Bustin’ Down The Door (DVD) Directed by Jeremy Grosch
What: A look at the turbulent 1975 surfing season in Hawaii when a brash group of Australians turned the surfing world upside down and changed it forever.
For: Every surfer
5 out of 5 stars Essential. Classic.
In the early 70’s a new breed of young surfer from Australia and South Africa came to Hawaii. Mark Richards, Wayne ‘Rabbit’ Bartholemew, Ian Cairns and Peter Townend from Australia and Shaun Tomson and Michael Tomson came from South Africa.
With an aggressive style and attitude they charged harder, taking more waves and risks to make a name for themselves.
Bustin’ Down The Door
By 1975 their tactics had worked. Invited to all the major surfing contests that year they dominated. They were taking over the mecca of surfing and their braggadocios and cocky attitude offend the native Hawaiians.
Seen as another colonialist encroachment on Hawaiian culture a group of native Hawaiians called the Da Hui or “Black Shorts” began to intimidate and then assault the group. The situation was serious, death threats hung in the air.
Legendary Hawaiian surfer Eddie Aikau summoned a meeting in the conference room of what is now the Turtle Bay Hilton to help resolve the issue. In a tense, near explosive “trial” the Hawaiians reached a verdict.
“You could call it a meeting or you could call it a trial. I was so ignorant, I didn’t know, and the lessons began. I was understanding why the Hawaiians were angry. They had lost their land and surfing was one of the last bastions of their culture Ieft and that’s what we had taken.”
-Rabbit Bartholomew
Out of chaos comes order. The dynamic surfing of this brash group of Australians and South Africans sparked the birth of the professional surfing tour as we know it today.
Bustin’ Down The Door is a surfing documentary classic. Essential watching for every surfer.
“Every great change is preceded by chaos.”
1975 was a year that changed surfing forever. In 1973 and ’74 a brash young group of Australian and South African surfers led by Shaun Tomson, Wayne “Rabbit” Bartholomew, Ian Cairns, Mark Richards and Peter Townend descended on Hawaii, the mecca of surfing. They were a new generation of surfers with a different mindset and a fresh attitude.
The reigning gods of surfing; Eddie & Clyde Aikau, Gerry Lopez, Barry Kanaiaupuni, Jeff Hakman, James Jones and Rory Russell had a laid back, wait for the perfect wave attitude. This was the age of mellow but this new group of surfers were anything but mellow. Instead they were aggressive, taking every wave they could and ripping it to shreds. They surfed with a reckless, nothing to lose attitude.
And they surfed Pipeline like it had never been surfed before. They surfed “Back Door” and “Off The Wall”; the rights on the other side of Pipeline. Until then no one had even thought about going right at Pipeline.
Suddenly all the attention shifted to them. By the end of ’74 they had made a name for themselves. Then in 1975 they totally dominated the surfing contests in Hawaii. It was a total changing of the guards.
This was would have gone down fine if they had remained humble. But instead they started bragging and chest-thumping in the surfing magazines. Rabbit Bartholomew wrote an article for Surfer magazine entitled “Bustin Down the Door” that enraged the Hawaiians. Surfing was the last thing Hawaiians had and now this group of foreigners were trying to take that away too.
When the Australians returned the next year the shit hit the fan. There was violence, beatings in and out of the water and death threats. The Australians and South Africans feared for their lives and had to go into hiding.
Eddie Aikau stepped in. Eddie knew he had to stop this chaos before someone died. The Hawaiians grabbed Rabbit and Ian Cairns and held a make-shift trial in the conference room of a resort hotel. With 150 Hawaiians present they came to a shaky peace agreement. Somehow Eddie Aikau had averted a disaster.
Out of this turbulence professional surfing was born. Surfing as we know it today began with this brash young group of Australian and South African surfers whose aggressive competitive style made the idea of professional surfing a reality.
