TIM RYAN / TRYAN@STARBULLETIN.COM
Sunny and Raina Garcia outside their temporary home. Behind them is a marker that identifies the house from the beach.
Facing reality A man from Detroit tries repeatedly to chat with Raina Garcia, wife of former world surfing champion Sunny Garcia, while husband and wife are visiting a restaurant.
World surfing star Sunny Garcia
gets a dose of life in a WB fishbowlStory and photos by Tim Ryan
tryan@starbulletin.comRaina, 24, explains that she's not interested, but the man persists after Sunny, 32, leaves the table.
When Sunny returns and sees the man again trying to connect with Raina, he confronts the visitor, fists at the ready.
It's just one of the incidents captured for posterity in the WB reality series, tentatively titled "North Shore," being filmed here.
"I'm used to men looking at Raina because she's beautiful," Sunny said later in the kitchen of the home he's sharing with six other surfers for the eight-week filming of the reality series. "But when someone won't take no for an answer, the Waianae-raised part of me takes over."
One of the five camera crews filming the show -- comprising six one-hour episodes set to air in June -- tries to get close to the enraged Sunny on his way to confront the man. Sunny rips off the microphone, throwing it on the ground.
By then the man, who is black, backs away, calling Sunny and his friends racists.
"There's no racism in Hawaii because we're all the same in Hawaii, a melting pot," Sunny said. "But I hope the crew got it all on tape to show problems we have with mainlanders who try to force their ways on us that takes away our aloha.
"How stupid can he be? Most good-looking females in Hawaii are hooked up with someone. Did he really think Raina was alone?"
Seven professional surfers share the two-story house: Garcia, Damien Hobgood and Myles Padaca, from Hawaii; Danny Fuller, Holli Beck and Veronica Kay, of California; and Chelsea Georgeson, of Australia. A camera crew is following the surfers as they train, relax and eventually compete in the Vans Triple Crown surfing events which end Dec. 23.
TIM RYAN / TRYAN@STARBULLETIN.COM
Surfboards are stacked outside the North Shore home, above, where seven professional surfers are living, their activities captured on camera for a WB television reality show.
Although the Garcias say Raina was included from the beginning, she was not on the producers' original cast list.
"We do everything together," Sunny said.
"He wouldn't have done this without me," said Raina, whose father, Joey Cabell, is a noted waterman and businessman.
Each surfer has his or her own bedroom. Garcia, the group's unofficial patriarch, is in the largest -- an oceanfront room with its own Jacuzzi and lanai.
"Sunny always gets the best room," Raina said.
The house near the Gas Chambers surfing spot at Pupukea was redecorated only slightly to give it a surfing ambience.
A large step-down living room has rattan chairs, a sea-foam green cotton-covered sofa, Hawaiian punee, ukuleles and tropical fish sculptures hanging on the walls, a slipper-shaped coffee table, tropical-print draperies, a workout machine and surf memorabilia including a 1970s vintage Lighting Bolt surfboard, a replica of an ancient Hawaiian koa board, Duke Kahanamoku table lamp, surf and travel posters.
TIM RYAN / TRYAN@STARBULLETIN.COM
Furnishings reflect a Hawaiiana/surf theme, including a slipper-shaped coffee table.
The back yard is also decorated with rattan chairs, tiki torches, picnic table and barbecue area, outdoor shower and a yellow-and-red surfboard vertical marker that identifies the house from the ocean and beach. More than 50 of the resident surfers' surfboards are stacked in the yard.
THE SURFERS receive an undisclosed weekly salary plus a food stipend, and a housekeeper shows up twice a week to tidy up.
Most days, the surfers are in the water; in the evening a few stay at home to eat, although most set off for friends' homes and parties.
"We're not forced to hang out or do anything together, really," Sunny said. "We do what we would normally be doing while on tour."
The production shoots as much as 70 hours of tape a day, said executive producer Bruce Tom, who previously worked on MTV's "Road Rules."
The only filming rules are that the surfers are never shot nude, engaged in sexual activity, something that might embarrass their sponsors, or enter bedrooms when the doors are closed.
"A few times, I've walked out of the bedroom without makeup because I forgot about the cameras," Raina said.
Knowing the cameras are always lurking has also kept their infrequent spats to a minimum, the couple said.
Sunny, who was raised in West Oahu, understands that after 17 years on the tour, the end of his career is looming.
"I've accomplished so much that anything else at this point is icing on the cake," he said.
Like doing the WB show. Sunny believed it would be fun and wants to show the world what really goes on during a surf tour. It's not about surf brats riding waves between getting trashed.
"This is a job with real athletes competing in very dangerous conditions," Garcia said.
ON THIS STORMY DAY, the Garcias and the housekeeper are the only ones home. The couple makes sandwiches and drinks fruit juice for lunch. Raina tells Sunny they need to go to Costco for food.
Sunny reminisces about his surfing career.
"From the day I started (at Maili Beach), I wanted to do better than the next guy," he says. "For me surfing was never about the fun. I'm still hungry to win."
That's going to be tough this year. In August, Sunny suffered a severe leg injury in a dirt bike accident that tore several muscles. He's only recently started to surf again.
"I'm still very competitive," he says, and proves that a few days later in Haleiwa when someone drops in front of him on an overhead wave, angering the former world champ. As Sunny paddles to the panic-stricken man, the WB cameras are rolling.
"I did yell at him, but there was no excuse for what he did," said Garcia, who also ordered the surfer to shore. The surfer is greeted by the WB camera crew.
"Great," he says. "Now the world will see that I was the guy who dropped in on Sunny Garcia."
Garcia doesn't apologize for his ocean territoriality.
"There's a pecking order out there, and I've waited all my life to get to the top of it," he says. "It's my turn."
The show's surfers were selected and did not audition. Garcia, the first surfer to come on board, made recommendations.
Although he's the oldest of the group, Sunny rejects the idea that he's a father figure to the others.
"They're all strong individuals," he said. "You have to be to survive on the tour."
AT 19, Georgeson is the youngest in the house. Before being contacted by her Roxy business agent, she planned to live at a friend's North Shore house for the surf tour.
"I thought this would be a great, different experience, to get some notoriety in the United States and internationally, and save money" she said. "I grew up with two brothers and hung out with boys my whole life, so that wasn't a concern. My parents know I wouldn't do anything stupid."
Georgeson said it was difficult at first to adjust to the cameras, but now, "I don't even think about it.
"But I do keep my bedroom door closed, just in case."
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