Joe Surf: Video casts spotlight on unassuming Micah Peasley

He is known as “surfer dude” or the “get pitted” guy.

His name probably isn’t recognizable to some of you, but his TV interview on Fox 11 some 13 years ago has been viewed millions of times on YouTube.

His name is Micah Peasley, and he never was looking to become so famous. But on a stormy day in 2002, the waves were big and Peasley, 20 years old at the time, went to surf the Wedge in Newport Beach.

He emerged from the water with a broken surfboard and almost immediately had a microphone in his face, the Fox 11 reporter doing a story on the weather and the big waves.

“Oh, brah, it’s just like ... dude, you get the best barrels ever, dude. It’s just like, you pull in and you just get spit right out ‘em. You just drop in, smack the lip ... waapah! Drop down ... swoopah! And then after that you just drop in, ride the barrel and get pitted, so pitted, like that.”

Once the video was posted on YouTube, it went viral. There are several clips of the interview on YouTube, including one that was turned into a musical remix. Many of the YouTube versions have been viewed more than a million times.

Reaction to the video has been mixed. Some make fun of him, others just think it’s funny. Peasley, though, is fine with it either way.

“It just depends on the individual,” Peasley said. “For myself, I’ve seen, more than anything, positivity. It’s extremely comical. Some people look at it as though I might be insecure about it, but the truth of the matter is, it was just a fun thing to do at the time.”

It garnered enough attention for Peasley to be invited to appear on the Comedy Central show “Tosh.0.” And recently, Peasley said, he was contacted by someone representing the MTV show “Ridiculousness.”

Though he certainly has had more than his 15 minutes of fame, profiting financially from the video wasn’t something Peasley focused on.

“I haven’t really been ambitious about it,” he said. “I kind of treated it as, ‘I love to surf, and if something comes along, if there’s an opportunity, maybe I’ll take it and do my best at it.’”

Immediately after the video came out, Peasley spent a few years teaching snowboarding at Bear Mountain in Big Bear. Now 33, he lives in Huntington Beach and works in construction. He also offers one-on-one surf lessons called, appropriately, Get Pitted Surf Lessons. He prefers teaching surfing but needs the construction jobs to get by.

That could change, though, if his girlfriend, Nicky Hackman, has anything to say about it. Hackman is acting as Peasley’s unofficial business manager and is trying to help him profit from his unusual thrust into Internet fame.

Hackman said Fox re-released the video on its Facebook page and got 30 million views. She hopes the video’s ongoing popularity will help promote the surf lessons, and she’s working on getting the word out through social media.

She has set up pages on Yelp and Instagram instagram.com/get_pitted_surf_lessons, or you can call (626) 399-1960 to set up a lesson.

In the meantime, Peasley will be the most unassuming famous guy around.

“The whole interview thing, it gets a lot of attention,” he said. “I’ll be out in public places and people will recognize me. They’ll say, ‘Hey, is he that guy?’ Or ‘You’re that guy,’ and they’ll start talking about it. And I’ll look at them and say, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ It’s kind of weird, they’ll get a little star-struck. It’s kind of funny.

“It got out there and it got its popularity. It’s known, people still remember it and it keeps ending up on TV. I don’t know if it’s going to help the surfing business, but it’d be cool if it did.”

JOE HAAKENSON is a Huntington Beach-based sports writer and editor. He may be reached at joe@juvecreative.com.