THE KIDS OF QUEENS
It was lunchtime on a hot August day in Waikiki and I was surrounded by a group of young longboarders—about a dozen or so teenagers with sun-bleached hair—at a mercifully-air-conditioned, if not particularly noteworthy otherwise, California Pizza Kitchen. Our long booth was covered in half-eaten pasta and sugary drinks that only an adolescent metabolism could possibly make sense of. Various conversations clashed across the table until a shout from the far end grabbed everyone’s attention.
“Oh my god, is that Justin Bieber?”
As a matter of fact, it was. The Beebs was waving at us, quite surreally, through the screen of Kelia Moniz’ iPhone.
Moniz—who is easily one of the most graceful and renowned longboarders from the south shore of Oahu, and an unoffifficial “auntie” to this group of kids—had FaceTimed her husband, a famous fashion photographer and apparently a close friend of Bieber’s. When the phone conversation ended about 40 seconds later, a squeal broke loose, springing from the 15-year-old girl sitting next to Moniz. “Oh my gosh,” she said. “I used to have a poster of him on my wall!” Moniz looked at me and laughed.
I had come to Waikiki a few days prior, not with hopes of FaceTiming The Beebs, but to hang with this table of teenagers—the self-dubbed “Waikiki Grom Squad”—who, at the median age of 15, were already becoming some of the best and most stylish longboarders in the world. They grew up together on the beach, once playing hide-and-seek in beachfront surfbfboard racks, now spending countless hours sharpening their technical noserides and smooth cutbacks along Waikiki’s fabled reefs. When they’re not surfing together, they go to the movies together, go ice-skating at a shopping center in Honolulu together, and if they aren’t doing any of the above, they’re still all texting on a group chat together.
“EVERY TIME THESE KIDS DO WELL ABROAD, IT BRINGS ATTENTION BACK TO HAWAII.”
—MALIA KALEOPA’A.
But what makes this crew unique isn’t just the fact that they’re an incredibly-tight-knit group of surfers who love cruising around on 9-footplus boards—gangs of passionate longboard enthusiasts are increasingly found all over the world from Malibu to Noosa, Bali to Cornwall. It’s that they’re easily the youngest of such
