The Champs Interview: Sunny Garcia

What about your Mom, is she still with us?

Yep. My Mom’s still there. My Mom’s kind of a quiet worker, just wants to be by herself and left alone, and having raised the kids she has, I understand. I’m like “Mom I’m gonna bring my kids by,” and she’s “No, you watch your own kids! After having you guys I don’t ever wanna watch kids again!” And my poor Mom, God bless her soul because she just … my oldest sister still lives there, my youngest brother’s still there, I have some cousins who live with her, my brother’s kids are there, so as much as she wants to be left alone she never is. I understand why she works so much, that’s the only time when she can get away. I call her and talk to her all the time. She’s not married to her second husband. They’ve been separated and divorced for quite a long time. Much as I would like to say a lot of bad things about my stepdad, he was a disciplining type of a person. So we got disciplined quite a bit. I didn’t like it because I thought most of the time that he picked on us. I felt like he was just jealous that we got more attention from our Mom than he did. And it probably was the case. And when I finally got old enough and big enough, I took matters into my own hands. It caused quite a bit of problems between me and my Mom, cause I screwed up the household quite a bit. But fortunate for me I turned pro at a young age and got out of the house, which left things a little more mellow. But then my brother got of age and size, and he took matters WAAY into his own hands then. At the time it was a good thing for my Mom and a good thing for him, they got separated and he moved out which was a good thing. My stepdad picked on my brother quite a lot, to the point where I’d say we were abused as young kids. That was full child abuse what we used to go through. Now I look back and him and I think whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and I see my stepdad all the time, I still call him Dad, everything’s cool. Same thing with my brother. When you’re young and you’re brought up the way we were brought up, the only thing you know how to do is fight. When we got of age we were ready willing and able to fight, so that’s what we did. (laughs a bit) I give my Mom a lot of credit because she had to deal with a lot of shit between me and my brother and my older sister put her through the wringer. And she did the best she could to bring us up in the right way, and I think she did a pretty damn good job considering the odds she was against.

When you went on the tour then did it feel on some level that you were getting away from all that, finding a new world out there?

Yeah and no. I was ready to go on tour for many different reasons other than wanting to win. I wanted to make money so I could help my Mom out. Help my brothers and sisters. And I wanted my whole life to get out of Waianae where I was from. I loved it, loved being there, loved all my friends, but I didn’t wanna be part of that whole lifestyle. I surfed and went to school and got into fights and got into fights and got into more fights. And it seemed like growing up on that side of the island was non-stop confrontations about everything. I didn’t wanna get into confrontations for any reason other than competing. I wanted to gain something from it other than a couple lumps. Once I got out I thought I’m out of there, I don’t ever wanna go back. I wanna visit, hang out, and get the fuck outta there. That was what drove me pretty much until today, that fear of having to go back to that lifestyle. Even now that I’m not on tour it’s still a driving force, you know, I better get into business or do something to make sure that I never end up there again.

That’s why you’re prepared to take your lumps from the IRS.

Yep. IRS. You know they say there’s two things you can guarantee in life, that’s death and taxes.

I’ve always thought you could break the last 20 years up into distinct generations, you’ve been able to surf against all those generations, would you say there’s a group of surfers that you hold in higher esteem than the others?

I hold the group that I came up with in higher esteem than anybody. I’ll put money on those guys that they’ve done more for surfing than any other group could possibly do. As much as everyone liked to bag on the ‘80s, the ‘80s were fuckin’ huge in surfing. You’d go to the Op Pro and there’d be 100,000 people on the beach. You go to the Op Pro now and you’re lucky if you get 20,000 and it’s a fuckin’ zoo. You’ve got skateboarding, you’ve got motocross and you still don’t have the crowd that you had back in the ‘80s just for surfing. Surfing was more colourful when I started the tour. You had Rob Bain, Rod Kerr, Robbie Page, Shmoo, Gary Green, Brad Gerlach, then you had the MRs and Shauns, Greg Day. It was more colourful and it was like men were men. The tour is just a bunch of kids now, who pat each other on the back. “Good luck,” you know, “right on, great surfing.” Back then they were like “Fuck you! I’ll fuckin’ rip your head off.” They’d put Vaseline on your board, they’d shave your eyebrows off when you’re sleeping, they did everything humanly possible to fuck with you. You had to be on your game back in the day. And back then everybody stayed together, which was an even better part. We had all the groups, everyone would rent a big house and everybody would stay in the same place and it was fun, you got to fuck with the guys more. Now everybody makes sooo much money, everybody stays sooo far away from each other, they don’t wanna know, they don’t wanna deal with it. I dunno. I think back then it was just more dog-eat-dog, more competitive, surfing was bigger, I think the format was a lot better. You had the top 16, you had the back 14, you had the two wildcards, and you had trials. So there were more guys who could get into the event. Local guys could get into the event and the media could follow a guy all the way from the trials. But now they have the wildcards and more times than not the sponsors are gonna put the guys into that position. So there’s no real way of getting guys in. And now everything’s coming to a head where local guys around the world, especially Hawaii, they wanna get into the events. They can’t get in ‘em and they’re making it harder for the events to run. I look back when everything was just a lot better, Surfing’s grown so much it’s almost diluted.

Pro surfing’s largely under the control of the big surf companies.

You mean Quiksilver, Billabong and Rip Curl. Basically. They pretty much have a say. And they have a very small mindset. All they want to do is control it. They don’t want it to grow, they want it to stay right where it is. And I think that’s a problem. It’s a real big problem in surfing. Once the ASP grows some balls and actually takes back their sport, I think it’ll grow. But until they actually do that I don’t think the sport of surfing’s gonna go anywhere. I think skating, snowboarding, all these extreme sports are gonna keep going and expanding and surfing’s gonna be right where we’re at. We need a drastic change. Something needs to change and until that happens I think it’s just gonna be growing at a real slow pace.

Yet surfing is still the only one of those sports with a world champion, and I wonder what you think the world championship means to the average surfer? How much does it matter to them that surfing has one?

I think it depends on age. I think to the kids, the world champion is everything that they dream and aspire to be. Then they get a little older and they realise they can’t be one, and they get really grouchy and they don’t care. But while you’re young that’s all you ever wanna be. It’s a dream and it’s an achievable dream for any kid that’s willing to put his time in to become one. I think that’s a great thing. To the average old guy, the world champion isn’t really too much. I mean there’s a lot of people who are really stoked to meet a world champion and shake his hand and stuff. The only thing that really matters is to have the kids look up to you. Having remembered being a kid and getting to meet MR and Shaun and all those guys, I remember how I was in awe. I think that’s a great thing. To achieve that is beyond belief. Being on the other end of that spectrum, being that champion and seeing a kid look up and you see the spark in his eyes. It’s worth everything that you have to go through to become one.

 

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