SITTING ON TOP OF THE WORLD : J.P. Patterson Leads a Wave of New Surfers

J.P. Patterson, a dean of sorts among body boarders, had seen quite enough. There he was at Hawaii’s celebrated Pipeline, minding his own business, waiting for the wave with his name on it, when out of nowhere came a pro surfer seemingly intent on running him over. Patterson veered out of the way, and again several minutes later.

This wasn’t uncommon. There is a hierarchy, a caste system at places such as Pipeline and it begins, presumably, with surfers at the top. Next are those who use knee boards--surfers call them “half-men”--followed by body boarders, or “cripples,” as they are known. These are not terms of endearment, but of disdain. Body boarders are considered nuisances, nonequals by some surfers.

“It’s something we’ll have to put up with,” Patterson said. “It’s almost like being of different races. They say, ‘If you don’t do what I do, you’re different, you’re not as good.’ We proved what we can do.”

Tiring of the pro surfer’s antics (Patterson said he preferred to keep the offender’s identity private), Patterson readied himself for a third run. Once again, the surfer disrupted Patterson’s ride, essentially trying to steal the wave away. Rather than straighten out and yield to the surfer, Patterson said he decided to teach him an unforgettable lesson.

“I came up with a trick,” said Patterson, recalling the bizarre story. “I had position and he kept dropping in on me. The third time, instead of going down the bottom of the wave . . . I just did a real quick turn at the top and got out in front of him. Then I got under his board and he came down on top of me. His board was on my back. He was, like, surfing me, except that I had control. He couldn’t turn because he wasn’t on the water; he was on me.”

Patterson said he maneuvered his board to the top of the wave “and lip-launched him,” which is the approximate equivalent of getting knocked over by a burst from a fire hose.

The surfer made his way to the beach. He stomped and swore and threatened Patterson. A friend warned him to stay away. “Hey man, he’s going to kill you,” he said.

Nothing happened. Patterson felt he had made his point.

“It (Patterson’s stunt) wasn’t a very good thing to do, because he could have gotten seriously injured,” said Patterson, of Huntington Beach. “But I wanted to teach him a lesson and I did. Actions speak louder than words. It’s by your actions that we gain respect, not so much by saying, ‘We’re better than you.’ It was actually going out and proving that we were their equals, that we were worthy of their respect. It was a long road, but it was worth it.”

Patterson, 28, first learned to ride a body board nearly 14 years ago. He surfed, but there was something about the body board that he enjoyed more.

“Somebody handed me a Boogie board one day and said, ‘Try this, you’ll like it,’ ” Patterson said. “I tried it and I loved it. You have the same feeling you have when you’re body surfing. You’re real close to the waves, a real intimate feeling with the wave. But you can go faster and do more things than just body surfing.”

Still, surfers mocked the odd-looking boards and the people who rode them. After all, the very first body boards were made from polyethylene foam, the same material used in packaging electronics goods. It was a baby sport, an aberration, said surfers.

Patterson didn’t care. He enjoyed the feel of the awkward-looking board, of what it could do in the water.

“(Body boards) still kind of had the stigma as being a toy, something a surfer’s little brother uses,” Patterson said. “Ever since then, we’ve always had that stigma of being surfing’s little brother. The biggest challenge was to tell people that it wasn’t just a toy, that we could try to develop it into a sport. It was hard because we didn’t get any respect.

“Now we have our own magazine, a lot of pictures have been published with big waves, competitions with lots of money. . . . We’ve really come into our own. It’s like, little brother has grown up and big brother has had to move aside a little bit and take notice.”

In January, also at the Pipeline, Patterson won $1,100 at the the fifth annual International Morey Boogie Body Board Championships. Not long ago, Patterson had a difficult time attracting a sponsor. Now, he is retained by a Newport Beach wet suit company that supplies him with a monthly salary and assorted body board wear.

As for the sport itself, a world body board tour is in the planning stages, Patterson said, as are more competitions. Depending on the tournament, a first-place finish can bring nearly $5,000.

“There’s a few of us that say we’re the founding fathers of the sport,” he said. “We were the ones who kind of hung in there, knocked heads with the surfers. I don’t want to blow my own horn because it wasn’t just me. We’re all dreamers, I guess.”