Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life

Throughout the book, Finnegan demonstrates how a shared love of surfing has been foundational to many of his closest friendships. As a child, he bonded with new friends in Hawaii through surfing. Being accepted by locals Roddy and Glenn Kaulukukui and their friend Ford Takara gave Finnegan companionship as well as a surfing role model:

Day in, day out, Glenn Kaulukukui was my favorite surfer. From the moment he caught a wave, gliding cat-like to his feet, I couldn’t take my eyes off the lines he drew, the speed he somehow found, the improvisations he came up with. (12)

Without surfing, the author would have only been friends with a gang of white friends from school who called themselves the “In Crowd” and espoused racist attitudes. However, because of his surfing connections, Finnegan was able to harmoniously merge his friend groups, even in the socially tense atmosphere at Kaimuki Intermediate School.

However, a mutual passion for surfing didn’t guarantee easy friendships, in fact Finnegan highlights how his changing relationship with risk and obsession sometimes put him at odds with his surfing friends. For example, while he and his friend Bryan both wanted to travel the remote South Pacific in search of undiscovered waves, Finnegan was much more impulsive and risk-taking than Bryan.