Coastalsurvey

The New York Times reviewed CitySurfer, CoastalSurvey’s predecessor, in their April 15, 1999 Circuits section. Find the story at The New York Times Online in the Technology section. April 15, 1999

A Guide to Surfing (the Ocean, Not the Net)

By BRIGID BUCKMAN

The surfing heroes of “The Endless Summer,” a 1966 documentary directed by Bruce Brown, circled the globe, long boards in hand, in search of the perfect wave. But in location after location, they were plagued by the dispiriting greeting of “you should have been here yesterday” as they grimaced at the flat waves that faced them.

Today, however, Brown and his surfers would be able to take a more educated guess at which beach would be hopping with well-shaped tubes (waves) by using a computer and a modem. Surfers, from professionals to groms, or novices, can use the Web to find tidal charts, weather reports, tropical storm maps, local surf reports, pollution watches and buoy readings before they make the trek to search for the perfect wave.

A global community of surfers from places like England, Israel, Italy, Australia, Southern California and even Brooklyn has tamed not only the surfers’ local breaks but the Web, too. The surfers are making their information and experiences accessible to all who have an interest in the surfing life.

Mikke Pierson, the owner of Z J Boarding House, a sporting gear store in Santa Monica, Calif., said he looked at the Internet every morning to find out about storm activity that might affect California surf conditions as well as swell information for his area. “You can really tell where you should go surf,” he said. Pierson shares the information he finds with his patrons through a telephone surf report his store provides. Apart from predicting great waves, the Internet helps link surfers worldwide, Pierson said. “Totally — that’s what it’s all about,” he said.

Though many of the Web’s surf sites are bogged down with superficial information and advertisements, or consist solely of action photos of surfers looking for a little glory, a number of sites offer quick-loading practical information, like the conditions at local beaches and the nearest surf shop for having a fin replaced. For the many armchair surfers, other sites act as cultural tutorials through the often romanticized subculture of surfing that, more than just being a sport, has become synonymous with a way of life.

An endless summer, like the one Brown chronicled more than 30 years ago, may be elusive today to the average surfer (especially the average surfer with a job), but through the Web, the waves of famous spots like the south shore of Australia or Hawaii’s Pipeline become a little more tangible.

City Surfer: NYC
www.users.interport.net/~barney

Created and maintained by Rob Cummings, a surfer living in Brooklyn who is nicknamed Barney, City Surfer: NYC is a jumping-off point for any New York City dweller with aspirations of trading in concrete for a day on the swells of the nearby Atlantic Ocean or Long Island Sound. Cummings plans to expand this site within the next few months. He also intends to introduce advertisements and a stronger emphasis on travel.

The site includes things like the complete 1999 tide tables for the Fire Island Inlet and journal entries that chronicle the creator’s surfing adventures (including advice on how to carry a surfboard on a crowded subway car without making enemies). The site’s main attraction is a network of links that gives the visitor quick access to specific surfing information for the tristate area. Links to local weather reports, Atlantic wave models and nearby surf video cameras are organized in groupings that are easy to follow.

If a trip to Montauk, N.Y., or to the Jersey Shore is out of the question, a subway token can get anyone in New York City to Rockaway Beach in Queens and, with luck, a nice set of waves. Nor is summer the only season for New York surfing. Monster waves created by autumn hurricanes and winter storms are favorites of many hard-core Manhattan surfers, as was evident during last year’s Hurricane Bonnie. Dozens of surfers, exhilarated by the brawny waves, ignored the closing of Rockaway Beach and took to the water.

Cummings’s site also features a travel section that offers information and advice through excerpts from e-mail messages. The firsthand accounts are colorful — sometimes even profane — and laden with facts about surf conditions and hot spots around the globe, along with grass-roots nuggets that may be otherwise hard to find in travel guides. How many travel books, for instance, could identify surfing beaches in County Mayo in Ireland that not only have pubs within walking distance but have, the source says, pubs that “pull an excellent pint?” Another message warns of a 14-foot reptile that has laid claim to a river mouth in Costa Rica. Despite the report of a man-eater, this surfing spot is not to be missed, the writer says.

The Enviro, Weather, Buoys and Surf Culture pages have numerous links on each page. Succinct descriptions of the focus and usefulness of each link (the Surfbook site is described as “containing all you need to know from hanging 10 to shaping blanks”) allow the site visitor to decide quickly about which way to click. Also included is a Tips page, which appears to be a seemingly endless block of text. The page has e-mail, most of it didactic, from various people. Use the page index to avoid getting stuck in this mire of information.

As with a lot of writing about surfing, the Travel, Tips and Journal pages are dominated by the surfers’ lingua franca: “kook flails for the shoulder, pearls right in front of me, loses his board, which cuts a four-inch gash in my rail.” You can do your own rough translation (an unskilled surfer falls off his board, which then becomes a menace to other surfers) by using the surfer-speak dictionary of the Surf Culture Orange County Web site (reviewed below).