare for big waves is to ride big waves. It's simply having the desire. I mean, the rest of the time you gotta surf every day, keep your timing together, stay fit and everything. But mostly you just have to be willing to break through that barrier, to make the leap. So we'll go out there and do it. Maybe we'll die trying, but we'll go out and give it a shot.

Do you ever think about dying riding big waves?

Well, kinda. But . . . [long pause]. I mean, I’m not afraid of dying in that situation. You have to understand that if you want the ultimate thrill, you’ve got to be willing to pay the ultimate price. Also, to me, it’s not tragic to die doing something you love. It’s like the space shuttle astronauts. I mean, when they died—as much of a tragedy as it was—you have to consider that, for them, they were doing what they had geared their whole lives to do. They were at the climax of that, and it’s not a bad way to go, if you gotta go. I don’t have a death wish or anything, but I could die happy today. I’ve had it pretty good. But at the same time, part of the reason I’m not afraid is because I’ve survived situations where I could have died. So I know I’m a survivor.

Last winter at Waimea—on my birthday, February 5th—the day they canceled the Aikau. It was too big in the morning, it was closing out, and they finally called the contest off at about noon. We waited until later that afternoon, and the waves kinda died down a little bit. There weren’t as many close-out sets, so we went out: Me and Kenny, Charlie Walker, Darrick Dorner, and Jason Majors. Anyway, I paddled for the first wave of this set, and it was real west, jacking up, and I thought, "No, not this one," and pulled back. I quit paddling, I’m sitting on my board on the backside of this wave, and I feel myself going over. So I bail off the side of my board and start swimming for the horizon, stroking and kicking. I remember seeing all those guys sitting out there, watching me, and that’s the last thing I see before going over the falls. I’m thinking, “This is going to be a ride." And on top of that, it was the first wave of the set and I knew more waves were coming.

The guys on the beach said I was down for two waves. I don’t know. It was a long time, though. I got to the stage where I was fighting. That’s another fallacy, you know—when people say to relax and go with it. That’s a crock of shit. You have to fight. If you relax and go with it in huge surf it'll hold you down forever. You gotta have your eyes open, because the first thing to do is figure out which way’s up, you look for where it’s bright and green, not black. And while you're doing that you gotta fight to hold onto consciousness.

There were more waves after the first two?

Yeah. When I finally popped up the next wave is coming right at my head. And from then on, while each wave was getting a little smaller, I’m getting pushed in a bit farther, so I’m in the impact zone for the whole set. By the time it stopped, I was washed all the way to the inside corner where you paddle out.

At least, yeah. And I walked up the beach and said to myself, “If I don’t paddle back out now, I’ll never paddle back out here again.”

It’s funny, you know? Surfing teaches you so much about life. When you pay your dues, the universe will pay you back. So I paddled back out there and caught the biggest wave I’ve ever ridden; the first wave I caught. For me, it's always been like that. At Sunset you take off, get pitched and eat shit, you go back out and on the next wave you get a fantastic tuberide. You pay, and the universe pays you back.

As far as size goes, there’s a big difference at Waimea. There’s the 15-18' range, where the guys on the Tour, some of them, can do well. Then there’s the 20-25' range, and it’s a whole different wave. It may have only gone up another five-feet in height, but now it’s three times as powerful, and the lip is three times as thick. Then there’s 25'-plus, which is just insanity.

Personally, in terms of performance, I don’t think anyone surfs at 20' Waimea better than I do. That’s just how I feel. At 18-20', Boobie Jones is insane out there, he’s always on the best waves. This year he didn’t do well in the Eddie contest because it was bigger than 20', and it wasn’t clean. I’ll tell you who went out and charged last year, went off the bottom and pulled into tubes, was Jason Majors. And Richard Schmidt, he does good out there. Those two are coming on. Brock Little—he’s not afraid. Darrick Doerner is good, too.

Kenny is Kenny, you know. He’s always going to do well out there just because he’s got the confidence and the aggression. Technique-wise—well, to me, good surfing is making it look easy. Kenny’s approach has always been a make-it-look-hard approach, at Sunset or Waimea or wherever. I think his boards are too long. But Kenny is up there, and the bigger the better.

I do aerobics, swimming, a little weight training for my lower-body, just to get my legs stronger. Although personally, I think most of that stuff, weight training and that kind of thing, is total masochism. I don’t know how guys do it seriously. But I tend to surf better when I do supplemental stuff, so it does work.

I eat a lot. Mostly good, healthy stuff, but not always. Bachelor life, you know. TV dinners and a microwave. I have to really fight to keep weight on. I’m super-light, I only weigh 135 pounds. Which means in big surf it takes way more technique and finesse. When you're light there are more subtleties involved. I really appreciate the surfing of Michael Ho, Mike Latronic, Bobby Owens, Dennis Pang, and all the other small guys. If you weigh 200 pounds and you’re going against strong chop, free-falling into a wave at Sunset, you can hit that chop and plow through it. But when you're light, you’re fluttering around, and you have to negotiate it.

Wiping out is harder when you're small, too.

For sure. Big guys fall, penetrate, and sink like a rock. Small guys hit the water and just start skipping down the face.

What happens when you wake up in the middle of the night and you hear huge waves breaking outside your window?

Everybody on the North Shore has a spot they get to walk to—Waimea is mine. If I wake up late at night and I can hear it, I’ll walk out there and check it out. Sometimes I’ll talk to myself just to sort of psyche up.

First thing, I’ll go in my hot tub and get real warm before I surf, ’cause the thing about Waimea is, you can’t warm up. Your first wave is real—you can’t really catch a small inside wave, so you have to be ready to go.

How much time do you spend looking at it before you go out?

Not enough. I see it’s breaking, and I’m running down there all excited. The older guys say you should time the sets and look at it and get technical and analytical, all that sort of stuff. But for me, if the surf looks good, I jump in the hot tub, warm up and run down there. I can’t wait.

[Photos: Robert Beck, Darrell Jones, David Skelton]

"THE ULTIMATE THRILL," MARK FOO PROFILE BY MATT WARSHAW (1987)

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