CitySurfer's Journal: Fall 1996
Saturday, November 23, 1996
This was to be the last surf of the year.
Picked up the rental car at one in the afternoon and drove it back to Brooklyn. Loaded it up with gear and fit the board inside. Drove out of town over the Verrazanno Bridge and south into New Jersey.
Figured I'd get as far as Delaware, then sleep. But the brand-new Dodge was running smooth, traffic was light, the moon was out and the scenery, as I sped on into the Southland, became progressively more surreal.
On Rt. 17 south of Norfolk, VA, the scenery just disappeared. No lights, no farmhouses in moonlit fields, just a line of trees by the side of the road and then darkness. It was a deep, enveloping kind of darkness that seemed to swallow light. It was the Dismal Swamp.
Rolled through the deserted streets of Elizabeth City, NC, around 2 am and took a left for the coast. The road to the coast was foggy, lots of bridges over salt marsh. Saw one police cruiser and two deer.
From the bridge, the scattered lights of this coastal town looked like a massive airport, wide avenues running parallel to the sea awaiting fat cargo planes filled with illegal produce from foreign shores. Barney has landed.
Sunday, November 24
Awoke in a Kitty Hawk motel room around noon.
Jenny Somebody was on MTV, herding gormless boys around the set. Some-Body is right, that woman is full of kinetic potential. Drove south in search of breakfast. No luck in the few places that were open, so settled for a plate of fries and some coffee served by a relentlessly chipper waitress.
Caught perfectly clean, waist high swell near the Bodie Light in the afternoon. There were three other guys on the peak, but they were pretty friendly to the kook that had just paddled out. One of the guys caught a nice one and rode it nearly to the beach.
"Not bad, Rollo," his buddy yelled, "but no brownie." The guy turned around to face me. "It's a contest," he explained, "first guy to ride one all the way to the beach gets the last brownie in the fridge."
Made camp that night in a half-empty campground with a permanent colony of gypsy RVs. Rarely saw the RV people, only abandoned lawn chairs and drying hip-waders hinted at their presence. .
Monday, Nov. 25 Checked the surf at the lighthouse in the morning -- cold and sloppy. Drove to the Wright Memorial at Kill Devil Hills later that day. This is where Orville and Wibur finally got their gas-powered kite off the ground nearly 100 years ago. Practically everybody thought they were nuts, except one old Outer Banker who was there December 17, 1903. "Goddamn, if I didn't see a man fly," he said.
Tuesday:
Took a walk in the Frisco campground am. That place would be a great place to skateboard.
That afternoon surfed onshore slop with one other guy, who had driven all the way from Athens, Georgia. He didn't care how bad it was, he was going in no matter what. Wind is kicking up some swell though.
Wednesday:
Caught Frisco good in the arvo. Shoulder high, clean, hollow and no one out except Barney and the dolphins.
Thanksgiving Day.
Checked surf in the morning at the lighthouse. Pretty small and really cold wind blowing. Most of the guys who were in the water were wearing hooded 5mm suits. Brrr.
Drove to Kitty Hawk Kites and joined a group of four other junior birdmen on the dunes. Listened carefully as the instructor explained how to strap into a hanglider and how to work the control-bar. "Let the glider fly you," he said. Yea, I thought, like moving with the wave.
Then, with the instructor running alongside, I charged down the dune with the kite on my shoulders until the thing began pulling up on the harness and my feet lost touch with the ground. I was flying -- only about five feet off the ground and only for 50 yards or so -- but, goddamn if I wasn't flying.
Grabbed a 7-11 burrito for dinner and drove back home to camp.
Friday, Nov. 29
Caught it good in the morning at Frisco. It was perfect and shoulder-high again. The crowd was doing the lemming thing up at the Bodie light, but there wasn't a soul out at this blessed sandbar.
Struck camp, packed the car and was back in Brooklyn by midnight.
Monday, November 4, 1996
Andrew and Barney have had some dumb adventures together, but today was one of the dumbest. They were bivouacked for the weekend at Andrew's place in Sag Harbor. Saturday and Sunday they drove over to Montauk to check the surf. Nothing. Zippo. Flatter than flat. Monday held more of the same, so by Monday afternoon the boys were ready for some -- any -- exercise.
Over a couple of beers at lunch, Andrew suggested they go surf-touring in the bay.
"Whaddya mean, surf-touring?" Barney asked.
"You know, just take the surfboards and paddle down the bay, look around," Andy explained.
"But it's freezing out and there's no waves on the bay."
"So. What else are you doing?"
"Uh, I guess so," Barney said. "Yea, OK."
They pulled the car up near a Nature Conservancy beach just west of Sag Harbor. The wind was coming off the Great Peconic Bay at about 20 knots. The air temperature was probably in the low 40s, the water temp just below 50. While Andy and Barney spent a few minutes hopping around trying to pull on their thick wetsuits, Andy's dog, Kombu, took off into the reeds.
Barney waded into the shallow bay with his old 7 ft. pintail. Andy followed with an 8 ft. funboard. "Kombu!" Andy yelled. The chocolate Labrador poked its head out of the reeds and came trotting down to the beach. Andy yelled again and the brown dog paddled out after them.
Barney took off at a good clip, as if he were trying to paddle over an oncoming set, but there were no waves, only the cold wind chop and a deserted stretch of beach. They paddled past million-dollar homes, closed for the season. They paddled past tall stands of marsh grass and wind-gnarled oaks.
Andy slipped off his board and stood up in the waist-deep water. "This is work," he said. "Look how clear the water is. I can see the shells on the bottom." Andy kicked a shell loose with his neoprene boot. He towed his board by the legrope as he walked along, surveying the bottom. Barney kept paddling.
At last they got to a sand bridge, a narrow part of a larger peninsula. "Guess we'll have to portage," Andy said. Barney was already ahead of him, climbing up the berm.
"Look, ducks!" Barney exclaimed, pointing at a wedge of mallards in the estuary on the other side of the bridge. Kombu had seen the ducks, too, and he began the hunt by circling around the water and through the well-manicured suburban lawns that fronted the brackish inlet. Andy and Barney took the direct route, charging into the water and paddling madly after the ducks. But the ducks were too fast.
Andy stopped paddling. "I'm tired," he said.
Barney sat up on his board and looked around. Most of the houses appeared to be empty. Floating docks were stacked neatly on the lawns, canoes and small sailboats sat in their cradles. One old man had set up a lawnchair to watch the rubber-clad idiots paddle past. He waved.
"Nice day to go duck hunting," the old man called.
"We're not duck hunting; we're surf-touring," Barney corrected.
The trio crossed the inlet and walked along the muddy edge of a salt marsh. "Maybe we should turn back. It's getting late," Barney said, "and I'm cold."
Andy nodded. "OK, let's just cross the peninsula here and put in on the other side." They carried their boards over sands that seemed pink in the setting sun and through stands of cypress, down to the Peconic Bay.
The wind had picked up and it was colder. Kombu followed them into the water, but quickly retreated to shore where he easily kept pace with the slow paddlers. Out on the bay, a red speck and a blue speck appeared. As they drew closer, the boys could see that it was two kayakers.
When the boats were close enough to the figures crawling across the surface of the water, the man in the blue kayak said, "What are you doing?"
"Surf-touring," Andy explained.
"Oh. Aren't you cold?"
"Not if we keep moving," Barney answered, while paddling purposefully down the bay.
"Uh, well, have fun," the kayaker said as he turned his craft toward Sag Harbor. Soon the kayaks were just specks on the horizon again.
"Andy, I've got to get back to the car. I'm freezing," Barney said.
"OK," Andy said, "I'll see you there."
Barney paddled the whole way back and then sprinted from the water for the shelter of the car. He got the engine running and sat inside, blasting the heat. It didn't stop the shivering. Eventually Andy arrived at the beach, walking through the water and towing his board. He said something that Barney couldn't hear.
Barney rolled down the window. "Huh?" he said.
"Have you seen Kombu?" Andy asked.
"No. I thought he was with you," Barney said. Andrew put his board on the car and began shouting the dog's name.
"Kombu!" he yelled. Andy looked pretty funny standing on that suburban street at sundown in his wetsuit and wool hat chanting that nonsense word at the top of his lungs. "We've got to go look for him," Andy said.
Barney pictured an alarmed homeowner greeting this strange, rubber intruder with a shotgun. "Uh, you go look. I'll stay here, in case he comes back," Barney said. Andy walked off stiff-legged into the subdivision, shouting "Kombu!" Barney revved the car's engine fiddled with the heat controls.
When it was almost dark, Andy came back. "He isn't here," he said. "Maybe he followed those kayakers." So the boys drove a couple of miles to a beach that is popular with boaters. Andy bounded out of the car and accosted a guy who was roller skating in the parking lot. The skater took a step back and Andy pointed a rubber finger toward the beach they just left and along the miles of coastline. The skater nodded and pointed to a house up on the hill.
Andy found his dog in the yard of the house on the hill, tired but unharmed. The three of them returned to the house where Kombu fell asleep on the kitchen floor and the boys made a beeline for the scotch.
"You should really get some tags for that dog," Barney said.
"Nah, he only gets lost once or twice a year," Andy said.
Saturday afternoon, October 26: Another beautiful day. That same crew of diehards were in the parkinglot at RM 3, hanging out and talking.
The path through the dunes to the beach had been fenced off for erosion control. Minor annoyance. Suited up and hopped over the fence, following the tracks of many others who had done the same thing.
The swell was small. Lili done gone, but there were still waist-high waves breaking over a bar that wasn't there before. It wasn't perfect: most of the waves were closing out, but every 15th wave hit the bar at an angle and peeled for up to 100 yards.
One kid out there had it wired. He was a goofyfoot and he read the break well. He jumped on those peelers and worked them until they slid into deeper water.
Barney didn't do as well, but I stayed out there for two hours, trying. When I got back to the parkinglot those guys were still standing around talking. Don't they have wives to meet or lawns to mow? What are they doing spending all their time at the beach?
That night Barney went to the old-guys bar on the corner to watch the ballgame. He talked to a girl named Eve and drank dollar buds and reprogrammed the jukebox to play Gamelan music and Mormon hymnals instead of Sinatra. Later he staggered home and barked up his dinner.
Thursday, October 24: Miss Lili has not been chary with her favors. Miso again. Still overhead and the faces are a little cleaner with sideshore/offshore breeze out of the west, northwest. It was a beautiful, sunny day in the Indian summer.
Should have been stoked just to be out there, but my mind was elsewhere. Left a lot of projects unfinished on my desk and I didn't really feel like surfing (?!). But true swell comes so rarely to this godforsaken coast that it's a crime to miss days like this. So I dragged my lazy ass through traffic on the LIE and out to the beach.
There was an old guy standing on the dune, one hand shading his eyes as if saluting the ocean. The wave faces caught the morning sun and winked back.
"What d'ya think?" I asked.
"It's a mess," he said without breaking his pose, "but there's two guys out way down there."
"OK," I said enthusiastically, "time to go take my lumps."
The first wave walled-up fast and I was too slow paddling into it. I got caught in the lip and watched in dismay as my board fell through the air beneath me, certain that I would soon follow. That's when I remembered that surfing is something you must commit to -- it's no good without the focus.
That old Zen hippie saying, 'Be here now,' does have some real life applications. Kundera wrote a novel called Life Is Elsewhere. I never read it, but I always thought that title sort of summed up the modern condition. Lives are going on all around us and most of them seem more real that the ones we lead. So my focus drifts, swept along on a current of free associations and happenstance, until I arrive at some critical point in my actual life and realize that I haven't been paying attention.
I surfaced after a few moments in the spin cycle and breathed in a great draught of sea foam. Coughing, I looked up at the steely beast rising over the sandbar. Its face was striated by the wind and the unseen force that causes tons of seawater to pile up and come crashing down on hapless sods like me. I dove for the bottom and grabbed for the sand with both hands. It was futile. That 7-foot foam sandwich attached to my leg plucked me off the bottom and dragged me back into the soup.
Gasping, wheezing and coughing outside I wondered what would have happened if I broke my back in that last wipeout. This wasn't just one of those intimations of mortality that come with age, it was a legitimate exploration of an alternate life. What if I planted my head in the sand and felt that mortal crack? Maybe I'd wash into shore and eventually some paramedics would hustle down to the beach and strap me to gurney and at the hospital the doctors would cut away my wetsuit and shake their heads and tell me i'd never walk again and then what? Guess I'd spend a lot more time at my desk, working and trying to remember what it was like when I could still feel my dick getting hard. It could be a good thing -- mandatory focus. With the two big distractions in my life -- waves and women -- excised, I'd have to concentrate on the work. Right?
Caught a few more waves. Didn't ride any of them well. Finally got out of the water about a half-mile from where I got in and walked back to where I had left my bag.
Monday, October 21: Miso Beach (Lido) was woolly.
Hurricane Lili is waay out in the Atlantic, tracking toward the Azores, but she sent us a few of her calling cards. It was head-high plus a foot and the wind was sideshore; there was also a little cross-chop left over from the noreaster two days ago. Saw one guy pull into a beautiful full-coverup tube before it totally swallowed him in a closeout. Nearly got shacked myself, but I spazzed before the coverup and stuffed it.
Real tough paddleout on the incoming tide.
Sunday, October 20: It came from the Bronx in rivulets and streams. It flowed from Queens in torrents and tributaries and it bubbled up from Brooklyn in sluicing torrents of trash.
The Noreaster yesterday swept the city clean, flooding sewers and drains with weeks of detritus, flushing it down the Hudson, out the East River, through Jamaica Bay and right past Coney Island.
Why surf Coney Island? I don't know. It came to me in a dream, or after a dream, when the wind that had been howling all of Saturday stopped and I awoke, well past midnight to a sudden stillness. I flicked on the weather radio. It was Victory at Sea time. The bouy 20 miles out from Fire Island Inlet was reading swell in the 16-18 foot range and Ambrose Tower, the bouy at the mouth of New York harbor, was reading a solid 10 foot. With the wind at 20 to 30 knots out of the East, most of Long Island's south shore would be a hash. A protected beach was needed. City Island in the Sound would be a longshot, but Coney Island, little Coney -- from the Dutch word for rabbit -- hiding in the lee of Breezy Point, might just break.
I decided to try Sunday afternoon, on the outgoing tide.
The kid on the subway platform with the goatee and the Buddy Holly glasses did a double-take when he saw the board tucked under my arm. "Are there waves today?" he asked.
"Uh, yea, we got a little Noreaster goin on."
"So where you going, Rockaway?"
"No," I said, "Coney Island."
New Yorkers are a pretty blase lot. I could probably strip naked and bring a giraffe on a leash through the subways and nobody would blink, but for some reason a surfboard invites conversation. Here are some things New Yorkers have said to me when they see the surfboard (usually wrapped in blanket or board bag) on the subway:
"Is that a kayak?"
"Where you goin, Hawaii?"
"You got to wrap it up, so it don't blow away." (huh?)
"Is that a surfboard?"
"So, what kind of instrument do you play?" (It's a cello, lady.)
On the G and the F trains under, and over Brooklyn, past Prospect Park and Greenwood Cemetery, final resting place of Samuel Morse, Horace Greeley and retired mobster Joey Gallo, through Borough Park and Bensonhurst, finally making the turn at Sheepshead Bay (final resting place of many other illustrious mobsters, currently sleeping with the fishes) the F Train clattered to a halt at the Aquarium, Coney Island, and I got out.
In the summer, Coney Island is a walking freak show. But on a chilly, overcast day in the fall, it was strangely quiet. I could hear the barking of the seals in their tank at the aquarium and the susseration of traffic on Surf Avenue.
I had to piss bad. The bathroom on the beach was bolted shut for the season, so I ducked under the boardwalk. There was a fisherman-dude there doing the same thing and another guy a few yards away, taking a dump and eyeing us warily over his shoulder. Welcome to Coney Island.
The beach was wide and pounded flat from the hard rain. There was a swell there, but the waves were just walling up and closing out. I walked down the beach toward the pier. A few couples in overcoats were walking on the strand and a pair of treasure hunters were listening to the sand with metal-detectors and earphones clamped over their heads. There was an amazing amount of stuff in the incorporated into the beach: tampon applicators, bubblegum wrappers, balls, brooms, cans, condoms, fish, styrofoam and one ex-seagull, mostly decomposed.
The pier, oddly enough, had formed no worthwhile sandbars at all -- no break. I turned around and walked back toward Brighton Beach and the Aquarium. A girl with a shaved head was kicking at a stick in the sand with her army boots. She looked up from that project to say hi.
"Are you going surfing?" she asked. She was German. German tourists show up in the strangest places. She had a nice smile, kind of cute, except she had no hair.
"Yea, but not here. It's no good."
"I think you should give it a try," she said.
"Well, I'm here. I guess I have to."
Nothing doing at Brighton either. The best break was a closeout across from a 20-story apartment building. The set waves were about head high and the water was shit-brown and cold.
A small crowd gathered on the beach to watch me get launched from thick lips and drilled into the knee-deep water below. I got a couple of short rides, but mostly it was Punch and Judy action with the Atlantic doing most of the punching. One by one, the crowd turned away and dispersed. They were expecting Pipeline, maybe?
I, however, found this abolution in filthy water inexplicably therapeutic. Kept getting dumped and paddling back out. Finally, it got hard to see. It was still light out, but there was some sort of shit in the water that was making my eyes film over. Time to go in.
Now, squinting at the screen, nose draining, imbibing cheap scotch and mildly concerned about contracting hepatitis, I wonder why the fuck I bother. I don't know.
I'm here. I guess I have to.
