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	>Long Beach is surf city, New York style. Less than an hour by train from Penn Station, Long Beach is a quiet town of one-way streets and perfectly manicured postage-stamp lawns. And with a core of about 500 year-round surfers and seven surf shops, Long Beach -- and the neighboring towns of Lido and Atlantic Beach -- is also the center of a thriving surf culture. It's a strange amalgam of Long Island kitsch, California cool and New York attitude. You could call it "yo aloha," but most surfers just call it home. >Minutes before sunrise on a recent Thursday morning, Dave Juan and his buddy, Mike Salerno, paddled out at Lido Beach. The nor'easter that had been raging for the past week had blown out to sea and left perfect overhead waves in its wake. As the sun climbed over the Atlantic, Juan and Salerno worked the shifting peaks, dropping down near-vertical wave faces and pulling into coffee-colored barrels. Late in the 5-hour session Juan hooked the wave of the day. It was a set wave, largest in a train of waves, and the lip pitched out as Juan sprang to his feet. The surfer disappeared for a moment behind the curtain of water and then emerged ahead of the curl to carve a series of fast turns before the swell spent itself on the sand. >"It was bombing!" Juan said after the session. "There was some sick pits." Dave Juan started surfing at Laurelton Boulevard in Long Beach 12 years ago. Now 25, he has already won a New York State title and last month he opened Long Beach's newest surf shop, Unsound Surf. >Although he looks like a prototypical California surfer with his long blond hair and year-round tan, Juan's home is here. After a few winters surfing on the West Coast, he can cite two good reasons to stay in New York. "Crowds and water quality," Juan said. "Because once it rains there, you can't go in the water. Dead cats floating by . . . and the plastic, the most plastic you've ever seen in your life." >Juan takes the East Coast flat spells in stride. "It allows you to work," he said. "It gives you time to take care of your priorities. But most of the time there's always a little bump. If you've got enough stoke in you, you'll enjoy yourself no matter what." >In Long Beach at least, Juan has found acceptance of his chosen path. "People around here have a great respect for (surfing)," Juan said. "They understand the beauty of it all and the freeness of your mind when you're out there." >At the fourth annual Beast of the East held May 16 at Lido Beach, the surf tribe met to compare notes. The contest drew over 100 amateur surfers from up and down the East Coast as well as 30 professional riders. Everything was there except the waves. Surf, especially on this coast, is an ephemeral thing. Where a few days before, locals had tucked into peeling tubes, wetsuited competitors now hopped along waist-high walls in a desperate attempt to preserve momentum. >Nobody seemed to mind. The sun was out, splashes of bikinied girls dotted the sand, music was blaring from the competitors' tent and some of the best surfers on the Right Coast were in the water. >"It all went pretty well," said Brian Walsh, manager of Lido Surf and Sport and a key organizer of the contest. "The waves were small, but those guys were still ripping." >Surfing has been marketed hard lately. Everyone from J. Crew to Guess has tried to capture the buzz, however the nature of the sport still eludes packagers. Surfing is essentially a private pursuit, open only to those who are willing to schedule their lives around storm and tide. But that hasn't stopped manufacturers from turning out related products like skateboards and snowboards, and it hasn't hurt retailers who are finding new customers among the board generation. This ground swell of popularity is seen in towns like Long Beach, where two new surf shops have opened this spring. >"In the last two or three years Long Beach has become more of a surf town than anything," said Larry Herrick, who has been surfing here for nine of his 23 years. For him, surfing was just what you did in Long Beach. "The whole beach scene growing up ... boogie boards -- you just graduate to it," Herrick explained. >One of the top riders in the region, Herrick works as a lifeguard at Long Beach. Like other locals, Herrick sees surfing as something more than a pastime. "It's more of a religion than a sport," he said. "The feeling's not the same with other sports. Surfing is a natural experience of life and being in tune with the ocean." >For some New Yorkers that's a tough concept to grasp. "People definitely don't understand," Herrick said. "I've had a problem with that. Once surfing becomes a lifestyle it's like, 'C'mon grow up already.'" >-- Rob Cummings
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