Friday, June 20, 2025: Bird’s Surf Shed:
More than 20 rows of folding chairs clutter Bird’s “Palace of Stoke,” as some of the world’s most influential surfboards hang above our heads, and there before us are three of the boards that helped create modern surfing half a century ago.
There before me is a Peter “PT” Townend board, glassed in his signature pink color. Next to the Townend board are an “Instinct” pintail signed by Shaun Tomson and a Brewer pintail with the name Ian Cairns scrawled on the deck. Those three surfers, some of the most influential of the mid-1970s, are in attendance for Tomson’s award-winning documentary, “Bustin’ Down the Door.”
Wayne “Rabbit” Bartholomew, who had been in attendance a while earlier, left early as he had a plane to catch, back to his home on Australia’s Gold Coast. Rabbit knows about the freedom in catching a plane for home.
It was he, Rabbit, who gave the film we are about to see its name after a Surfer Magazine article he wrote about the then-new, brash crew arriving in Hawaii from South Africa and Australia. The article basically describes a crew tired of waiting that would now take what was not being offered.
The main players in article and film are South Africa’s Shaun and his cousin Michael Tomson, and Australians Townend, Mark Richards, Cairns, and the mighty Rabbit himself. What to most were harmless words on pages were considered as offensive as the mark of the beast to some islanders.
Always a volatile playground, the North Shore of Oahu quickly boiled over. Some of the aforementioned surfers received the brunt of a thrown-down gauntlet. Two were pounded and all felt threatened by yet increasing violence.
In the film, Cairns mentions the big guy who came for him before they brawled onto the street and whom he, Ian, contemplated throwing into the street to be run over by oncoming traffic. Rabbit was punched out on the beach. Townend needed a police escort to get to his Pipeline Masters heat. Tomson and Richards were spared for the most part, but, taking no chances, Tomson slept with a loaded shotgun by his bed.
For the surfers involved, this was a make-or-break moment, with four of them — Townend, Bartholomew, Richards and Tomson — emerging as World Champions after their baptism by fire.
As the movie ends and the lights come up, I am reminded that “Bustin’ Down the Door” is more than a surf film. It is a story of a challenge each of us must face, overcoming the terror within that threatens to rise up and destroy us if we let us.
These aforementioned surfers did rise up and now serve as the inspiration to those of us seated safely with popcorn and sodas in our laps, with an unspoken challenge to face our own quests to overcome internal and external threats.
While an entirely different animal, “Bustin’ Down the Door” ties with “The Endless Summer” for the most influential surf movie of all time.
Click here to view “Bustin’ Down the Door” in the safety of your own home.
