Rory’s Ramblings: We Missed Iggy Pop At Pipe (And It Wasn’t My Fault)

Iggy Pop played three songs at the Billabong house last night. An unreal scene, beachfront at Off the Wall, a rock legend laying into an open secret it seemed the entire North Shore was in on.

Or so I’m told. Once again, Stab showed up late. Or, well, some of us did. Captain McIntosh was right up front, raging with the boys, while we’d been held up too long at the Vans shindig down Waimea way, were forced into a quick jaunt up into Pupukea, then sprinted down Ke Nui as phones beeped and people informed us:

Iggy’s going on.

Holy shit, Iggy’s playing Right. Now.

Rolling up to the Billabong house five minutes later, we’d missed the whole thing. 

It’s nice to be able to lay the blame on this one off on someone else. Ashton Goggans is the boss, he was behind the wheel. He was the reason we were late. Definitely not my fault.

The Billabong house is deceptively small. It sprawls laterally but does not run very deep. The beach pins it on one side, the bike path on another. It was standing room only inside. We surf media nerds hobnobbed with each other, attractive women ignored our presence. Young men postured and nodded their heads to the beat.

The Skegss played a great set. Ozzie Wright joined them for a number. Pretty young girls danced with the total lack of self-consciousness that only pretty young girls possess. Jake Howard observed that “It’s all Australians with bad haircuts.”

It’s only slightly an overstatement. There were lots of Aussies and lots of bad haircuts.

A couple Aussies with normal haircuts raved to me about how good and cheap coke is in Hawaii. The surf’s been garbage most of this last week so they’ve been hoovering powder that’s apparently difficult for them to get Down Under.

I explained to them that it was most likely stepped on meth. There’s not much decent blow to be found on Oahu and it’s unlikely that two young kids stumbled onto it by accident.

“How can you tell?”

“Well… it burned, yeah?”

They were decent blokes. One a part-time laborer busting his ass to finance a ‘QS campaign. The other an amiable tall drink of water. Neither of whose name I remember.

I asked the QS/Laborer how he likes the grind.

“I travel to the worst waves in the world with the worst people in the world.”

Mickie Avalon and Landon McNamara played a set across the street, which is where we ended up once the burly men hired as security ushered everyone out Billabong’s front door.

As is always the case, the bigger and scarier a local guy looks, the nicer he is. Seven feet tall and covered in face tattoos? Guy’s a big-hearted puppy dog, guaranteed.

It’s the wiry little guys you have to look out for. Especially once everything shuts down and the mass of humanity clogs the roads on the way back to their cars. You need to stay aware, keep your head up, watch out for the handful of kids looking for an excuse to throw punches.

A very tall, very thin, haole kid was unaware of this. He got caught slipping, viciously false cracked, and put to sleep on the shoulder of the road. It was absolutely fucking hideous. His friends didn’t take him to the hospital, but they really should’ve.

It’s hard to feel too bad for him. I can’t help but think he might’ve done something to deserve it.

The kid had his reset button touched and the first thing he said upon regaining consciousness was, “This is why Donald Trump is president. You people have no respect.”

Well… you know, any pity I might’ve felt immediately fucking evaporated.

Take that shit back the mainland, kid.