Johnny-Boy Gomes was born in 1965 and grew up around Waianae and Makaha on Oahu’s West Side. From the late 1980s through the 1990s he was one of the most powerful surfers in Hawaii, and a force at Pipeline.

In 1997 he won the Pipe Masters, beating Kelly Slater along the way and Michael Ho in an all-Hawaiian final.

He is all over the Hawaii films of that era on Nalu TV, from Herbie Fletcher’s Wave Warriors II (1987) through Breakin’ On Thru, No Exit, Winter Warriors and Larry Haynes’s Fluid Combustion series, to Sunny Dayz (2001).