Havoc Is Gnarly for a Radical Dude

Richie Collins says he surfs for the Lord now, partly because he reads the Bible, partly because he needs the help, and partly because he doesn’t surf for Billabong anymore.

Billabong, the surf-wear company that sponsored Collins for years, decided to fire its local hero last week. It was inevitable. When you’re footing the bill, you want surfers with feet firmly planted on their boards, not in their mouths.

“I can’t put the blame on the company,” Collins said Thursday after advancing to the third round of the men’s Op Pro surfing championships at Huntington Beach Pier. “I have to blame myself because that’s the way I am. I’ve got to learn how to control it.”

So what was the straw that broke the contract’s back?

Was it Collins’ neat little observation last year to Sassy magazine that women shouldn’t be surfing, they should be at home having babies?

Was it Collins’ insistence on surfing at Cape Town, South Africa, despite that country’s racist politics, because apartheid “is not my problem”?

Was it Collins’ published quote on 1990 world champion Tom Curren--”He surfs old”?

Or his published quote on new star Kelly Slater--”I think he gets too much publicity. . . . He hasn’t done anything yet”?

Or his published quote on up-and-comer Chris Brown--”I think Chris Brown is a punk”?

Now Einstein never surfed and Gandhi seldom hung out at Blackie’s. Statements made by high school dropouts in dripping wet suits have all the shelf life, and significance, of a finger drawing in the sand. If you ever saw “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” you know Jeff Spicoli’s surfer view on the meaning of life: “All I need is a cool buzz, some tasty waves and I’m fine.”

Still, the stakes and paydays keep climbing and when you surf professionally, and win professionally, your board becomes a soapbox.

On his, Collins creates “havoc. I say all kinds of things. . . . People either love it or they don’t.”

Bob Hurley, president of Billabong and a family friend since Collins was 5, finally decided he could do without it.

“Me and Bob have known each other a long time,” Collins said. “He knows me personally and he knows my dad and he knows my background--and he had to fire me. He said, ‘Hey, I’m getting too many letters. I’ve got to run this company.’ ”

The letters, Collins says, “call me a kook, an idiot, this and that. They say they’re not going to buy Billabong anymore because of things I said, things I’ve done.

“I say, ‘Hey, you don’t know anything about what’s going on in my life.’ All my friends love me a lot. They know who I am. They see the stress I go through. You ask any of the 16 top tour guys and ask them if it’s stressful on the tour. If anybody says no, they must be on glue.”

Thursday, however, there was only a calm breeze, and a few reporters, to contend with. Collins had already aced his heat. He was back home, in Orange County, not far from his Newport Beach residence.

It seemed a good time to set the record straight.

OK, Richie, what about that Sassy interview?

“I took some grief,” he said, “but I heard about the other side of it. They put (Collins’ quotes) up against Mel Gibson and everybody else--and they said the same thing. But since nobody knows me and everybody knows Mel Gibson. ‘Oh, Mel Gibson, he’s this and that, who’s Richie Collins? Who is this punk? Who’s he to say all this stuff?’

“And I’m going, ‘Wow, man, that’s radical.’ But Mel Gibson, Bob Hope and all these full-on gnarly guys were saying the same thing. I had a girl come up to me and say, ‘You’re a male chauvinist pig.’ I said, ‘No, I’m not. Read in the Bible. It’s there in black and white.’ That’s the way it goes.

“Hey, look, a woman’s place is in the house, I think. . . . It’s like the husband makes the money and the wife is supposed to take care of the husband, the way I look at it. Because if you have both coming home at the same time and you’re stressin’ at each other, wow, you’ve got two dogs goin’ off and then there goes divorce.”

Collins, by the way, is single. But “if I do get married,” he said, “my wife can do whatever she wants. As long as she’s there to hold me.”

He was asked about surfing South Africa.

“If anybody criticizes me, I go, ‘Why?’ ” Collins said. “If you’ve never been there, all you see is the news, and the news is full of it.

“When I go down there, I see a lot of nice people. A lot of black people who are really black. I go, wow, those people are really black. I’ve seen a lot of super-smart black people down there.

“It’s just the way it goes. I just let it ride, you know. Whatever goes down there is not my problem. I go down there whenever I want to and I leave whenever I want to. I love it down there. . . .

“I think it’s all bogus stuff, what (the newspapers) write. They haven’t been down there, they don’t know what really goes on. I talked to locals down there about what goes on. They’re just a bunch of people from England who moved there, just like what happened here, man. Look what we did to the Indians.

“They came in and started, like, to educate the blacks and the blacks didn’t want it and they started fighting back. They wanted to trade cows for cars. You can’t trade a cow for a car, or whatever the deal is down there. . . .

“But I tell you, it’s my favorite place to go. Cape Town is the most beautiful place I’ve been to. Except, maybe, Kauai.”

Collins returned from South Africa last week and noted that he fell ill. “I got sick--laryngitis--again,” he said. “Just like two years ago. Every time I go to South Africa, I get sick.”

Maybe a higher source is trying to tell Richie something?

Literally, Collins is still standing on the ground, but the figurative hole he’s dug is now Adam’s apple-high.

Finally, he grabs for the bottom- rung-of-the-ladder out.

Collins claims he was misquoted about his fellow surfers. “I never said Curren was old. I said he was an insane surfer--I love the way he surfs--but I’m sick and tired of watching everybody surf like him,” Collins said. “I took so much crap about that. I had to go right up to Curren and say, ‘Hey, Curren, I never said that.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about it. I know how the media is.’ ”

And Brown?

“One of my friends told me I wrote off Chris Brown. I went, ‘Whoop, he’s a friend of mine.’ I didn’t say it like how it read. I didn’t mean it as he’s a punk--I just meant he’s like a punk surfer. He’s one of my friends. He’s one of my punk friends.

“It gets blown out of proportion and I go, ‘Oops.’ I wanted to talk to him down here about it, but he lost and he bailed. So I’m going to have to get his number and call him. Hopefully, he hasn’t read it yet.”

Anyone left that Collins hasn’t offended?

Old surfers, perhaps?

“I’ll get flak for this, I know, but I’m sorry, the old guys are jealous because they couldn’t make a dime doing it, because there was no money back then,” Collins said, revving again. “Now there is and I’m using it to the fullest extent.

“I talk to a lot of the old guys and they go, ‘Yeah, well, I could’ve been that good, too.’ Great. You’re old now. So back us kids up. Be happy for the sport.”

Yeah, Collins will probably get flak for this.

“A small price to pay for having people write about you,” he said, grinning through chipped teeth. “I know I eat my words all the time. Sometimes, I say things without thinking. . . .

“I guess that’s why I’m in the position I’m in now.”