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one word to describe barney is love. hero. super human. foxy. colorful. friendly. joyful weird loving
pure. acrobatic creative inspirational. unique. amazing. crazy. from surfing mavericks to airs, to art, running into him at the store, and you;re just like – "wow" a lot of times i just think, of pretty much the most different thing i could try to do
or the most radical thing i could do because, i mean, even though all of the basic moves are rad and fun to do you can only do them so much. i think the more clever move, or radical thing you could do, you get more of an energy or feel than if you do a radical lipper, even though it does feel great. but just think if you went on, beyond that lip and did something way more gnarly. it's really hard to go back to the first time exactly that i met barney but i was in second grade and he was in 4th grade, and him and my brother started becoming friends at bayview elementary school. at probably about 10 they hit bayview together, there was shawn, darryl, and troy
who were just friends from the get go. he hung out with flea nonstop, they were like, inseparable. and flea was like this really angry little kid and barney was like the nicest happiest kid, it was the weirdest thing, a full yin and yang, but best friends. doc scott used to run the surf events, wsas in the early 80's. there was always a big pack of westside kids mobbing around. he was in that group. our first time interacting and hanging out was i think was when i was working at santa cruz surf shop. i had just gotten this sponsorship from instinct clothing. he was all about "i want to get sponsored" he had these ambitions. he was like that little kid that wags his tail.
you could tell he was a little different, because he didn't care what people thought. he dressed different, he was just, crazy. he was always falling and rolling and jumping from the time he was tiny. whatever he was doing he was always having fun. he was just super limber, and i just remember him doing cartwheels all over the place. he was always pretty off the wall. really off the wall actually. he was the clown of our group. he's got a brilliant mind, shawn barron, and you noticed that from the first time you met him. he's one of those groms that figured it out at a young age.
i think he was born an old soul, because he just smiled all the time. he was on of those things. you'd go to the lane and he's just such a pressure cooker. every person that jumped off the cliff you were just going "god, this is getting more and more crowded" more and more gnarly then all of a sudden you would see barney i didn't matter how crowded it was, if you saw barney you just smiled. he had such a good personality and such a good aura around him. he just made you feel warm he was kind of like a little campfire floating around. i went on a santa cruz surf shop team trip, his first surf trip to puerto escondido.
even then barney stuck out amongst the group. he was the first guy to be gung-ho to pull into 8 to 10 foot close outs. he was the first guy to volunteer "hey put that camera on my board" sonny miller had a camera that can be mounted on a surfboard. so i did that with him. he ended up getting a cover shot and a spread from that one trip and that pushed barney into the limelight. we saw on that trip where barney was going to go. he knew he wanted to be a pro surfer. but after he went on that puerto trip, that's when he became barney. he was on cover acid. barney's surfing was loud, and extreme, kind of like barney.
no two waves were ridden alike. he would just try to pull everything no matter what. you would see a lot of guys just fall, but barney would just go into his barney layback he could reel it back in. grab his outside rail, knock his leash and pull it up. barney, he'd just fall down and get back up and snap back. he was super double jointed. he would see something that no other person could possibly see just because of the way that his brain worked spontaneous would be an understatement. you never knew what he was going to do on the wave. ever.
he had it in his own mind what he wanted to do, but i couldn't read it. the majority of the time he would just lay back, stick one foot up and roll around back spinning. then come back up on the board. it was fun to watch him. we'd always surf together. and he'd always push the limits. from trying to do barrel rolls, to all of the aerials he's tried, to the creative way he marketed himself. he doesn't want to be "the santa cruz guy" he had to be "barney... from santa cruz." always being different, never really following anyone in surfing. some of his flips, and all that stuff, was so far before its time. gabriel medina and flynn novak and those guys do them now, and they stick them.
but barney was doing those things 12 years before that, at least. you know what? , i loved it. because there was no one like him. he was doing barrel rolls, no one is doing barrel rolls, even now days. i saw barney in costa rica do a backflip on an 8-foot wave, land at the top of the whitewash and make it down nobody caught it on film, it was one of the first real backflips. laying down with one toe on his board and pulling it back up. there's still no one who surfs like him. i don't think anyone ever will. in the early days of transworld, that was the guy that we wanted. we were like "if you want to be in this magazine, do what barney does"
do your own thing. barney's surfing was the most entertaining thing. every singe wave i saw him ride when i was in the surf with him made me laugh out loud. he was a fucking clown in the water. he would scream when he would surf. i'd be coming off the clidd at the lane and you would hear "rahhhh" barney would get himself psyched as he was on his feet on the wave. i always tripped on barney's big wave stuff. because i just didn't see him as that. he did all the innovative stuff that was on covers for this and that.
he'd be on a cover doing an alley-oop in south africa and the next month he'd be on the cover doing a soul arch in the barrel at mavericks. he shows up on a big swell. and everybody was like "oh hey look there's barney, hey barney!" they thought of him as an aerial surfer, they weren't thinking of him as a mavericks charger. he went right to the bowl, and within 5 minutes the first set comes. he whips it, spins it, sticks it straight down and sticks the gnarliest drop ever. i just made me realize, that that guy can do anything. we were scared surfing there. but we all did it together. we all challenged each other we all had to one-up each other
barney would be out there just chuckling and making jokes and doing his funny voices and it would bring this level of comfort. he was out there charging mavericks, wearing that "bat-barney" wetsuit with the full flaps coming off the sides. people dress as super heroes, but he's out there doing death-defying stuff wearing super hero outfits. i think that just kind of epitomizes who he was. barney was really impressive in hawaii. some guys come to hawaii and they're put off and intimidated by the size and how big waves were he was kind of the opposite. i thought "this guy is kind of crazy" he would frickin' charge
i swear to god, within 5 minutes the whole north shore loved him. he was the whitest guy ever in goofy pink shorts he just goes out and starts doing his thing in the water shredding. more importantly he was like "hey what's up brah!" to the gnarliest dudes "yo braddah whats up brah!?" we were like "oh my god" but they'd look at him and go "eeehhhh! whats up barney!" they just loved him. i remember surfing at backdoor, barney's going down the line and jonny-boy is yelling "do something!" anyone else and johnny boy would be snapping but he was like "how's this guy barney?" that was barney the funniest story i ever heard about barney, was his first time at the north shore, he was a grom.
and johnny-boy gomes was hanging out, just sitting there, and barney was getting all excited because he was going to go surf pipe, and he was pumped, and he stood up and tripped and he knocked his cup of coffee and it went right down johnny-boy gomes' back. we were all like "woah is he going to get beat up?" and johnny jumps up to slap him but then he just looked down and said "no wonder why they call you barney... it's all good" i never really saw him get angry. but one day richard schmidt's tires got slashed or something and barney thought he knew who the culprit was i was out in the water and barney paddled out pissed off and ends up tackling the guy
and dunking him and the guy was looking at me like "what the fuck? what's going on?" then barney was just pissed like "richard schmidt!" he was going off, like crazy the guy was like "fuck, let's go to the beach!" and barney was like "let's go!" they get to the beach and the guy was like "what's up!?" and barney just starts doing a handstand and walking around on his hands, kind of mocking the guy, clamoring around his hands and the guy was just like "uhhhhh?" we were all just sitting there like "what the fuck is going on?" and kind of scratching our heads. we just chalked it up to a barney story, which i'm sure every person that you talk to has one. so i went to bed and i wake up in the morning, the place was thrashed, like normally, and i look up
where there's a loft with 12 foot ceilings, and there was muddy bootprints going up my wall across the ceiling and down the other wall... i didn't even have any sticks around that were that long. i think i told him "watch you boots, take your boots off" because we had just moved into this place. "i don't want to get mud on the carpet" he was like "ok, i won't get the carpet muddy" but your ceiling is just through. i got super pissed at him and i grabbed a knife, i was so pissed, i was going to try to stab barney. he did this like kung fu kick and he kicked the knife and it stuck in the ceiling, and then he jumped up and grabbed it, it was a full role reversal
we had to start laughing because it worked so perfect, it worked exactly how he thought it was going to work. another trait that barney has, which was painful at times was how inappropriate he was just some of the things he would say. you'd be having dinner with your family. he'd come barging in, you'd be like "oh my god" now i'd give anything to have him come barge in my house again and interrupt our little family. he had a good way of heckling people. he would say things, that i know if i would say would be so inappropriate if it came out of my mouth but he would deliver it, or because it was him, it would be fine.
you blasted a sick air in your heat taj! haha, i got a 3 feel! with a smile on his face, and sort of laughing he would hit you're worst nickname and you couldn't do a thing about it. because there was no intent for him to be rude, it was just... barney usually the ones that stuck were the ones you didn't like. "oragne-a-tang" was one of his favorite for me. rat of nimh, rat carc, carcass , so many nicknames from him.
one of his favorite ones was "glory dog", i'd be out at mavericks and hed be all "go glory dog!!" i'd be like "oh my god shut up dude you're pissing me off" but i'm laughing. his nickname for me was "crinkle stance" he called me "god" for a while. he liked to call me "god 2". he called flea "god 1" he still called me "dumpling" even though dumpling was my nickname as a 12 year old. so i wasn't stoked on that but he also called me "e-side" he would just look at me an go "e-side" at the end he was calling me "mid-life crisis"
bruce jenner, pruno butter, irons icon, "irons icon", "trademarkit.com" we all know he had a unique brain, but he also had a medical disorder. he had to take lithium to help him, and he hated lithium. he had kind of a manic break in austrailia. i was having a great trip, trying all kinds of maneuvers, meeting the locals but then it occurred. my bipolar action. when you have maybe a manic break, you get too far, you just keep going. he had told us that his meds had been saturated in cologne because it was in his bag and the cologne broke he just stopped taking his meds.
everyone was dedicated to hanging out with him for a certain period of time. at some time we lost track of him i think there was a lunar eclipse that year. the moon was fuller than i had ever seen it. isn't the human body made up of 80% water? and when the moon is out it pulls water, that's where you get the tides. low tide and high tide. but can the moon pull your own body? definitely worried about his safety. i remember it was the first time i said "oh my god i have to get a passport" i've never been out of the country. and i may have to bring him home. strapped down somehow we were warned that if we didn't get him home and he had to go to a hospital he would have been stuck there for months.
we have a mission here, we get him home. when he came back from austrailia, we picked him up at the airport. i think he was doing cartwheels down the escalator. darryl and peter mel were there, thank goodness. my husband gets him into the car and drove him here. medicated the heck out of him and i think he passed out for a week. a lot of stuff maybe collisioned in on one thought. a hundred thoughts hit my brain. when i should be thinking about one thing. sleep. you get a lot of brilliant ideas, or at least you think you do. for me art is a great outlet for that. i can make a purple person there, or a pink tree there.
you can kind of go in and do whatever you want. constantly just doing art because he had to do it. he never did it to try and sell it or anything. every one of his friends had paintings of his all over their house in santa cruz. he gave a lot of himself away. one of those things you don't really notice until he's gone. he used to spend hours painting, a painting for each and every one of his friends. with a little message on the back that was hard to decode, with barney's language when he passed, the first thing i... grabbed a painting, flipped it over, read what he wrote laughed my ass off, looked for another painting, flipped it over, read what he wrote
i was amazing what he did. he gave a piece of himself to every one of his friends i left a mark in my head, like wow, what am i leaving for my friends? what am i leaving for my kids? he did that to everybody. everybody has a piece of art that barney would do one night, or a collage. because he's thinking of you. in a creative sense, barney was just an amazing person. where he could just put colors together not only in paints. he would see something. he'd see a bunch of trophies in a pile and he would be like "trophy man!" and he would just get so excited because he knew what he was going to do with that got out of jail. and he was like "i got this art piece for you" and i was like "fuck, rad dude! super cool" on the back of it it says "my friend's in jail, love you, barney"
i was like "woah dude". he goes "what you don't like it?" i go "no bro, it's cool, it's cool" barney is just like a super-human. just a freak of nature. he's almost like an alien, you know what i mean? as a human being shawn barron was an incredible man. he was very smart very subliminally in touch with a lot of things people didn't see. very positive vibes, always easing the tensions. nothing could ever get too serious with him. at that time all the pro surfers kind of had egos, this and that, barney didn;t give a fuck. he's barney, walking on his hands, saying what he want's to say his energy was infectious, it was something, no matter what kind of mood you were in
you better get to barney's level because he's coming in hot. genuine friendliness. a lot of people aren't like that. just open and say weird stuff, and not care about it. he was just, unfiltered brain thought, everything he thought he said it. he was living in the moment. it was like every day he would hit the restart button wether he was putting on a show, or art, or surfing or whatever it was, he's pure. when you met barney, you were inspired to do something more, or be like him. you look at what he was doing the last years of his life. he always found time to help people learn how to surf. all the wounded warrior projects, the mauli ola projects. he was at the forefront doing them every time they came to town he was there to spend that time
to put that energy in with those kinds of people. every weekend he was teaching kids with cystic fibrosis how to surf. he was never the guy to go "i should get credit for doing this", he just did it. barney to this day hit it off way better with kids. young kids. kids with disorders, kids with ailments. its hard for people to stop what their doing and come down in to your level. most people just going going going. but barney would have a way to really connect individually with people barney was the king of making you feel good. he was the king of bringing up stuff in a conversation that made you feel good about you. some of the things i've taken away from barney's life is, try to be positive with everybody.
try not to judge people. that's hard, you know? be friendly to everyone. pretty much how to love each other really. that was his gift. not to take life so seriously sometimes. that's what i get out of it. he lived a short life, but he lived a full life of how he wanted to live it. i think a lot of people, especially kids up and coming could learn a lot from barney. do what you want to do, because you want to do it. do it because you love it. whatever it is do it how you want to do it.
you know what? be yourself, don't hide what you are. it allows you to be free. he couldn't care less if you thought his super hero costume wasn't cool. because he thought it was cool, and therefore it was cool. follow your own path. in his case he became a hero for it. that's what you learn form people like barney. do your own thing. be yourself. barney came in hot here at the shop. just a few days before he passed. i got a chance to give him one last costume wetsuit. and he put it on in the dressing room. came out. walked around the shop on his hands. started saying "should i go get the shot buell?" and i was like "yeah go get the shot"
and he started yelling "social media!" what is barney doing right now? i'm no expert on the after life. but i'd like to think he's doing what he always did. just enjoying the moment. taking it to a whole other level and inspiring others to be themselves. i think he's painting, while he's surfing and also doing a gainer off the cliff at the lane. like all at once. laughing right now, he's laughing right now, barney is laughing right now. getting paintings ready for everybody when we show up. i guarantee he's got paint all over his clothes. probably spilling coffee somewhere too.
probably just painting naked somewhere. oh my god he's probably just wigging out flying around to all the galaxies checking out black holes and stuff looking at all the colors, probably found new colors to paint with probably creating his own little universe to come play in when we join him. you know his spirit is definitely guiding everyone who was part of his life he painting and surfing clouds. with some girls doing some leg molds and art, and surfing painting. if there's heaven he's definitely there and he’s probably making it even more colorful than it probably already is.
that's it, barney is everywhere. everywhere positive. i don;t think he's completely gone. i think gavin beschen probably communicates with him. there's that buzzing again. barney must be calling me. hey this is barney, come in. come in gavin. where'd he go? transcontinental journey. i think i heard he went on.