Ocho means 8, and if you rotate that shape-image-pictograph ninety degrees it means infinity. Ocho to me: has a rolling continuity yet fleeting fruition, a Grecian paradox, most similar to platonic form, it has moments feeling infinite but it isn’t always. Heraclitus says on the matter, that it is not possible to step into the same river twice. I guess if we change river to van then were getting a little bit closer...
I met the Ocho that I know, as a neighbor the summer after my first year of university and before he was known as such ... then a few years later we lived together. Our house came to the agreement that this Norwegian friend of ours could park his used craigslist-ed dark navy retro Westy with all the proper hippie stickers in our driveway. How much was the rent on that you might ask? Oh, you know the traditional Isla Vista currency, a keg of crappy beer on the 8th of each and every month and a larger share of the cleaning chores. Heck we started to make a party out of it after we agreed to the idea, so we called it, him, his duties, etc: The Ocho(he was our eighth “housemate”). It kind of became a maxim of our lives that year that ‘The Ocho’s got it’. We wore togas sometimes too.
In fact, we all had it. One of the more scenic homes in our little beach slum(it has had many names from the cliff haus, to the mens-center, the ymca, the ocho house, the barnacle is one I just recently heard... it goes on I am sure). Our home overlooked a nice inviting and slower pointbreak. Our backyard was completely open and through it runs a hard dirt trail usually littered with broken glass of some kind. Despite its true character, it is still the kind of spot you take your parents to when they visit in October after a few weeks of fall’s classes, the kind of spot you jog through, the kind of spot you take your dog to shit at, and lastly the spot where say late October until the following April you take the girl your crushing on to watch the sunset at. The house itself had no bearing on any of us living at that address but the view; well you’ve probably already seen an instagram or snapchat picture of our view if you have ever been so lucky to call Isla Vista your home. And if you came before us then maybe you still remember the “Ocean watching club” that met on Tuesdays on the cliff.
The house was so funkadelic and outdated (it used to belong to a university professor, just like most of the other more homey houses not rushed through in design like the big renters normally build), it held beneath our uneven, green, and molding carpet a small basement emptied out by the tenants before us(also surfers). Ocho took to tradition pretty strongly and started a shaping business himself below, taking a retro centerfold pin-up from Playboy magazine and following in their planer whirs before him.
Even before Ocho had completed his first shape, our house’s quiver was excessive considering how many of us actually surfed, whether we owned the boards ourselves or were merely watching over them for traveling friends, that house can only truly exist with a large quiver of boards, and equally too many bikes. Just the handling and the seeing of so many different boards began to open my mind to the function of such a peculiar thing. But that October, I tore my hamstring and met an awesome surfer girl so things really slowed down, a lot. My season was limited to forcing a certain dreamlike left that sat over a steep dropping sea shelf, just behind our house below the cliffs. It’s a spot I truly loved, being goofy-footed, and still being too afraid of the point.
I remember one morning in January, that I had gotten up early to practice a spoken word piece in our yard at sunrise... luckily it was projected flat and I was passed by no checking surfers along that path, so rapping aloud to myself went unoticed. For this class we were also required to take special journal of our health in a holistic sense. In spoken word your body is your instrument just as a guitar to a guitarist and surfboard to a surfer. The number one habit I take from that lesson on journaling was that surfing in the morning made for a pretty sweet day: it means I got up with the sun, got some exercise, ate a good breakfast after, and probably had a LOT of well earned coffee... not to mention the spiritual gratitude for the universe and just being alive that surfing cultivates. I had during this time been trying to, at the minimum paddle each morning to get stronger and for that ion balance/gratitude created from the salt water. This particular morning when I made it from the stairs directly out say 30 yards to the kelp line I saw some frantic waving spining dervish on our cliff. Ocho. Once we saw each other he exaggeratedly pointed to the point. That day the two of us and one of our millionaire(billionaire?) neighbors traded fun glassy 1-2 footers. That day I learned what trim felt like, I learned what 2foot and firing meant. That day I got the waves that I wanted. And that day I ordered my first real board. #16, The OTTer pop... 9 feet 2 inches, narrow squash tail, all red and fully lopsided and perfectly imperfect. I forget my spoken word lines at the moment but I remember that session like it was today. The early stages of the Ocho’s culture of craft.
A lot of time has passed but now I can say I am a lot more confident. I can say I surf the top of the point with pride many days. And I am confident that Ocho is proud of each time I fall and lose the OTTer pop end over end into the rocks. The bummer is that Ocho now lives in New Zealand, he spends his days milking goats, building things, and chasing swell in a different van when he gets the chance. It’s a bummer because I miss trading waves with one of my elders, its bummer because I want to burn my elder, just to prove my worth and my progress. But that won’t be for a while so instead I share my stoke via internet chats every so many days. Yet like the Norwegian grandpa I will never actually have, Ocho’s wisdom stays in my daily motivation with ease. He speaks of the time I am entering from his own experience, a type of ghost shaper of winters past, he is not dead, he is far from gone but still far out, and yet he is lingering in eight-starred logos scattered in our breaks.
My struggle these days, is with change and growth in my environment. I long for an Isla Vista of the past, one of legend, one that I only floundered in before. But I am both a product of the changing environment and one of its many catalysts. My own progress and growth is one of the changes. But like this years El Niño I believe I am merely a piece of a now much more frequent cycle of change. Drought years are supposed to be more common as are El Niño years according to some climatologists. Surfing is clearly growing every day whether it’s flat or not. Sands beach around the corner for some reason will remain the more popular location for one and first timers. It’s where I first confusedly stood on a wave. But Sands also is the place of cameras and video edit vibes. Lit all summer by the sun, it is our representation of southern California surf: hot and high contrast, white washed and windy. Just earlier this week an Adirondack chair was added to a near by concrete slab that overlooks the rocks, with it a wine cork. Sands is a tar-slick hot beach bordered by a polarizing and heavily policed Plover preserve, in the past these dunes were open to all. The waves at Sands max out usually with winter size around true 5 or 6 feet. Summer winds and slosh is its modus operandi, as are beers, bonfires, joints, dogs, and dimes. The only seating I have ever known there is from fallen trees and kelpy sand dunes. The slab of concrete un-purposed before, is now claimed for 1, rather than the usual communal Isla Vista couch. It is quite cliché and obvious that things change, but often we can miss the cycles that spin before our eyes. Is the Adirondack just as the plover fence before it a cycle of development?
I hope to someday be in the cycle myself as one of the Dev-a-guru elders before me and around me. Devereux beach has no seating for those afraid of the sea, and to surf it one must scale minor shale cliffsides with board in hand. Its famous Jailhouse is littered with paint cans needles and broken glass. The shaded reef and kelp forest attracts much more diverse life than Sands can sustain in such a strong lens of the summer sun. I bike past the cliff haus to check every now and then. Its balcony is still lined with wetsuits, but I hear no planers, I see no van, and Dreamiez has not broken yet. But we must still be early in the cycle.
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