Nice bruise

Name: Kian Barker

Age: 13

From: North Park

Occupation: 7th grade student

At dusk, I saw Kian Reese Barker loading his six-foot Mitsven surfboard into his dad’s truck parked by the South Mission Beach jetty. It was the first weekend of 2018 and Kian’s first time riding the board his dad had just given him.

“When it was windier, at six miles per hour, the swell was a bit bigger,” Kian said, “and it died down when the wind died down.”

Kian said he learned almost everything about how to surf from his father. “He did influence my very laid-back style,” he said, “but [at times] I like to hack around on the wave.”

This was a good day for that because the waves had “six-foot faces and four-foot backs.” He appreciated the “nice left for cutbacks [and when] I’m going down [the line] and then popping up and hitting the top [of the wave].”

Kian and his dad travel to Hawaii almost once a year to surf. “In 2017, we biked down to the beach and we were holding our boards.”

He’s been surfing for five years, and his favorite spot is the jetty. “I like it here the most because it’s got the best left along this whole coastline,” he said.

Kian’s eaten it here a few times; one time, “It was a smaller wave day and I was riding these training fins,” he said, “so I pearl-dived, like, when my nose goes [under, and] I fell over, then my bicep hit the fin and it broke off. It didn’t cut me but definitely hurt a lot and it gave me a nice bruise.”