Today's guest is one of the most polarizing professional surf figures of our time.

For a solid decade from about 1987 onward, Richie Collins was in your face.

Try as you might to avoid him, which many did.

Collins confronted and pestered surf world decorum.

His neon outfits, self-shaved mohawk, webbed gloves, and reflective Oakley blades, commanded gawking from anyone following the tour or flipping the pages of a surf mag.

Equally well known for his hypnotically long stretched out floaters and full-speed surfing was his brash persona and a seeming

desire to seek out confrontation. In fact, then and even now, I wonder if his behavior

overshadows his career highlights and the surfing itself. For the record, he won the 1988

Coldwater Classic, the 1989

O.P. Pro over Tom Curran, and then the 1992 Rip Girl Pro at Bells Beach. He did most of this

on self-shaped boards. In fact, maybe even exclusively on self-shaped boards. I'm not exactly

sure, but he was the only one doing that

on tour at the time. And for me, growing up here in Orange County, Richie's reputation preceded

him. And if he was in the lineup, which he often was, I would opt to just paddle out

elsewhere down the beach to avoid confrontation or even witnessing a confrontation. Stories of his hassles in the

lineup were omnipresent for decades up until a point when I realized that he was gone and that

he had been gone for some time. I hadn't heard or seen anything from him for years. Until recently,

I was on Instagram and I saw that he was tagged.

Apparently he had relocated to Hawaii where he was shaping surfboards.

So I reached out with a desire to hear what he had been up to, and I was really curious how

he felt about that persona of Richie Collins from the 90s that everybody knew so well.

So that is what we are here to do today.

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