You’ve Never Seen Staircases Like These
A kitesurfer’s Maui dream house finds its mojo thanks to Martyn Lawrence Bullard.
By
Leilani Marie Labong
Douglas Friedman
One fateful day in 2014, a California kitesurfer named Ed Freedman arrived in Maui at his beachfront rental—a quarter-century-old estate house in Paia, a bohemian crossroads on the island’s north shore. He dropped his bags and bounded the 50 or so yards to the sand, a favorite launch for legendary kiters like Laird Hamilton and Robby Naish. Pressing his bare feet onto Hawaiian terra firma for the first time, the 40-something tech entrepreneur felt a current course through him. In the native Hawaiian language, this life force is known as mana, but the newcomer could only summon his kiteboarder’s lingo. “I felt completely lit up,” Freedman recalls. As if the scene were destined for island mythology, he then caught sight of a green sea turtle, or