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Outside Magazine December 2004

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Outside’s All Stars
Laird Hamilton (Cont.)


	Laird Hamilton (Peggy Sirota)

ON A CLEAR AND WINDY DAY, at his usual hangout, Anthony's Coffee Co., in the small north-coast Maui town of Paia, Hamilton holds court like a mafia don in an Italian trattoria. They sell his DVDs at the register, encourage admirers to nod but not approach, and stock everything for Hamilton's Atkins-on-steroids breakfast regimen: New York steak, slabs of salmon, and poached eggs.

Hamilton knows perfectly well, of course, that he's at the peak of his physical powers, and that now is the time to capitalize. That's why, even as he sips coffee in this sleepy beach town, the wheels of his entrepreneurial machine are churning, thanks largely to BamMan Productions. Maximizing the next phase of Hamilton's career, BamMan will allow him to serve as the star, producer, and owner of every second of Laird water-action footage from now on. And, with any luck, it will provide him a viable business when his best surfing years are past.

First on the agenda is to turn BamMan's The Ride into an extreme-sports reality-TV series, and Hamilton insists that a Disney Imax big-wave movie is on the horizon. And always brewing in the back of his mind are ideas for further big-wave innovations—hydrofoil boats pulled by kites, speed-sailing, underwater bodysurfing, paddle-surfing—which, with any luck, will keep him in the spotlight and provide cutting-edge, exclusive footage. "We have the best cameraman in the world," he says, cutting into his salmon and nodding to two middle-aged realtors at the next table. "We have the best helicopter pilot, the best riders, and it's all right here, whatever they need. It could be 60 for 60: a 60-foot screen with a 60-foot wave and a six-foot guy. Awesome."

It is awesome, which might explain why one of the realtors, looking from Hamilton's plate to Hamilton's Marvel Comics physique and then back to his plate, asks the waitress what every man in the room is no doubt thinking: "Can I please have the Laird?"

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