It’s a part of growing up - lumps on the head or worse, lacerations.  If you was a warubozu kind of kid, you know what I’m talking about.  We even used to show off the scars on our head almost like it was a badge of courage - or recklessness.

As I briefly mentioned in the Remembering Bowling Alleys blog entry, my first “puka head” I got was at at a bowling alley.  Boulevard Bowl - when I just under 5 years old.  My dad was bowling in the Pearl Harbor league there.  My older brother was doing the “spin in a circle until you get dizzy and fall down” thing, so of course I had to try it.  But when I fell down, I hit the base of my head on the corner of the ball polishing machine.  I screamed.  Blood was everywhere.  I remember my dad holding a blood stained handkerchief to my head to make the bleeding stop.  He was pissed because he had to take a dummy score for the rest of the night and take me home.  I never was taken to the hospital.  It just healed up on it’s own and left a small scar.  If I cut my hair too short at the base of my hairline, it shows.  So if I look like I have a mullet haircut - it’s actually to hide my scar.

Then later when I was in my teens, we were surfing at Lighthouse.  I took off too late on a wave and by the time I stood up, I was diving down the face of the wave - head first.  My board followed me.  Somewhere in the mix, I felt my board whack me in the back of my head.  I immediately rubbed the back of my head, as I came up I looked at my hands and saw clumps of hair - and blood.  As I pulled my board to me, I could see the swallow tail was shattered with my hair stuck in it.  My surfing buds knew I ate it and looked towards me and yelled “Bleeding?”.  I nodded yes and we all paddled in.

After showering off, I asked my friend if it looked bad and he said it wasn’t too bad.  So we headed to my mom’s work place but she was out of the office.  I asked the receptionist how it looked and she immediately said “You need to get to the emergency room.”  So we went to the emergency room and the doctor stitched it up. Then my friend tells me “Yeah, it looked pretty bad, but I didn’t want to scare you.”  Thanks.

The weird thing is that the ER doctor rolled up a piece of gauze, like a mini tampon, and stitched it on to my head right over the cut.  So after that, while I still had the tampon stuck to my head, when I rode in someone’s car and they shifted rough, my head tampon would hit the headrest and cause some pain.  But after about a week, the stitches came off - as well as the mini tampon.

As for tankobus or lumps - too numerous to recall.

I remember my father-in-law telling us a story about how my mother-in-law was taking things out of the car trunk.  Just as he was slamming the trunk lid down, my mother-in-law says “wait” and sticks her head right in the path of the trunk lid.  BOOM!  My mother-in-law thought it must’ve been a hot day because as she rubbed her head, she felt sweat.  But it wasn’t sweat.  Yup, bleeding.  Small kine so no stitches necessary.

Fast forward a few years - Paula, me, and the girls go to a bon dance at Windward mall.  It was raining lightly so I open the back gate of my Explorer to get the umbrellas - you already know where this is going, don’t you.  And just as I’m about to slam down the gate, Paula goes to reach in and BAM! - right on the head.  Luckily, no blood.  I felt so bad.  Especially after I said “Like mother, like daughter.”

So share your puka head stories.  I’m expecting my big brother to share with us why he no longer goes surfing on Thanksgiving Day.  If you didn’t get a puka head, you’ve must have at least got a tankobu once or twice.  No shame.  Wear your scars proudly! Tell us your stories.

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Yesterday, I had the pleasure of meeting fellow blogger Melissa Chang of Urban Mixed Plate - IRL.  Here’s a little picture of us showing off the latest issue of Homescapes magazine.

A flack & a hack 

Quite a few years ago, a classmate of mine started working at The Advertiser. I admit that I didn’t recognize her at first (sorry Karen), but she recognized me. We got to talking and we were recalling the good ol’ days and Karen said she still had my senior picture that I gave her.  So one day she brought it to work.  As I was reading what I wrote on the back of the picture, I just had to laugh; “Have a righteous summer”.

Righteous?

Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t a super religious guy back then, but that’s one of the words that we used to say - back in the day.

Which got me thinking of other words or terms we used to use back then, such as:

Far out - “That is so far out!”
Bitchin’ - “It was a bitchin’ wave”
Geev ‘um - “Go for it brah, geev ‘um”
Fast - “Us country girls not fast like you town guys” (Thanks for that one, Barb)
Boss - “It’ll roll, it’ll toss, the hula hoop is really boss”
Neato - “Wow, neato!”
Ice out - “We went ice out LB”
Trip - “Da guy was one trip”
Trippin’ - “Nah, they not going steady, they just trippin’”
Bag - “Eh you guys, I going bag.  See you tomorrow.”

Okay, that should get you folks started.  What other words or terms do you recall using back in the day?  If you can, use it in a sentence or give the definition.  Slangs allowed, but no racial slurs.  And keep it clean.

Bud Browne - known as “the father of surf films” passed away at 96 years old.

Maybe you don’t recognize his name, but maybe you recognize some of these titles:

• Hawaiian Surfing Movie (1953)
• Hawaiian Holiday (1954)
• Hawaiian Surf Movie (1955)
• Trek to Makaha (1956)
• The Big Surf (1957)
• Surf Down Under (1958)
• Cat on a Hot Foam Board (1959)
• Surf Happy (1960)
• Spinning Boards (1961)
• Cavalcade of Surf (1962)
• Gun Ho! (1963)
• Locked In! (1964)
• You’ll Dance in Tahiti (1967)
• Going Surfin’ (1973)

Honestly, the only Bud Browne movie that I saw was Going Surfin’.  And what a surf movie it was.  In my book, Going  Surfin’ ranks even higher than 5 Summer Stories.  In fact, since I thought the movie was so good, I went out and bought the soundtrack.

Yup, that’s an LP, not a CD.  And if anyone knows where I can get a copy of Going Surfin’ on DVD, I’ll be eternally grateful.

By Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 29, 2008

Bud Browne, a onetime Venice Beach lifeguard who became known as “the father of surf films” after he began showing his 16-millimeter surf movies commercially up and down the California coast in the early 1950s, has died. He was 96.

Browne died in his sleep Friday at his home in San Luis Obispo, said his close friend Anna Trent Moore, daughter of surfing legend Buzzy Trent.

Bud Browne began shooting footage on 8- and 16-millimeter cameras in the late 1940s. He screened his first film, the 45-minute-long “Hawaii Surfing Movies,” in California beach towns in 1953.  Admission cost 65 cents.

“Bud created the genre of surf films,” Steve Pezman, publisher of the Surfer’s Journal, told The Times on Monday. “What was unique about Bud and his films was the water footage, and the fact that he lived with the surfers he was filming.

“All those surfers actually just loved the guy, and he was a great athlete himself.”

A former captain of the USC swim team who learned to surf while working as a lifeguard at Venice Beach in 1938, Browne bought an 8-millimeter movie camera two years later and began making home movies of his fellow surfers.
In 1947, after serving in the Navy during World War II, he upgraded his camera to a 16 millimeter Bell & Howell and got more serious about shooting the action on the waves, particularly during his annual trips to Hawaii.
Several years later — after working as a middle-school physical education teacher and attending the USC film school — Browne had enough footage to edit into a 45-minute movie.

With handmade posters nailed to telephone poles near local surf spots, he debuted his first film, “Hawaiian Surfing Movies,” at John Adams Middle School in Santa Monica in 1953.

Browne, who charged 65 cents admission, introduced his film onstage, then hurried back to the projection booth to narrate it via microphone with taped musical accompaniment.

A couple of other successful beach-town showings followed, and Browne gave up teaching to launch his career as a surf filmmaker.

Between 1953 and 1964, he released a new surf film each year, including “Trek to Makaha,” “The Big Surf,” “Surf Down Under,” “Cat on a Hot Foam Board,” “Surf Happy” and “Gun Ho!”

In the process, he captured on film longboard-era greats such as Phil Edwards, Miki Dora and Dewey Weber and first-generation shortboard heroes, including David Nuuhiwa and Gerry Lopez.

Browne, who shot big-wave action from the water with a waterproof camera housing of his own design, was known to be fearless.

“He was completely at home in the water,” Matt Warshaw, author of “The Encyclopedia of Surfing” and a former editor of Surfer magazine, told The Times on Monday. “With a camera cased in housing, he was willing to go out and take lumps and get angles no one else wanted to get.”

In a 2005 column in the Orange County Register, surfing champion Corky Carroll recalled “running over” Browne one day at Pipeline in Hawaii.

“He told me to surf like he wasn’t there, so I did,” Carroll wrote. “I am tucked deep into this monster barrel, and there is Bud, right in the way, filming me. I figured that he was gonna dive under before I ran him down. Wrong. He just stayed right here filming, and I took him out like a Greyhound bus nailing a highway dog.”

As a surf-film pioneer, Browne predated other early surf filmmakers such as Bruce Brown, Greg Noll and John Severson.

Brown, whose film “The Endless Summer” became a phenomenon after opening nationally in 1966, remembered watching Browne’s films as a teenager. In fact, Browne captured him on film surfing in Hawaii.

“That was a big deal to go to Bud’s movies and to see if you were in it,” Brown told The Times on Monday.

He held Browne in such esteem as “the originator” of commercial surf films that “when I got a chance to make one of my own, I went to Bud and said, ‘I don’t want to do it without your blessing.’ He said, ‘No problem; go for it.’ ”
Warshaw said the work of Browne and other early surf filmmakers was, to surfers, the equivalent of passing around a scrapbook.
“When Bud first came out, there weren’t even surf magazines,” he said. “Everyone was so starved to see imagery of surfing.”
Nicknamed “Barracuda” for his tall, slender build and the amount of time he spent in the water, Browne was known as a top body surfer. In the early ’60s, he was famous for body surfing at the Wedge in Newport Beach, the most dangerous body-surfing spot in California.
As a filmmaker, Pezman said, Browne “made a film record of the surf culture that he was intimate with.

“He was allowed inside as one of them, even though he was quite different than they were,” Pezman said.
“He was a traditional, old-school gentleman, and they were rambunctious rebels, but somehow they coexisted, and he recorded their lives and their culture as it expanded from a few hundred [surfers] in the ’50s to several million in the ’60s, and he and his films helped fan the flames of that growth,” he said.

Warshaw said Browne retired for a while in the mid-’60s, then came back in 1973 with what many consider his best film, “Going Surfin’.”

Browne also shot footage for Greg MacGillivray and Jim Freeman’s 1972 classic “Five Summer Stories” and was part of the team that filmed the surfing sequences for “Big Wednesday,” director John Milius’ 1978 feature film.

Born in Boston on July 14, 1912, Browne moved to Los Angeles in 1931 to major in physical education at USC.

Browne, who lived in Costa Mesa for many years before moving to San Luis Obispo three years ago, was inducted into the International Surfing Hall of Fame in 1991 and the Huntington Beach Surfing Walk of Fame in 1996.

He was honored in March at the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival for his contributions to surf films.

Moore, who said Browne remained active until he developed health problems due to diabetes, recalled that she and Browne went on three bungee-jumping trips to New Zealand together in the 1990s.

“He loved to bungee jump, and he bungee jumped until he was 86,” she said.

Browne, who never married, is survived by two nieces and a nephew.

At Browne’s request, close friends will scatter his ashes at Pipeline on Oahu.

A celebration of his life will be held at 7 p.m. Aug. 25 at Waimea Falls.

As at tribute to Bud Browne - let’s recall our surfing memories.

MOVIES
When I was a young surf rat, I remember my mom dropping me off at Kapahulu theater to see 5 Summer Stories by myself - and I was hooked on surf movies.  However, as I mentioned above, Going Surfin’ was my favorite.

Other surf movies that I saw (which I can remember) was Pacific Vibrations (which we named our social club after), A Sea For Yourself, and The Inner Most Limits of Pure Fun.  I remember seeing Free & Easy and Endless Summer on TV before I started surfing.

There was a lot of other surf movies that we used to watch at Roosevelt Auditorium.  Some were hard core surf movies with no narration - just surfing and rock music.   Others has minimal narration and all surf footage.

WAX
The wax that we used to use was parafin wax.  Then Surfline had a square block of a light blue surf wax that smelled like bubble gum - which we appropriately called “bubble gum” wax.  Eventually, Mr. Zogg came out with Sex Wax and that became the wax to use.

SURF LEASHES
Commercial surf leashes weren’t available when we started surfing - just the concept.  We used to use nylon rope.  We threaded surgical rubber with the nylon rope at one end.  That’s the part the tied around our ankle.  The surgical rubber was to prevent chafing from the rope rubbing against the ankle.  A hole was drilled at the base of our skeg where we’d slip through the other end through and tie a knot on each end to keep it in place.  We also had to use knots to tie the surf leash around our ankle.  It was the pits when a portuguese-man-0-war would wrap around the surf leash right at the knot area.  Or worse yet when the man-o-war wrapped around the leash at the ankle - because it took a couple of minutes to untie the knots while the man-o-war was stinging our ankle.  Then later we replaced the nylon rope with bungee cord.   The Hobie Cats left on the beach had a lot of bungee cord that we cut off and used.

THE BOARDS
Pin tail “sticks” for big wave riders.  Rounded pin for shorter boards.  Box tails.  Diamond tails.  Swallow tails.  Fish tails.  Swish tails.  Asymmetrical tails.  Stingers.  And the board invented before it’s time - the Bonzer.

The Bonzer

THE SURFBOARD MAKERS
Surfline on Piikoi street.  Lightning Bolt on Kapiolani.  Rich Parr on Queen street.  Stonebreaker on Mililani street.  Hawaiian Island Creations on Hahani street.  Haleiwa surfboads in Haleiwa town.  Dick Brewer on the north shore someplace.  Town & Country in Pearl City?  And of course, home made surfboards.  At Rich Parr, you could buy a surfboard kit (includes blank, fiberglass, resin, skeg, rope, etc.) for $55 (?).  A custom made board without color from Rich Parr - $100.  Add $10 for tint or pigment.
Oh yeah, and Rich Parr was thee place to go for your Body Glove wet suit.
Mainland surfboard makers? Plastic Fantastic.  And Bing surfboards had the coolest logo.  Whether you read the logo right side up or upside down, it still reads “bing”.

THE  SURFERS
Gerry Lopez,  Ben Aipa, Tom Stone, Reno Abellira, James Jones, Rory Russel, Buttons Kaluhiokalani, David Nuuiwa.

Okay, that should start stirring up the old memories.  So strain your brain and add to the lists.  *I purposely left out surf spot names otherwise this entry could go on forever.

Rest in Peace, Bud Browne.  And thanks for all the footage.

In keeping with the bowling theme, let’s visit bowling in general.

First of all, I would like to thank Edward Sun for the very informative entry he contributed in the Remembering Bowling Alleys blog entry.  If you get a chance, please read his posting.

When I was about 8 years old, my dad bought me my first bowling ball - a 10 pound Ebonite with the name “DEL” imprinted on it.  Cost $5.  My bag was a hard plastic case that we got at the Gold Bond stamps redemption center.

Later on in my early teens, I got my first brand new ball.  IIRC, it was an Earl Anthony Mag-7.  I loved that gyro looking logo on it so I just had to have one.  I believe it was soft rubber - and hooked just about a much as a rubber ball could hook in those days.  I didn’t bowl in any leagues - for recreation only, maybe once a year or so.

Skip to about 15 years later when I got married, I joined a team with my father-in-law in the Nisei Friday night Bowl-o-drome league.  It was the second shift league and between the machines breaking down and the first shift bowling slow, sometimes we wouldn’t get started until 10:00 pm.  Even though we were just a 4-man team, we wouldn’t finish until way after midnight.  But back to my bowling balls, since I was now bowing in a league, that meant I needed a new ball - a Columbia Yellow Dot.  I thought I was all that, until I saw the other bowler throwing something called a Hammer.  A urethane ball with a unique block - unlike the old standard “pancake” blocks.  Bought myself a black Hammer.  Oh, but the red hammer hooked even more so I needed the red Hammer.  Hmm, two balls.  Now I need the 2-ball Hammer bag.  This was getting expensive at over $125 per ball and about another $75 for the bag.  But I was having fun and my average was improving.

The Nisei league started to lose teams and was getting almost too small to make a league.  In fact, we only took up half the alley.  The other half of the alley (actually a little less) was used by 2 leagues that rotated on a 6 month basis.  The Department of Transportation league and the Department of Health league.  Eventually we joined forces and formed the Department of Health league that ran consecutive seasons.

But due to the late nights, over time the league got smaller every season until it disbanded.  Some of us joined a Thursday night league at Kam/Mak bowl.  Going from Bowl-o-drome to Kam/Mak bowl was such an upgrade.  No more broken down machines.  No more overground ball returns.  No more kicking the ball return when trying to pick up the 10 pin.  And best of all - no more manual score keeping!  At Bowl-0-drome I used to dread having to keep score.  When it was our turn to keep score, I had to keep score by myself.  My other team members just didn’t keep score.  Sometimes I’d even have to write in scores between my first and second ball.  Talk about throwing off the rhythm.  With the automatic score keeper, I could relax and joke around with my team mates and stay loose.

By then, my bowling equipment had advanced quite a bit.  I was partial to Track bowling balls with exotic drillings.  Axis weight.  Leverage weight.  Sanded.  Lightly polished.  Finger inserts.  Tape.  At that point, bowling balls were costing me around $235 each.  And the gloves and wrist supports all added up.  Oh yeah, and the 2-ball Hammer bag was just too small.  I had to have the Bruinswick Zone 3-ball bag on wheels.  The hard decision was figuring out which 3 balls to take to the alley that night.  I must’ve had about 6 different balls to choose from.  My theory was that, like baseball players that get a new bat because the old one “ran out of hits”, I had to get new bowling balls because the old ones “ran out of strikes”.  And the shoes, had to be the Dexters with the interchangeable soles for the different approach conditions.

But about 5 years ago, the Thursday night league also disbanded and that was the end of my bowling career.  I did manage to “break the bank” once.  That called for a game of 260+ with handicap.  But I never did bowl a perfect game - even with handicap…

Some bowling tidbits:

• Why isn’t bowling an olympic sport?
• Bowling is one of the few sports where you can achieve a perfect score.
• A 7-10 split is not impossible to pick up.  I’ve seen it done.
• The secret to keeping score:
  • A spare is 10 + the count on the next ball rolled
  • A strike is 10 + the total count on the next 2 balls rolled
• 2 strikes in a row is called a “double”.
• 3 strikes in a row is called a “turkey”.
• 4 strikes in a row is called a “4 bagger” and so on.
• A “coke frame” is when everyone on the team strikes in the same frame except for one team member.  That person has to buy the whole team drinks.  I’ve been “coked” many times.
• “Sand baggers or Dumpers” are those who know they have no chance to win the jackpot so they throw a junk game to retain their handicap.
• “Horses” are those you give their money back to after you win a jackpot - because they usually give your money back to you when they win.
• Most Embarrassing leave - a 5, 7, 10 split.  Means your ball has no drive when hitting the pocket.  Almost impossible to pick up.
• Most Macho leave - a solid 5 pin.  Means your ball has too much drive when hitting the pocket.
• Improper Etiquette: Going on the approach when a person in either adjacent lane is getting ready to bowl.
• Too Much Proper Etiquette: Waiting for two lanes on each adjacent side to clear before going up to the approach.
• Worst Nightmare: Stepping on water with your sliding shoe (can’t slide).
• Most Embarrassing: Having your ball slip out of your hand on your back swing.
• Best Times: The end of season bowling banquet.

We visited memories of old bowling centers in the last blog entry.  Now let’s visit old bowling memories that you have.  Any funny stories to share?  More bowling tidbits to add to the list?

This past Saturday, The Honolulu Advertiser ran a story on Waialae Bowl and how it just may be resurrected once again.  And it got me thinking of all the old bowling alleys that once were.  I grew up around bowling alleys.  When I was a kid, my father used to bowl the second shift at Pali Lanes every Friday night.  We used to go with him and hang out while he bowled - that’s where I learned how to play “nickel machines”.  I used to stand outside of the room an watch the adults play the machines - but that’s for another blog.

I remember Boulevard Bowl where I got my first “puka head”.  Does anyone remember Boulevard Bowl?  It was located on Dillingham boulevard (thus the name), right across OCCC.  The building is still there today and is occupied by a bunch of small businesses and credit unions.  I still look at it whenever we’re heading to Marukai.

Then there was City Bowl which used to be at the corner of Alapai and King St. if memory serves me correctly.  My auntie and her sister used to run a barber shop in the same building.   Now it’s a bus terminal.

Further up the way was Kapiolani Bowl at the corner of Ward and Kapiolani.  I remember stopping in there one night and I saw my dad there.  He was bowling in the Hawaii Newspaper Agency bowling league.  I wasn’t working at The Advertiser yet otherwise I’d be bowling in that league with him.  Kapiolani Bowl had one of the original grills there with the wide venetian blinds in the window and a “U” shaped counter with stools and a few booths.

Those grills seemed to be the standard because Stadium Bowl-o-drome had the same set up.   I have quite a few stories to tell of Stadium Bowl-o-drome.  But that’s for another time.  There was talk of maybe bringing Bowl-o-drome back to life.  The building is still there, but it’s not being used except for the parking lot.  Too bad.

Let’s reach farther back.  Kaimuki Bowl?  It used to be located upstairs on the second floor.  I wonder how the first floor businesses managed with all the noise.

Aloha Bowl somewhere downtown.  I heard it was located in Mark’s Garage, but I don’t remember for sure.  I just remember one being somewhere downtown.

Kalakaua Bowl.  Who remembers that one and can tell me what’s now in the area that it used to be?  I remember going into Kalakaua Bowl once and wondered why there was a clipboard at each lane.  It was for keeping score on.

On Keeaumoku, across Walmart was a bolwing alley.  Anyone remember the name of that one?  The building is still there and if you picture it, you can see the how a bowling alley would fit the building.  My father-in-law said that there used to be another bowling alley on Keeaumoku further up.  Anyone remember another one on Keeaumoku street?

Pali Lanes is still open in Kailua but is slated to close later next year.  It’s the only public bowling alley on the Windward side.  Kaneohe used to have a couple.  Windward Bowl in the Windward Shopping center was torn down and replaced with a strip mall.  The other Kaneohe bowling alley is where Windward Toyota is.  Now what was that one named?  Again if you look at the building you can picture it as a bowling center.  That tragic flood in Keapuka back in the mid 60’s marked the end of that bowling alley as the flood waters ran through it.

Remember Kalihi Bowl with the big bowling pin landmark?  Now it’s the site of the New City Nissan dealership.

Classic Bowl across of GEM in Kalihi.  That one shut down overnight when the landlord’s wife told him to get all his taxidermy out of the house so he converted the bowling alley into a museum.  Now it’s a church.

Kam Bowl across of what used to be Kenny’s Burger House is history.  Walgreen’s is coming up there.

It’s sad that there are only 3 public bowling centers left.  Leeward Bowl in Pearl City, Aiea Bowl in Aiea, and Pali Lanes in Kailua (for now).  So it’s encouraging to see that Waialae Bowl may have a second life.

I know there are tons of neighborhood bowling alleys that once were.  What bowling alleys do you remember going to when you were growing up?  What bowling alleys do you remember around town?  And if you’re a seasoned citizen, was one of your first jobs a “pin boy” at your local bowling center?

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Last year when we were visiting my brother-in-law in Washington state, I snapped this picture of a bowling center in an old town named Yelm.  If buildings could talk, I’m sure this bowling center would have many stories to tell.