CitySurfer's Journal: Spring 1996
Monday, March 18: Back from Florida. Caught some good waves before the swell died. Landed in Newark with two surfboards in a 10-foot-long blue bag. Took a bus to Manhattan and then got on the subway.
It was rush hour. At each stop more people got on the train, until they were packed in like toothpicks standing up in a box. A few commuters were eyeing the dirigible-like blue bag at their feet, but nobody said anything.
Began to sweat. There was no easy way to get the boards off the train. Finally made a little announcement: "Uh, I'm getting off at the next stop . . . and if you all just breathe in a little, I'll try to get this thing out of here." Thirty pairs of eyes stared back. Nobody said a word. The train stopped, the doors opened and the crowd, miraculously, parted.
"You get home safe now," one lady called as the doors closed. The train pulled out and I climbed the stairs that led to the connecting train.
A woman screamed. A Mexican man turned to look at the platform where the sound came from then looked at me. Was she being stabbed, or just laughing? A second scream. She was in trouble. We hustled down the stairs to the platform and found two women, unharmed. One of them was pointing into the darkness of the tunnel beyond the platform.
"He took my bag, then ran in there," said the woman with her arm raised.
I glanced at the two women, looked down at the surfboards dangling from my shoulder and then stared into the utter blackness of the tunnel.
"C'mon," I said, "we'll go find a cop."
Monday, April 1: Dreamed of paddling out over huge seas. The last wave of the oncoming set was twice as big as the others, a mountainous wall of cobalt-blue water. The wave broke hard, drove me down deep and held me there until my lungs burst. Woke up gasping.
Tuesday, April 16: Spring is late this year. Today was cool and rainy. There's a storm off the coast: you can smell the salt on the south wind even in Brooklyn. Maybe good surf tomorrow?
Wednesday, April 17: Took the subway out to Rockaway with Scott. Made the eight-mile trip from apartment in Brooklyn to Rockaway Beach in Queens in an hour and a half. A new record.
There are better places to surf on the Atlantic seaboard, but none that can be reached for the price of a token. So you take what you get. Today we got slop.
There was a swell there, but it had been blown to hash by a strong west wind. The current was running east, and it was cold. Even wrapped in a quarter-inch thick wetsuit, 40-degree water is numbingly cold. Stayed in it for 45 minutes and caught two unremarkable waves.
Later we walked to Tom Sena's surf shop to buy a new fin for an old board. There haven't been many surfers in the shop over the winter, Sena said. "Except this guy, Herbie," he added. "He's hardcore; he was out here all winter long." Sena gave us Herbie's number and we took the subway home.
Tried calling Herbie that night. No answer.
Saturday April 27: Stood, amazed, on the boardwalk.
The storm that had moved offshore last night was pushing back a nice waist to shoulder-high swell and a steady breeze from the land shaped the waves into neatly breaking lines. It was a rare bit of perfection.
Paddled out to a peak south of the jetties and caught a series of quick roller-coaster rides. The water at Rockaway is sometimes gray or greenish brown, depending on the currents and the wind. On this day it was the color of coffee and cream. Found a rhythm in the coffee-colored waves and that loose, electric feeling you get from moving with them.
Stayed out for nearly two hours and caught a dozen good waves -- that's maybe 90 seconds of actually standing and riding. The rest of the time was spent paddling around and over incoming sets, sitting on the board and drifting, looking at the kids on the jetty and watching the jets belly in for their final approach to JFK.
A trio of surfers arrived in the late afternoon, but the tide was ebbing and the waves had lost their shape. The three surfers floundered around for about a half-hour and then paddled in.
Monday, April 29: Still no answer at Herbie's. He must have given up on New York's silly little waves and gone to Fiji.
Tuesday April 30: Another storm blew over. If the northwest wind holds, it could be epic tomorrow.
Headline in today's Daily News: "Weird Life of a Psycho Surfer". The story was about some loser in Tasmania who shot a whole bunch of people at a tourist resort with a small arsenal of automatic weapons. And the wanker was driving around in a car with a surfboard on the roof. Therefore, he's a Psycho Surfer. If he had actually used that board, he would have been way too mellow to go around capping people.
Wednesday May 1: Woke up early and checked weather radio. The wind had shifted. It would have been pointless to go to the beach. Went back to sleep and dreamed of Fiji.
Sunday, May 5: Cinquo de Mayo. Drove out to see Andrew in Sag Harbor last night. It was dead still and a heavy fog was lying over the east end of Long Island. That evening we checked Bridgehampton beach. There was a nice swell there, but nothing for it to break on. The waves walled up and collapsed right on the beach.
The next morning I got Andrew up early, and we buzzed up to Montauk. First look, from one of the pullouts on the old Montauk highway, got me jazzed. Below the bluffs, a perfect little sandbar was working. Good as it was, we went further east.
The Ditch was crowded with longboarders and the beach looked like a young Rotarians' picnic. Groovy young moms and little kids and dogs ran all over the sand. We decamped to another break west of the Ditch. It wasn't as consistent, but we had it to ourselves.
Beautiful day: green water, probably around 50 degrees, sunshine, clean shoulder-high waves and just a whisper of offshore breeze. It was one of those days that stay with you for awhile.
Saturday, May 25: Up at 6 am. Rode my bike to a truck rental agency under the Williamsburg Bridge and rented the last vehicle left in NYC for the Memorial Day weekend. It was a beat-to-shit Ford Econoline van with a jammed side-door and a serious alignment problem. Threw the bike in the back, drove home, took the bike out, put surfboards and camping gear in and drove over to Heidi and Stevo's place in Fort Greene (Brooklyn). Heidi, Stevo and their friend Alonso threw their gear in the van and off we went.
Five hours later we pulled into the Hither Hills campground near Montauk. The trip usually takes less than three hours, but the holiday traffic jammed Rt. 27 all the way to Amagansett. We were lucky enough to get a campsite and eased the van onto a patch of grass already crowded with tents and RVs. Once camp was set up, Stevo and Alonso took off on their mountain bikes while Heidi and I got back in the van for the short drive to the Ditch.
The wind was offshore and the waves were small, in the waist-high range. But there were still about 20 guys in the water at the Ditch. Heidi and I walked east along the cobblestone shore, looking for a less crowded break. There are good breaks up that way, but they all need a substantial swell to work. We turned around after about a quarter mile and walked back to Ditch Plains. The wind had shifted onshore and everyone left the water, so Heidi and I paddled out.
Heidi is just learning to surf. She's got a good O'Neill wetsuit and terminal stoke. She stood up a couple of times that day.
Stopped in town on the way back from the beach and bought fresh fish for dinner. By the time the guys got back from their bike ride, I had a beer open and the sputnik (Weber barbecue grill) loaded with charcoal.
We sat up late that night, burning driftwood in the sputnik, drinking beers and telling stories. There were a lot of stars and chill in the air.
Sunday we all went to the beach and took turns with the three boards and wetsuits. The water temperature was still in the mid 50s. Alonso, who lives in the jungle on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula near Palenque, was determined try surfing, regardless of how cold the water was. Somehow he ended up wearing my crummy old wetsuit with the blown out seams. Alonso stayed in the water until his face was as blue as that old wetsuit.
Monday, Memorial Day, the Atlantic was as flat as a lake. We packed up the van and drove home.
Saturday, June 8: Took the shortboard -- an old Tabeling 6'4" -- out to Rockaway. The wind was onshore, the waves were small and there were plastic bags and who-knows-what-else floating around in the water.
Sunday, June 9: Heidi and I took the LIRR to Freeport and then a bus to Jones Beach. Then we walked 2 miles down the beach to the jetty at the west end. The jetty is under construction. A small mountain of boulders stood on the sand, ready to be set in place. The wind was onshore again, but the waves were a little bigger, maybe shoulder high. Except the recent construction had prevented the usual sandbars from forming, so at high water it was practically shore pound. I didn't care: just launched that little Tabeling, took the drop, cranked a bottom turn and flew off the shoulder before it closed. Wave after wave. Got pounded on the sand a couple of times, too, but it was fun.
Thursday, June 13: Picked up a rental car in Midtown. Drove it back to Brooklyn after
work, put the racks on and took off for the overnight to Rhode Island. Crossed the
Whitestone and was on I-95 by 1 am. The cool thing about driving at night is there's no
traffic and no rules -- after midnight I-95 is an autobahn for Peterbuilts.
Arrived in Misquimacut (?) just before dawn Friday. There was a light fog over the coast and a clean waist-high swell rolling onto the beach. Couldn't see any obvious breaks, so I drove back to Rt. 1, found a little dirt road to nowhere, parked the car and fell asleep in the backseat.
Woke up around 9 am. It was starting to get warm. Got back on Rt. 1 and started doing the coastal survey thing until I found Deep Hole at Matunuck. Stepped onto the beach just in time to a wetsuited surfer disappear into a fogbank. The fog had consolidated into a thick grey wall about 100 ft. offshore. I could hear the waves breaking out there, but I couldn't see shit.
While I was still staring into the fog, a young guy in a pickup truck with a longboard in back pulled up. He got out and walked down to the beach.
"Is there a break out there?" I asked, lamely.
"Yea, there's a rock reef about 50 yards out," he said. "It's probably pretty small today, though."
This guy was typical of all the Rhode Island surfers I've met since that first visit: friendly, attitude-free and generous with the local knowlege. The inverse law of thermodynamics applies to RI riders: The colder the water, the warmer the surfers.
We suited up and paddled out to catch a few cold ones. It was like surfing Brigadoon. The waves appeared out the fog and then vanished again as they rolled shoreward. If it had been big, it would have been scary, but it was far from big.
Had lunch at a clam shack that was just gearing up for the summer and drove out to Point Judith to fall asleep on the grass near the lighthouse. Woke up in time to catch a perfectly tiny afternoon session off the rocks below the point. After getting lost in Jamestown and Newport, I arrived at Dr. Wally's place in Providence a few minutes before he got home from the hospital.
"Spudly," he said.
"Wally," I replied.
That night we met Heidi and May for dinner. Heidi had bussed it up from NYC after rehearsal (Stevo couldn't make it) and May was teaching a summer design course there at RISD. May was the other reason I came to Rhode Island -- think Liv Tyler, only older and smarter. Alas, May had no interest in underemployed surf bums.
Saturday, June 15: Heidi and I surfed at Naragansett in the morning. If you want to meet pretty teenage girls in bikinis, go to Naragansett Town Beach on a sunny Saturday morning. Surf was OK -- about 3 foot and onshore. That afternoon we paddled out at Matunuck and Point Judith in ridiculously small waves -- knee-high at best. That night we were back at Dr. Wally's for dinner, beers and Hitchcock's The Birds. What a goofy movie. Even Tippy Hedron's low-rent Grace Kelly imitation couldn't save it.
Sunday, June 16: Prevailing flatness drove us up to the Cape looking for surf. We paddled out at White Crest Beach and Newcomb, near Wellfleet. It was only marginally better than RI. Had dinner with the crew in Providence that night and rolled into NYC in the wee small hours of Monday morning.
Friday, June 21: Interviewed Donna Olson, producer and director of Surfer Girl at her friend's SoHo loft. Remarkable woman; amazing video.
Sunday, June 23: Robert Moses between Fields 2 and 3. Waist-high waves, warm water and a sweet offshore breeze.
Sunday, June 30: Robert Moses again. Took the LIRR again. Except this time it was cold, rainy and onshore. Total slop. Although, Heidi found plastic sea turtle on the beach. She picked it up and took it home with her.
Thursday, July 4: Took the A Train to Rockaway. Junk waves, but we stayed in for about 3 hours anyway. Later we walked down to Tom Sena's shop on 116th St., where I bought a new spring suit. That night we watched the fireworks over the East River from the roof of my building in Brooklyn.
Friday, July 5: Surfed Long Beach and Lido. Sideshore winds, waves a bit better.
Sunday, July 7: Heidi, Stevo and I made the trek out to Lincoln St. at Long Beach. Talk about crowds. Talk about junk waves. Although, we did get to meet locals Will and Wes and the infamous Brendan Perreault. Saw Independence Day at the Long Beach theater that evening. Does anybody else think this movie is a satire of American gung-ho-ism?
Thursday, July 11: Hurricane Bertha's out there and I'm stuck at my desk, writing an article about surfing. Oh, the irony.
Friday, July 12: Took the A Train out to Rockaway to meet Miss Bertha. Fucking finally some real waves! It was a solid 8 foot of long-period groundswell with light offshore winds. I brought my old 7' single-fin pintail cause I thought it was going to be bigger. The board worked fine and it was great to feel some real juice for the first time in a long time. That buzz stayed with me for days.
Sunday, July 14: The whole crew drove out to Moses for the tail-end of Bertha. Except Heidi, she was performing in New Jersey. Wrong beach, wrong tide and wrong wind. None of us could get out to the lineup, if you could call it that. Long drive home that evening.
Saturday, July 20: My sister, Allison, arrived two days ago with her car. To celebrate, Heidi and I drove her out to Long Beach where Heidi bought her first surfboard. Pretty shit-hot board: It's a 7'6" Stewart, double concave, a fair bit of rocker and chine rails. Oh yea, and it's got red-hot flames blazed on the deck. That's a board she'll have to grow into.
We racked the new acquisition and continued east to Montauk. Long drive; lots of traffic. But we arrived in time for an afternoon session in the cove just west of the Ditch. It was fun: head high waves, breaking all over the cove, sometimes opening up fast little sections, sometimes mushing out. Stayed at the Tiki Lodge that night and watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.
Sunday, July 21: Heidi and I surfed Kamikaze's in the morning. Al slept in. That afternoon we explored the old Air Force base near Radar's. What's up with those sealed concrete bunkers? Whatever they got in there, it can't be good.
Returned to the Ditch for a late arvo session and found a nice sandbar near Hither Hills for the evening surf. Small, but fun.
Monday, July 22: Caught the early-morning glass at Ditch. Only four other people out in a weak chest-high swell. Pretty sweet send-off for the long drive back to NYC.
Saturday, July 27: Surfed Jones Beach on a waist-high swell, until the tide rose too high over the bar. Then I fell asleep on the beach. Woke up in the late afternoon and drove out to RM, where there was a shallow bar that would be working.
The water was midsummer-warm and there was with just a hint of evening chill blowing on the wind from shore. One by one, the crowd of surfers who had been contesting the little waves paddled in, until I was alone. My last wave was small, about as high as a sidewalk is wide and, in the reflected light of the setting sun, it shone like a quicksilver path. I set the rail of the board and trimmed a high line across the face. Ahead of me the wave began to fold. Spray whipped from the falling crest like a signal flag and I eased off the rail, slipping down the little hill, around the whitewater and across another silvery incline before falling off the shoulder of the wave. The entire ride took no longer than 10 seconds.
But those 10 seconds are worth more than some whole days spent on land.
Saturday, August 10: Drove out to RM with Mirth and Lorene. Beautiful day, tiny waves.
Sunday, August 11: Hiked out to Democrat Point with Heidi. Waves were still small, and doing strange things on the incoming tide, but at least there was no crowd.
Saturday, August 24: Caught Lido early with Heidi. Waist-high and offshore. Got a few nice little rides. Heidi's getting better too. Stopped off at Aquaduct on the way home to see a man about buying a dog.
Friday, August 30: Called in well to work. Hurricane Edouard's tracking up the coast. Picked up Heidi and Lauren and drove out to RM 2. We get there mid-morning and it's already big. Since the tide was dropping and the swell was building, we suit up immediately and get out there.
The morning was epic, a bunch of fat, fast lefts. On the rides where I beat it around the collapsing sections, I got some sweet rollercoaster action on head-high plus walls. Riding my 7'11" Stewart. I love that board. But the swell was building. I came off a short right and took a big set on the head. Four heavy waves and the lineup was gone, just a dozen or so heads bobbing in the whitewater. Heidi decided it was time to pack it in; Lauren was already on the beach.
I made it back out a couple more times. The last time I sat way outside, breathing hard and looking at what was left of the lineup: four guys. An hour ago there had been 30 out there. Eddy was getting closer.
By afternoon it was too big to paddle out. We tried, but it was like trying to swim upstream in a Class IV set of rapids. We tried Gilgo, but the cops chased us off. They'd already done two rescues that day and they didn't want to get wet again. By Friday night most of Long Island's south shore was closed to the public.
Heidi called me the next day at about 7 am. "Let's drive up to Rhode Island and surf!" she said. Heidi is a friend from college, married to another good friend of mine from school. She is just learning to surf and doesn't have any concept of limits yet.
"I'll call you back after I get some coffee," I said and hung up. I sat looking at maps while the coffee took hold. Rhode Island is normally a 3 hour drive from NYC. On this Labor Day weekend it might be twice that in traffic. But RI also has a rocky coastline that is all points and coves, the only place that could handle a swell this size. I called her back: "Let's go."
Seven hours later we were in the water not far from Watch Hill, Rhode Island. The wind was wrong, but the swell was building.
The next day, Sunday, we went to check Point Judith in the morning. Point Judith is a rocky finger of land that points directly out into the Atlantic, and it was getting hammered. There were two dozen surfers out, scattered in a ragged line stretching back about a mile into Narragansett Bay. They were paddling desperately up and around the waves driving into the bay. One rider got into position and took the drop. From shore, it looked like a man jumping off a two-story building. We decided to surf the other side of the point, behind the breakwater.
Normally, this spot is a placid harbor. On this day the waves were rolling right over the breakwater and reforming in the center of the cove. All the boats, save one, had been taken in. It was bobbing crazily at its mooring as we paddled past it. It was crowded and the lineup kept shifting. Heidi was the only woman out there, paddling blithely up and over the big swell.
I missed the first two waves I tried for; they were moving too fast. I started paddling early for the third wave. It swept me up the wall and for one long second I hung at the crest. Then I felt the board fall away beneath me and I jumped to my feet. Most waves are remembered viscerally -- a jumble of sensations and then it's over. From this wave all I remember is the sudden acceleration of a top turn and laughing when it finally collapsed.
For some reason I remember the
second wave clearly. It started walling up early; a set wave. Several riders tried for it,
but they were too far out. I was paddling easy toward shore, watching the wall rise over
my shoulder. It looked about as high as two subway cars stacked one on top of the other --
maybe 15 feet from trough to crest. There were other surfers between me and the shore so I
took a high line, shooting across the wall above them, amazed at how much room there was
on the face. I heard a whistle. Two longboarders were directly in my path, scrambling to
avoid the whitewater. One of the guys had whistled to warn me. I didn't have the presence
of mind to shout my intention so I just pointed my direction, banked off the top of the
wave, and drove the board through a long arc toward the soup. I didn't see the whitewater,
but I could hear it: a freight train roar closing on my left. At the base of the wave I
reversed direction, carving below the longboarders and back toward the peak. Then another
rollercoaster turn and it was over.
Thursday, Sept 5: Dragged myself out of bed early. NOAA radio said the Fire Island bouy was reading out 8-foot swell in advance of Hurricane Fran. Took the 7-foot pintail, racked car-car and got on the LIE. Made it to Jones Beach in good time, just under an hour. There were only five or six other cars in the lot.
On the long walk across the sand, I tried to get a grip on the time. All my other projects have been put on hold. Just can't concentrate. It's this Alice In Wonderland thing where a door opens up to another funner, more primal universe and you just wander in. The question is, Do you stay?
This is the best time of year. Those peckerhead lifeguards have gone home and the beach is almost empty. Almost: two guys with surf casting rods and a babe in a bikini have made camp at the base of an abandoned lifeguard chair. Where to surf? It all looks good and there's NOBODY OUT.
Finally pick what looks like a relatively quiet section alongside what might be a rip or maybe just a patch of deeper water. The first ride was fast. These waves are only a foot or two overhead, but they pack a punch. Stuffed the next few waves. Wasted a great looking left cause I was too far back on the board. That pintail has to be ridden from the center. Still, I'm pissed at myself and cursing at the sea.
Then I pop up from a duckdive into a field of hissing, white bubbles. It's like God just poured a huge glass of soda, and I'm paddling across the fizzing surface. Suddenly I'm evanescent. I pick off a good left, nail the top turns and fly off the shoulder. The next wave is even better. Next thing I know I'm floating around in the lineup, pounding on my chest and yelling like Tarzan.
Afterwards, I stop in at the Lido surf shop for some wax and end up buying another -- used -- surfboard. This one's a pretty, lemon-yellow 7'6" rounded pintail with hard rails. What the hell, for $200 I couldn't really leave it there. It goes on the car rack and I'm back in Brooklyn with just enough time too take a shower before I go to work. I put the new board on an armchair in the livingroom, where I can look at it.
Monday, September 16: Drove all day from Wally's wedding in Vermont. Picked up Stevo in Providence, we met Heidi at school and continued down to First Beach in Newport. The sun had set. It was getting darker, but we needed a surf real bad, so we paddled out anyway.
It was small, maybe 3 feet, and glassy. There was one other guy out. There was a low cloud cover and no moon. At first we could see the waves, sort of, but as it got darker the little walls just seemed to well up out of nowhere. The other guy packed it in. We moved in a little to be on the waves just as they got to a critical pitch. Caught a few more. It was this loose, oily feeling, slipping along these little waves that were all but invisible. Got a chill, but not from the water temperature. Heidi must have felt it too. We decided to call it a night.
Wednesday, September 18: Weather radio said the Fire Island bouy was ringing in at 7 feet. Unnamed storm system out in the Atlantic, kicking up a little fuss. It was raining, a little cooler out, and the wind was hard offshore.
The tide was almost full at Lido and the 25 mph offshore had pounded the swell down to a compact 4 ft. Trouble was, almost no place was breaking. Walked a long way down the beach before I found a bar that was working. One other guy out. Wished I had brought a bigger board. Tried to get tubed in the itty-bitty barrels. Might have succeeded -- it was hard to tell with my head buried in the lip.
Saturday, September 28: You got to want it bad when you paddle out in 25-knot onshore winds. The crazy thing was there were two other guys already in the water near Robert Moses Field 3.
Predictably, it was all over the place. No lineup, just a lot of water being driven toward shore. The two longboarders were working a piece of water in the lee of a sandbar that was slightly less disorganized than the rest of the ocean. Why not? I paddled out to join them.
The waves, when they stood up and broke, were about waist high. There was no point in paddling for them, since they never broke in the same place twice, so we just moved out to the zone and waited for whatever came along.
I guess there's a zenlike poise to be gained from drifting and waiting for your wave to manifest itself. If so, it was beyond me. After a half-hour of thrashing after phantom peaks, Barney had had enough. I set myself down on the beach and watched in disbelief as three more surfers joined the lunatics already in the water.
Fell asleep on the sand with the wind roaring in my ears and dreamed of falling from an airplane.
Arrived at Gilgo later in the afternoon just as two guys were leaving the water. Can't blame them; it looked nasty, but better than RM3. Gilgo's deep water and persistent sandbar confined the break zone to a section maybe 100 yards long and 20 yards wide. Within that zone it was anarchy, but at least it was limited.
As I was wading in, a cluster of teenagers ran down to the water's edge. The boys stood staring at the ocean with arms folded while two of the girls set a boombox down in the sand and began to dance. They were dressed alike in baggy overalls and white shirts. The wind carried the sound away and I was left with the vision of two brown-haired girls doing the frug on the edge of an angry sea.
And, angry it was. The waves breaking over the bar averaged shoulder-high with an occasional overhead anomaly. Got a few rides here, but mostly paddling out and away from the random peaks. It was enough.
Tuesday, October 8: Gilgo again. Wind hard out of the East--that's sideshore at Gilgo. The remnants of Justine or Jaqueline or whatever her name was had passed Georgia. Sky was leaden and it was spitting rain. No true swell, though.
Been reading Dan Duane's book, CAUGHT INSIDE, and he spends a lot of time obsessing about sharks. Since I was the only one out, I figured I'd be first course. It sort of threw my concentration off. Picked off a few unremarkable rides and left the water just as a hooded surfer was paddling out. Sat on the beach in the rain to watch him.
He seemed untroubled by the growing squall. He paddled up and over the shoulder of a breaking wave and disappeared into the trough. When I saw him again, he was pointed toward shore and in position for a late drop into a shoulder-high wave. To his credit, he got his longboard hybrid down the face and along an uneven wall in a very relaxed style.
Walking back to my apartment in a driving rain, a woman paused on the street to stare at me. This doesn't happen very often, so I stared back. "Is that a surfboard?" she asked, pointing with her chin at the long blue bag hanging from my shoulder. I allowed that it was. "I've got a 9'6" and a 7'4" at home," she said.
You don't meet other surfers everyday in Brooklyn, so we stopped on the sidewalk to talk. Her name's Lisa. Maybe we'll go for a surf before it gets too cold.
