Balaram Stack
Balaram Stack has come a long way since his beginnings on the shores of Long Beach, New York. He’s made a name for himself by circling the globe, chasing the world’s most life-threatening barrels, and parking it on Oahu’s North Shore for months on end, putting on show-stopping performances when the conditions get heavy at Pipeline. All that time materialized into a career defining Pipe Masters win. I sat down with Bal recently and discussed New York, his new film “Hail Mary,” and his newest passion spear fishing, which has allowed him to continue to push his personal limits while chasing swells. He just throw’s the spear in the board bag and hits the road, it seems there is no place too far flung for him and his girlfriend Eden Edwards. Pretty sure they are somewhere off the Skeleton Coast of Namibia right now, striking the iron while its hot.
The Word with Balaram Stack
Where have you been lately?
In the last month I've been getting all these premieres done. It's been tough picking and choosing where to have them because I want everyone to have their own experience in their town. We did four stops on the Northeast, one stop in Vancouver, and then one at Volcom headquarters recently. And they all went really well. The movie is now out on Amazon and iTunes.
How did the process of making the film go?
We just had a bunch of footage at first and we're like ‘let's make it a proper edit.’ And then that turned into a visual of New York and Hawaii. That became a story time that was told best by my mom because she was there for it all. That was the light bulb moment. I was like ‘Mary, moms in it, let’s call it Hail Mary.’ It was a four-year process of making it, getting interviews and trying to get all the footage together. She went on camera for six hours and I went on camera for four. Ben Gulliver killed it by piecing it all together and making it a lot shorter than I had imagined it to be.
How long did it end up?
It's about 50 minutes now. It was an hour and a half to start and then he cut it down.
You're on the road most of the year. Are you still based out in New York?
Yes, still based out in Long Island, New York. I recently moved into my brother's house, where I would spend most of my time at anyway. We're always fishing and surfing every morning out of there. He’s got three kids, it's sick. It’s a free for all with them.
Are you guys going back there soon?
Yeah, we're going to drive to her (Eden’s) home in Santa Cruz Wednesday, and then fly out Thursday to go to the East Coast. And then get back on the road and get barreled after we catch some fish in New York.
You just picked up a new spear today, how did you start with spear fishing?
My brother and I fished together for a long time, and he had all the gear to dive. I got interested during Covid when I couldn’t find a fish that would bite a hook. So we started to dive and look for them. Our buddy Sammy from Bunger surf shop showed us what's up and gave us all the gear. He gave us a shortcut into doing it, and we both fell in love with it pretty quickly. It's all we do now.
And that's in Long Island?
Yeah, right off Long Island. We go offshore too for tuna, but we're more into striped bass. The visibility is really bad but the fish come and check you out, because it's so murky they come close to you. I usually dive around 30 feet and just wait.
Did the depth thing take getting used to?
Yeah, but there's a lot of little easy like tricks and tips that you learn and it improves your breath holds so much. Little things like relaxing your jaw. They say that may cause you to relax your chest and then you end up staying down another 10 seconds that time.
And you've been doing more spear fishing trips lately?
Yeah, I've been able to get them to coincide with surf trips. Mexico is perfect for it. And then I just had opportunities to dive in Tahiti and Fiji. It goes a hand in hand with surfing. I bring my gear with me everywhere.
How long were you in Fiji?
Almost like three weeks.
How did that come about?
Last year I did a trip. My buddy Dwayne Diego down in San Diego. I met him surf surfing in Panama and he invited me on this trip to Fiji that he does every year with a couple clients of his. He fishes for two weeks, and I was the lifeguard and surf guide on that trip. We ended up fishing the whole trip anyway. This year I came out again and I stayed for two weeks of his and then almost two weeks of another one. I made some friends with the fisherman and then Eden came through and we got to dive and fish. Got her the barrel of her life on accident. Stepping off in Fiji with nobody around. I got two swells, one I got before and then the one when she was there.
What's the longest stretch you've been away from home this year?
November to February in Hawaii. I don't remember honestly. I went home once after I won the Pipe contest.
Let's get into that. You won the Pipe Masters in December. How were you feeling going into that event? Your mom was caddying for you, which is pretty unique.
It was wild. It was funny my mom wasn't there for the caddying previously in the contest, and she ended up being my caddy for the final. I'm like, ‘I don’t know mom, there might be some heated moments, I don't know if you want to do that.’ Luckily it wasn't even needed. But she was down at the shoreline with the board the whole time. When it ended she ran up the beach with the board in the rain, she was on it for sure. I don't know why I doubted it. She always comes out for the Pipe Pro or the Shoot Out, which is in January, and this was the first year she came for the one in December. And it worked out. It was crazy.
How was that being in a new format and then switching on for comp mode?
It was simple to me. I was like, ‘I know what's going to win this heat, a barrel of any kind.’ The final was small rights. So I just sat at the top and waited at Gums the whole heat. Joao and Griffin we're both getting ones underneath the whole time. And I just was like, ‘Well, I'm not going to beat them doing a little backside air reverse. A barrel is the only way.’ And then I got that first one and that’s when I realized it might actually happen. I paddled back out and another one came to me.
And then you became a Pipe Master.
Everyone was just freaking out on the beach from then on. It ended at 11:30 in the morning, and we were already partying hard. I didn't even make it past 10pm, if that.
Do you think that win changed anything for you with contests? Or just specialty events?
In terms of Pipeline, I would love to do more stuff like that. But that was like the world title for me. I’ve surfed Pipe my whole life, every winter. I don't care what event it is, if I get a win out there that's like my world title, 100%.
Congrats on that. Let's go back a little bit to New York. What was it like growing up trying to become a pro surfer from The Big Apple?
I didn't like realize it was an oddity to be a surfer from New York until I started traveling. Once I started traveling people didn't even realize that there was an ocean in New York. I can see the novelty in it. But I love New York City and my home more than anywhere in the world. I only realized that when I started traveling, and then coming back.
Do you see any other kids coming up from the area at all?
There are a lot of surf camps nowadays. A lot of kids are surfing now, which is new in the last few years. The generation that I grew up in, it was a good crew and we all surfed in the winter and hung out all the time. And after that, there was a couple of years where it kind of fell off. There wasn't too much going on in the grom scene. And then these surf camps popped up. And now there’s tons of groms again, and within that pack of groms there's a couple that are starting to surf well. It's cool to see again for sure.
I'm sure you had a little bit to do with that.
Yeah, I would like to get more involved too. I really want to do an event. The nighttime Red Bull events are so foolproof for getting people to come out and party. They have all the lights for the nighttime to do tow ats. Unsound still does an event every year, and we've been figuring out different ways to keep it alive. Whether it is a junior pro, a QS, a CT, an invite event Air Show. During Covid of course everything was done so they did a little scale event. Everyone in town came down and just threw some money in a hat. That was the last couple of years. We need to get some money into it and get some heads from around. Because the QS that Unsound had, everybody from Wardo to Dusty Payne to Occy came through. For me as a grom, looking at those contests. It was everything. Seeing these pros in my hometown. I didn't even know what a pro surfer was until that happened.
Yeah, I would like to get more involved too. I really want to do an event. The nighttime Red Bull events are so foolproof for getting people to come out and party. They have all the lights for the nighttime to do tow ats. Unsound still does an event every year, and we've been figuring out different ways to keep it alive. Whether it is a junior pro, a QS, a CT, an invite event Air Show. During Covid of course everything was done so they did a little scale event. Everyone in town came down and just threw some money in a hat. That was the last couple of years. We need to get some money into it and get some heads from around. Because the QS that Unsound had, everybody from Wardo to Dusty Payne to Occy came through. For me as a grom, looking at those contests. It was everything. Seeing these pros in my hometown. I didn't even know what a pro surfer was until that happened.
You can probably make it happen. The Balaram contest.
Oh, I'd be so fun. I want to do that mainly in Airshow, because it's so fun to watch for people on the beach.
How do you manage being on the road as much as you are?
Well, I have a nice cushion to lay on now that I've been traveling with constantly. It's hard to get sick of traveling when you're going somewhere that you want to go. What I’ve learned most traveling is that you don't need to rush nearly as much as people around you think they need to. It's a crazy rat race going nowhere. Hurry up and wait. It seems like human nature to just get frantic in those moments. And I guess that's the frustrating part with travel sometimes. But I don't know, you just sit back and let it happen.
So that leads into traveling with Eden. Has that changed the way you travel?
We just got lucky enough to have the freedom to travel together frequently. Over the last few months we have been able to be on almost every trip together. We've been lucky in terms of scheduling. She just graduated college and she's got a place in Hawaii, where I spend most my time during the winter. And now I've turned her into a little bit of a New Yorker. She spends a lot of time there now. I don't know, it's been really good.
Where are you trying to go next?
Namibia is the goal. There's another swell coming, I’m really trying to get there.
Looking forward, do you have any new projects in the works?
Yeah. We’re trying to get an extension of Hail Mary going. Whatever that may be in terms of extra footage for the movie, or a different part of the story. It'd be more like a B-Sides kind of thing. We want to do a trip to Scotland that we never got to put in the movie, which we wanted to really badly. That and then mostly just getting my fish count up and getting barreled and trying to coincide those two things to the fullest extent.
