(ABOVE) Joey Valenti at Bizia Surf and Coffee Bar in Wahiawa with a quiver of surfboards made from albizia, an invasive tree that's become a threat to Hawaii's native forests as well as to life and property. Finding uses for its soft, light wood has been Valenti's ambition for almost a decade.
Native to southwest and east Asia, albizia is horribly invasive in Hawaii; it's claimed more than twenty thousand acres of Oahu. Its spreading canopies pose fire risks and block sunlight that native plants require. Albizia's weak, brittle wood is prone to breaking under the weight of its own branches, endangering lives and property. But Valenti demonstrated that it was possible to build sturdy structures and furniture from its wood, once thought useless for construction. In 2017, Valenti and his now-fiancee, Christine Johnson, founded the Albizia Project to make the most of this prolific pest.
Valenti's latest venture, Bizia Surf and Coffee Bar in Wahiawa, does just that. Located about a hundred yards from the woodshop where he shapes albizia planks into surfboards, Bizia is an earthy, charming spot to browse albizia boards or sip coffee while thumbing through books about surfing in the library nook hidden beneath a staircase (its railing ornamented with tiny albizia surfboards).
Though surfers often align themselves with sustainability, most surfboards aren't very Earth-friendly. Most are mass-produced from polyurethane blanks that wear out quickly. Ancient Hawaiians, who invented surfing, rode boards shaped from native woods, usually koa and wiliwili, that were treasured objects. "We're trying to bring that full circle," says Valenti, "and use what is abundant here today."
Valenti buffs a new board in the shaping bay.
Bizia began serendipitously—with a surfboard Valenti noticed at woodworker Eric Bello's shop while the two were working on a 100 percent albizia house that Valenti had designed as part of his doctoral thesis at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. "The board was just sitting there, covered in dust, and it turned out it was albizia," Valenti recalls. Bello had designed it with shaping legend Dick Brewer, who taught him how to make a chambered wooden board. For years, Valenti (busy with milling, woodworking, overseeing wood-innovation grants and managing his farm in Mokuleia) joked with Bello that he'd get around to making albizia surfboards. In 2020, two years before Brewer passed away, he whittled out the time.
The original Brewer-Bello board, the 9'8" Waimea Big Wave Gun, is now on display at Bizia alongside a 9' performance longboard Bello and Valenti designed, and the "Lis Fish," a classic 5'8" twin-fin collaboration between Valenti and Myers Surfboards. Wooden boards are slightly heavier than foam boards, but because they're hollow they're highly buoyant—a combination that Valenti says gives them more drive and stability than lighter boards. For Valenti, surfing on Bizia boards restores a sense of authenticity. "You're on living material; you can feel the life of the wood beneath your toes," he says. "It evokes a different energy and flow in the water."
