15 Jul Adventures in Advertising
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“The Forgotten Four” was written by Ithaka, and published in Water magazine for his column “Fishdaddy Chronicles”.
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Part 1: Accidental Purists
Day 1:
It’s bizarre how time
can compress or expand,
depending on circumstances.
A mere micro-second
in the barrel can feel like a minutes.
Waiting for a delayed plane
can feel like weeks.
And for an unlikely crew
of 29 individuals (ages 15-50),
traveling to mainland Mexico
to shoot the 2003 OP ad campaign,
a week was seemingly transformed
into several months.
For the first couple days,
it was just the seven of us,
a skeleton crew of photographers,
cameramen, art director,
and marketing folk
with the intention
of scouting locations,
and hopefully, surf.
But we’d missed the swell.
Wrong angle…
Wrong tides…
Wrong wind… Wrong coast…
Left as dismal substitutes
were 18-inch
marshmallow crumblers,
staggering drunkenly
across an exacto blade,
lava shelf completely
encrusted with thousands
of baby sea urchins.
And the water was too damn hot,
offering 0% refreshment
from the tropical madness.
Anyone over 95-pounds
was shit out of luck wave-wise,
but the chocolate-skinned
village groms
utilized the impotent dribblers
as a skate park,
each of them with repertoires,
including airs and reverses
(style hopefully will come in time).
One thing was for sure,
this was their break.
Age, ability, and size
were not taken into consideration,
of whom, they rode in front
and behind of.
They snaked all of us
and each other,
over and over again.
No pecking order
of any kind existed,
but up on the beach it
was all bro-shakes and smiles.
We had arrived
just six hours earlier.
An hour and a half, of which,
had been spent trying
to clear100 clothing samples
through customs
(finally achieved with cash bribes,
sweet talking and a couple of pairs
of corduroy walk shorts).
Another two hours
had been burned
digging our rented van
out of bottomless pothole.
And the remaining time
we’d been tap-dancing over urchins.
The trip already seemed doomed.
But at dusk, walking
up the hill to
our luxurious borrowed palace,
the methodical blink
of fireflies
began flickering like
a glimmer of hope
through thick vegetation
on both sides of the path.
I love those little flappers,
someone said,
Yeah,e too. We used to crush‘em
and rub the glow powder all over our faces…….
Yeah…I remember the time……….
Day 2:
More location scouting:
a deep jungle trail boogie,
climaxing with
a wade through a putrid,
mosquito-larvae infested mud pond.
The rewards?
A clean white sand beach
and 2-4 foot glassy but gutless rollers.
Enough scouting — we surfed.
Once again,
local kids were
on everything in sight.
I wondered if they even realized
that by taking turns
they’d have even more fun.
I was stoked to see,
the campaign’s lead shooter, Colin Finlay,
(who I’d known only by photographic rep
and had no idea was even a surfer),
catch one of the better waves
and milk it to the sand.
New arrivals began trickling in
later that afternoon.
Our final group equivalent
the size of an independent
feature film crew:
7 pro surfers
(an injured Tim Curran among them),
2 swimsuit models
(one of whom, Ana Paula Limez,
wanted to surf just as much
as the contract riders),
2 makeup artists,
2 clothing stylists,
1 designer,
3 photographers,
2 cameramen,
1 art director,
1 V.P. of marketing,
2 marketing coordinators,
2 cooks and our host family,
the Taylors.
In the morning,
our two Californian chefs
drove an hour
out of their way to
the Sam’s Club in Vallarta
to buy 60 pounds of frozen fish.
FROZEN FISH???
Here we were,
located at the goddamn
fisherman’s Bay of Plenty,
and the mofos are driving
to buy fish imported from Chile.
The next few days
could technically
be considered work,
but with cool people
in a beautiful setting,
the atmosphere was not exactly stressful:
shooting film, taking photos,
getting sun burnt,
avoiding giant flying ants,
sweeping scorpions out of our rooms,
scooping beatles
the size of potatoes
out of the pool,
drinking Pacificos
and attempting to find waves.
You tend to talk a lot
on a trip like this,
plenty of down-time,
transport time
and time to hear
people’s own versions
of their own life stories,
(not just what you
have learned through
the grapeweed
or read in surf magazines).
Among us were:
celebrated pros,
big wave hell raisers,
glowing hot upstarts,
underground film makers,
an award winning photojournalist,
and two voluptuous sex symbols.
But considering the talent roster,
egos were at an all time low.
Barriers were broken.
Groms and veterans
had the same rank and file
(and equal opportunity
to ride shotgun
on wave checks).
Lately it seemed,
I ‘d been surrounded day to day
with people who just “talk stuff”,
their whole lives devoted
to the pursuit of material subsidies.
That shit gets old after a while,
downright boring.
But people here
were having real conversions
about real things;
waves, travel, music
and relationships.
(What else is there?).
This was group therapy.
The Breakfast Club,
estilo Juevos Rancheros.
Five days (or was it months)
into this sojourn,
a distant tropical depression
(that we’d barely
been paying attention
to by weather reports)
was now a Category 3 hurricane
a couple of hundred miles
off somewhere.
Enough to send
our pink-bellied cooks
scrambling to the airport
to get the hell out of Dodge.
With empty stomachs,
the rest of us took it all in stride.
But by the next morning,
the system was
now being reported
as a Category 5
and predicted to hit land
in the exact vicinity of
our low-lying adopted village,
Sayulita.
Although not yet
an official evacuation,
it was strongly advised
that we relocate an hour south
to Puerto Vallarta
into the protection
of Bahia de Banderas.
Facing northwest
and protected by high headlands
to the south,
hurricanes had never
entertered the sheltered bay.
Departure was set for eight pm.
With a little light left,
a few of us
snuck down the hill
for a few softies
in front of the village
(the water still too warm, s
till nicking our feet
on the rocks and urchins, a
nd the lineup still infested
with neighborhood kids
demolishing every ripple in sight).
The hurricane warning
had to be a hoax,
the swell had actually decreased.
Sean Taylor’s birthday tonight:
we ate soggy grilled lobsters
and cake and sang
happy birthday
before stockpiling
into four vans.
Most of us had arrived
on separate planes
in phases as strangers,
but we were leaving
as a single tribe
of brothers and sisters.
The southward journey
was a smooth one,
moonlit tropical perfection.
The kind of night made for driving,
we could have kept
going all the way to Guadalajara……
and we should have.
Most of the hotels
were completely booked,
but we eventually ended up
in the Sheraton’s
rock-star marble lobby,
cramming into elevators
en route to our assigned rooms.
Some people crashed early,
but true insomniacs
migrated to the halls.
It was, after all,
Sean’s 18th birthday (
and Holly Beck’s 22nd
was just a couple of days away).
AND we had escaped the storm!
This justified celebration.
Taxis to old town Vallarta,
like a mass of tourists
arriving by cruise boat,
we completely overran
one of the nearly empty
ocean front bars,
(the staff ecstatic at our arrival).
On the ride down,
I’d overheard Sean
ask volumptous model Sarah Stage
what she was giving him
for his birthday.
What do you want?, she asked.
A lap dance, he said.
“Ok”, she responds. “
I’ll buy you one
as soon as we get to town.”
But in the end,
Sarah had her way.
It was Sean
who ended up
giving her the dance
(women rule the universe).
The metallic sounding techno
didn’t vibe well with our crew,
and some people
segregated straight off
to the pool table,
but Jamo Pibram went upstairs
and threatened the DJ,
ensuring bass-heavy,
bumping hip hop joints
for the remainder of the evening.
Two For One drink specials
were rampant,
meaning they just diluted them
twice as much
(but all of us at least grooving
on a psychological buzz).
Pretty OP marketing coordinator,
Nikki Larsen had to fight off
several locals that
were hovering about
trying to stick to her like glue….
(she’d received two separate
marriage proposals
by the end of the evening).
And people
you wouldn’t have expected
to even dance at all,
were throwing down moves
that would’ve made Travolta
sweat with envy.
Filmmakers Mark Jeremias
and Jason Baffa were solid standouts,
but wild man,
Bron Heussenstamm dominated.
Four hours later,
emerging outside into light rain,
I overheard the doorman saying
the hurricane was already
300 kilometers north of us.
We’d survived.
Part 2: The Greatest Show On Earth
We were all up early
considering the near all-nighter
we’d just pulled.
It was still raining,
not a particularly impressive rain,
but now there was wind.
And instead of being lake flat
out in front the hotel,
there was now two-foot shore pound.
It’s starting, prophesized
the shoot’s art director Eric Crane
over orange juice in the lobby bar.
We ignorantly watched
in amusement
as the swell size
and wind velocity
both quadrupled
in about an hour.
On the way back upstairs,
we bumped into North Carolinian
power-styler, Matt Beauchump,
the only person among us
who had ever even been
near a hurricane…….
See those waves, he said,
in about three hours
they’ll be breaking
through the lobby.
Like disbelieving peasants
listening to Noah’s promise
of the great flood,
we disregarded
the information
as pure fantasy.
But minutes later,
the storm was already
kicking the shit
out of the tile rooftops
and palm trees.
And suddenly
the whole thing just snapped!
The waves, wind
and rain seem
to hyper-accelerate
in a single second.
Downpour charged the hotel
in grey opaque blankets
of solid water.
The initial gust of wind
blew out a couple
of 4×6 foot hallway windows.
And like giant liquid teeth
trying to swallow the entire coast,
monster Teahupoo-esque
mud grinders
greedily devoured
the sandy beach away
in a matter of minutes
and were now gnawing
on the cement walkway
leading to the back entrance
of the Lobby.
Surges of muddy white water
rushed up the lawn,
across the pool
and right up
against the building.
This monumental rise
in tide level soon brought
the waves in even closer.
Incredulously we watched
the hotel’s beachfront restaurant
get completely demolished
by a single, three-story wave,
(its fifty foot high palapa
popped like an enormous
palm leaf pimple).
Eight foot walls of whitewash
were now going
right through the hotel’s lobby,
stripping bricks off the walls
and plaster off the ceiling.
And pushing EVERYTHING,
including: sofas, computers,
lawn chairs, refrigerators,
pots and pans, palm trees,
sand, mud, rocks
and garbage
completely through the building
and out the front doors
into the muddy swamp
that used to be the parking lot
and tennis courts.
At this point,
security came through
the corridors instructing
everyone to go up to the 7th floor.
Phone, electricity and water
were long gone.
And we’d also just been informed
there was a gas leak.
The elevators being disabled,
we used the service stairwell.
With horrific sounds
of the flooding taking place
only a couple of floors below,
the walk up the pitch dark stairwell
resembled a scene from
The Poseidon Adventure.
On the 7th level,
we passed an open room
where most of the hotel’s staff
were sitting on the floor
holding hands in a circle
and praying.
This image,
more than anything else,
began to plant seeds
of real fear within our group.
We all packed
into a single room
where trip supervisor,
Michael Marckx, did a head count
and came up a couple people short
(only hours later did we learn
of our friends whereabouts).
Two natural gas containers,
both the size of station wagons,
got ripped off of the roof off
the hotel’s garage (
where they’d been bolted down)
and flew away like balloons.
One punctured on landing,
the pressurized vapor output
spinning it down the street like a giant top.
Because of the hotel’s
diagonal angle to the beach,
it was possible
to watch the storm
from the hallways’, retracted,
windowless balconies.
With the wind rushing sideways
past us at 130 mph,
we still remained in relative safety.
But down below, some of
the outer lower level walls
of the Sheraton’s
pyramid-shaped structure
began crumbling
like graham crackers in wet milk.
No chance of leaving at this point.
And nowhere to leave to.
Debris flying through the air.
The surrounding area totally submerged.
No swimmer on earth
could have survived the water that day.
Although there was no screaming
or hysterical outbursts
among our crew,
we all knew there was
a significant possibility
that the entire hotel could go down.
Built on sand
with low grade cement and bricks,
each gargantuan lip
landing out on the lawn,
set shudders up the building’s spine.
Peoples’ personalities
began to shift under crisis. S
some of the maids and attendants
began freaking out and crying,
others began looting supply cabinets
and guest rooms.
Even the Wonder Grom,
(15 year old, straight-A student,
wave-shredder), Erica Hoessini,
hungry and thinking
it was all over with,
karate kicked (and shattered open)
a glass mini-bar door to retrieve
what she thought was sure
to be her young life’s last Snickers Bar.
Hypnotized by the entire spectacle,
most of us couldn’t
stop staring at the ocean.
This was not the ocean
we had grown to love,
this was an ocean possessed.
When the bigger sets crashed,
warm water spray
from the colossal white explosions
splashed our faces
way up on our seventh floor balcony.
If the high tide
and storm surge continued
to rise and the hotel itself
took the brunt force of even
a single 20 foot set wave,
it would’ve loosened the building
from the sand it rested
and could have set
the Vallarta Sheraton
teeter-tottering down
into a pile of mud, bricks,
and cheap cement.
But it didn’t !
The extreme tide
began to drop,
slowing
the ceaseless bombardment.
The swell diminished
and the rain and wind lessened.
The once immaculate
poolside flower gardens
began to reappear
as broken trees
and twisted metal,
eventually revealing
the swimming pool
(completely filled to the coping
with sand, stones,
mud and lawn chairs).
The whole entire episode
had lasted no longer
than four hours start to finish,
from 9am orange juice
until the storm
had completely passed us
(heading north
to obliterate the city of San Blas).
Our missing friends
reappeared unscathed.
The sun came out
and clean-up crews
with bulldozers arrived
to begin making
the roads passable again.
And as far as we heard,
there were (unbelievably)
very few human casualties
in the entire area.
Our vans were still half-submerged
in the parking lot,
(all eventually started).
Walking several blocks inland,
we saw familiestrekking
through the mud
with all of their possessions
and animals in tow.
We saw jet skis and boats laying
in the middle of the streets
alongside of logs and rubbish.
We passed a weddingdress shop
that had been flooded
with muddy runoff
and had now completely drained.
The 11 dresses being displayed
on vintage mannequins
were each equally dyed to the hip
with red mud.
We bought snacks
in an air conditioned supermarket
that had survived without a incident
(only 1/2 mile from where we had been).
WE personally had seen
the worst of it all.
Actuall,y as far
as Vallarta was concerned
the destruction was very localized.
Because of the Sheraton’s
severe damage,
we were again forced to relocate
like a band of caravanning gypsies.
But by sunset,
we were all swimming
in a beautiful lapis-tiled pool
and ordering pina-coladas
and smoothies from the sunken bar.
Everything decadently perfect
except for the smell of dead fish.
The storm,
although not visibly damaging
this resort,
had killed most of the fish
in the golf course ponds
and the stench
was beginning to waft its way
over to us,
(the only indication here
that there had been a storm at all).
Had it really even happened?
This morning seemed like a week ago.
Last night seemed like last year.
The longest 24 hours
any of us could remember.
The next day shooting
resumed as scheduled.
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