Bobby Vaughn was born to no parents. Snatched straight from the womb in a dingy central California valley hospital and sent to an orphanage. His birth father was Mexican and his birth mother was Japanese or vice versa. Who really cares? He was an orphan. But rolly and cute was soon adopted by a Methodist pastor. His new family lived in French Camp, California, though moved often to other central California towns equally depressing. Tracy, Stockton, Fresno etc. Hot farming towns that smell of fertilizer and shattered dreams. And then, when he was nine years old, his father moved to a church in Santa Cruz and Bobby Vaughn was born again.

Growing up on the mid-town he straddled both east and west sides, surfing where he wanted. He loved it. Loved every minute of it and excelled. Soon he was surfing NSSAs, mopping foam at Pearson Arrow for boards and gear. Surfing all the time. He climbed the ranks, cracking the top three in the northwest. He was on the full pro route. Doing it. He became sponsored by Venice Beach brand Bronze Age, which had a certain reputation. People whispered it was simply a front to move mounds of cocaine. Again, who really cares? He was living the dream.

But things went sour at home and at twelve he moved in with his girlfriend. He also started hanging out with the toughs, and while he never became a fully-fledged gang member himself, never jumped in, they were all his friends. And his surfing slowly faded away. He was going hard.

One night, at the Burger King, they were all cruising around, and things started to get weird. Some boys from the other side of town tried to run them over with their car and it turned into a brawl. His best friend pulled a gun and shot one of the offenders in the neck. And then everyone dispersed. Bobby was standing three feet away. They went on to party that night thinking “no big deal.” Until the next morning when they heard the offender had died. Shit.

The whole crew bee-lined to Mexico to drop the shooter off. He was done and he knew it. He planned on spending the rest of his life in Mexico. And he was Bobby’s best friend so the goodbye was bitter. Sure he might outrun the law but the two might never see each other again. Bobby drove back north, back to Santa Cruz, thinking, “I’ve got to really be a gangster now but all I want to do is surf again.”

And so he booked a one-way ticket to Hawaii. When he landed, he had twenty dollars in his pocket, no surfboards, no nothing.

A friend got him a job on Maui at the Marriott and he just surfed all day long. Back to his first real love. He soon moved to Oahu’s North Shore and lived at Log Cabins and kept surfing, meeting all the boys. Jason Majors, Johnny Boy Gomes, Bobby Kailii, Shawn Briley, James Labrador. And for two years he surfed without break. V-Land, Pupukea, Pipeline, Sunset. Chris Malloy even got him a job on a TV show, Birds of Paradise. Things were fine. Bobby Vaughn had returned to the water.

Bobby Martinez, representing Bobby Vaughn’s FTW.

But back home his friend had grown tired of life on the run and turned himself in for murder. Because the event happened when he was under eighteen he was convicted as a juvenile and received juvenile life as a punishment, which is seven years. And it may not sound very stiff for a murder rap but he had to do his time at Chads. The worst facility in California’s Youth Authority. It is called a mini Pelican Bay, the most notorious prison in the United States. Guards would stage cage fights among the inmates. Ugly.

Bobby refused to testify against his friend and, in turn, Bobby’s friend refused to testify against him. And with the matter temporarily settled Bobby departed from his island sabbatical and flew back to Los Angeles.

He met an actress whose best friend was married to the manager of the Cult. She was beautiful and things were good. He reconnected with the owner of Bronze Age who himself was just out of prison on drug charges and trying to turn the brand legit. Not a front anymore. Bobby did everything from repping to running the team to running marketing. He moved to Malibu and soaked in the business side of surf. He learned the business. But the brand was in a rough spot, saddled with debt and sinking. One day, while sitting in their downtown Los Angeles offices, a guy wandered by trying to sell Von Dutch patches. Von Dutch was a crazy artist from back in the day who was well known in the moto and custom car world. He would paint hot rods and get weird. Bobby and the Bronze Age owner liked the design of the logo. They thought they could make it something. And so they trademarked the name. Von Dutch’s daughters were still alive, spun out trailer trash living in Arizona, so Bobby flew out and signed a licensing deal with them, flew back to Los Angeles and started working on the new brand. Von Dutch.

Bobby Martinez, representing Bobby Vaughn’s FTW.

He wanted to do some custom denim and was friends with Pamela Anderson’s brother in Malibu so he asked to get in a room with Pamela. He knew she would dig what they had going on. But her brother was not the brightest and had gotten Pamela into some bad deals before so was reticent on making another introduction. In the meantime, Von Dutch was making hot rod flame boardshorts for Matt Archbold and the like. Bobby had met Archie in Hawaii and it was the perfect complement to “built for speed.” They did more North Shore underground stuff until one day Pamela’s brother made a meeting happen. And Pamela loved it, she bought a trunk load of denim, but she also knew the real person who could send Von Dutch sailing was her ex, Tommy Lee. And so Pamela introduced Bobby Vaughn to Tommy Lee.

They hit it off instantly. Bobby had had a child and Tommy had children so they were both single fathers, good fathers, but also loved to party. They would split their weeks hanging out with the kids and throwing wild benders. Crazy parties. Tommy introduced Bobby to his friends, Snoop Dogg etc. and Von Dutch started appearing in music videos and on red carpets. Things were rolling.

One morning after spending the night at Tommy’s, after a wild party, there was a knock at the door. Bobby opened it and saw an MTV camera crew outside. They were there to film Cribs. Nobody was prepared. The house was littered with girls. Partied. But Tommy let them in anyway and Bobby’s entrepreneurial mind began to spin. He ran up to his room, grabbed the biggest Von Dutch logo t-shirt he could find, threw it on Tommy Lee and sat back. The episode became the highest viewed ever on MTV. A perfectly rock n roll Tommy Lee wandering around his perfectly rock n roll house wearing a white t-shirt with a giant Von Dutch across the chest. Across Tommy Lee’s rock n roll heart. Bobby Vaughn can be seen in the episode lounging on the leather couch, sandwiched in between strippers and models.

Tommy Lee on MTV’s Cribs. Bobby Vaughn cameo at 0:42

This was an original article from Surfing Magazine. To read part 2 & 3 of the Life of Bobby Vaughn Story, visit Surfing Magazine.

Jump directly to Part I , Part II , Part III

After my fifth year on The World Tour the ASP decided to change the surfing format to a tennis format since a lot of the surfers and ASP employees were all huge tennis fans.  They all said it would be great for the sport and bring more fans to surfing.  I did a live webcast interview saying how the ASP and the competing surfers have ruined surfing because they are all Tennis Wanna Be’s and they need to change the tour back to the way it was and has been for years.

Since I did this interview live for people to see and negatively criticized the ASP, they kicked me out of the event and disqualified me from competing in any ASP sanctioned event for a year.  I would have to pay thousands of dollars to compete in an ASP event once my year ban was up.  Two months after my interview the ASP crowned The World Champion too early after a fan observed that they had miscalculated and the world title had not yet been won.  So the ASP had to take The World Title back because they messed up the points due to their new tennis format. Eventually The World Champion was crowned and afterwards the ASP ended up changing the tour format back to what I was saying it should be in New York when I was banned.

Since being kicked out of the ASP events for stating my opinion, which was right, I have loved my change of life.  Traveling a little bit and surfing for the enjoyment of it, I now get to surf at home and take trips here and there.  I love surfing, it has changed my life and given me a life I never knew existed and for that I am very thankful.  I have met great people all around the world and without surfing I can say I don’t know where I might be.

- Bobby Martinez

Born on Oahu’s North Shore and raised on Kauai, Kala has been riding waves for most of his life. A sponsored pro since the age of 13, he has always had an affinity for big waves, and the ocean has been his greatest formative influence.  According to Kala, the highlight of his surfing career was competing in the 2009 Eddie Aikau at Waimea Bay as the Aikau family pick. On the strength of his performance, he was officially invited back the following year—a huge accomplishment and honor.

He’s brash. He’s loud. He’s thug. Or so we’ve been told. SURFING’s Beau Flemister packs his expectations in a duffel bag and takes a trip to Santa Barbara to interview Bobby Martinez. Over breakfast he learns that Bobby likes the Kings of Leon, wants kids to be kids and has a unique opinion on the meaning of FTW. Beau returns with an empty duffel bag.

Download Wallpaper of Bobby Martinez Cover: Surfing Magizine May 2012

The day he was banned from surfing’s World Tour for causing “damage” to the sport’s image, he was back east on Long Island’s Long Beach. Although he’d put his sponsor-logo hat on, his personal emblems — the glorious tats that unfurl across his back — were hidden by the long-sleeve, colored jersey surfers wear so judges can identify them on the water.
Martinez had won his first heat in the Quiksilver Pro New York 2011, when Todd Kline, one of the sponsor’s marketers, pulled him over for an interview for the company’s webcast.
“The ASP and you guys aren’t going to want this interview,” Martinez told Kline, referring to the Association of Surfing Professionals, the sanctioning body of the World Tour.
But Kline waved the words off. When the mic went live, the surfer let loose. By the time Martinez was done, one minute and seven seconds later, F-bombs littered the sand like trash on the beach after Memorial Day.
Seen live on the Internet and on huge screens at Long Beach, Martinez hammered the Association of Surfing Professionals, the World Tour and his competitors, starting slowly but gaining momentum as he leaned toward the camera, his board next to him. “I don’t want to be a part of this dumb fucking wannabe tennis tour,” he let them know.
“Fucking surfing’s going down the drain, thanks to these people,” he concluded.
Martinez had a case to argue: the tour’s recent adoption of a rolling world ranking system, similar to tennis, which, he said, meant the tour’s top 34 surfers could be outranked by competitors who had never surfed against them. “Come on, now. That’s bullshit,” he scowled. To many, Martinez’s ferocity was unintelligible.
Quiksilver’s Kline froze. His mouth gaped.
The ASP didn’t hesitate to react. Martinez had been jabbing it with “fucks” on Twitter for months. Even before the interview turned into a global blowup with thousands of downloads, the ASP Rules and Disciplinary Committee disqualified him and suspended him from the World Tour.
Bobby Martinez, a rare Latino surfing superstar from a working-class background, who had risen to the top tier of professional surfers on Earth, was too rebel for what had once been a rebel sport.
Even two months later, there’s an edge to ASP spokesman Dave Prodan’s voice when he discusses Martinez’s suspension. “Bobby made it abundantly clear that he was … not happy with being on tour. And I don’t think there’s much of a reason to give him a second chance or a third chance or a fourth chance,” he says.
Since he turned 20, Martinez, now 29, has skirmished with surf industry powers in Orange County and Australia. With his stylish, effortless surfing, he nailed huge wins as a rookie, and was once seen as a possible successor to Florida’s Kelly Slater, winner of more World Tours than Lance Armstrong has Tour de France victories. But Martinez also defied sponsors, took his complaints with competitive surfing’s hierarchy public and called B.S. on competitors he didn’t respect because they wouldn’t speak up.
Although he beat even Slater, long before New York there were plenty in the surf industry who saw him as petulant, stubborn — unhirable.
But to discover the story behind the controversial interview is to find another Martinez: Hardwired to speak the truth but also, “honestly, one of the most humble guys I’ve ever met,” says Tarik Khashoggi, a lifelong friend.
“He’s always so polite,” says Allen Sarlo, the only Malibu surfer ever to surf the World Tour.
“People got this misconception of him that he’s ungrateful … but he is so grateful,” says pro surfer Pascal Stansfield, a friend of Martinez’s.
“He’s not about the money with it, he’s about the surfing,” says his current sponsor, Bobby Vaughn, who co-founded the Von Dutch brand and now runs edgy New York clothing firm FTW.
But surfing is money.
Begun as surfer-to-surfer small businesses, the industry now is part of the active-lifestyle market, which includes skateboarding, motocross and snowboarding. The surf/skate industry had $7.22 billion in U.S. sales in 2008. It is dominated by the “big five” companies, which sponsor surfers and pay for a key industry marketing vehicle, the World Tour. But that tour has always struggled to grow its audience.
The new ratings system — the radical reworking of the World Tour that Martinez pilloried — was conceived as a solution and a way to showcase new faces.
And in Long Beach, Huntington Beach–based Quiksilver had hoped to increase surfing’s profile by hosting a major contest in an unlikely locale just miles from Manhattan, the media capital of the world. Instead, viewers were treated to Martinez spitting on his sport.
But within two months, the ASP would have its own self-inflicted, epic fail on its hands by mistakenly crowning a champion before he actually won. And some would see Martinez as a truth sayer. Then, on Dec. 27, the ASP abandoned the most controversial aspect of its new rules — the one Martinez had vehemently railed against.
“Unfortunately for pro surfing, there are very few people like Bobby, who are willing to speak out,” says Sunny Garcia, surfing’s 2000 World Champion, who splits time between Hawaii and San Clemente. “Bobby said it so the rest of the world could finally hear what a lot of surfers actually think.”

Continue reading this article at LA Weekly.