Long Island, New York, USA

New York The summer of 1934 saw Tom Blake on Long Island, teaching the children of a wealthy businessman to swim. He met up with the lifeguards at Jones Beach who were already pro surfboards being used as lifesaving equipment and were stoked when Tom showed up with the latest model hollow paddleboards. Charlie Bunger started shaping out of his garage back in 1962, then opened Long Island’s first surf shop in Copiague the following year. Other notable shapers early on included Jack Hand and Bob Hawkins, who shared the empty line-ups with a crew that included George Fisher, Billy Shelton, Rowly Eisenberg, and Eric Eastman. These lucky locals had it to themselves until things got really busy in the mid-1960’s, when popular Californian imports became available alongside the local boards. The huge population of nearby NYC provided plenty of customers for the expanding surf industry, which spread out towards Montauk. But the arrival of the shortboard era really took its toll on the public’s interest in surfing here, as beginners became easily frustrated with the small, unstable boards. Although some big companies, like Surfjet, flooded the market with boards in the early 1970’s. The scene stayed fairly quiet and predictable right through the twin- and tri-fin eras until the modern mal resurgence saw a marked increase of surfers in the line-ups of New York.

New Jersey Glittering casinos now dominate the shoreline around Atlantic City’s Steel Pier area, where the Duke treated beachgoers to that surfing exhibition back in 1912. Subsequent “swimming tours” during the roaring 1920s brought Johnny Weissmuller (of Tarzan fame) and other great swimmers to these beaches. Summertime visitors enjoyed various forms of wavecraft at the state’s crowded resort until, by 1939, surfing was banned at many of the most popular locations where one too many solid wood boards or sharp, thin belly boards had taken out the legs of an unsuspecting citizen, wading in the shallows. Surfing remained generally taboo in New Jersey until 1963, when Cecil Lear and several other surfers banned together to form The Jersey Surfing Association and asked permission to hold a surfing contest. Permission was granted, and the club began meeting and organizing competitions with other surf clubs up and down the coast. Charlie Keller and Bill Yerkes were pioneers in the East Coast surf rep scene, filling their station wagons with surf gear and accessories and travelling up and down the coast from their base in Lavallette. They weren’t alone, since West Coast heavyweights — like Hobie, Bing Copeland, Dewey Weber, Greg Noll, and Hansen — were heavily flogging the East Coast market for surfboard sales by the mid-1960’s. Even Surfer magazine started covering events on the Atlantic shore, following leading surfers like David Nuuhiwa and Jeff Hakman when they came back to compete in the major contests. No history of mid-Atlantic surfing could pass without a mention of Dan Heritage who made his first surfboard after seeing an ad in Popular Mechanics magazine, circa 1962. Although the resulting stick only lasted half an hour in the shorebreak, Dan went on to become one of Jersey’s most influential shapers and a surf-industry stalwart. He established Little Waves (an early East Coast surfer’s joke) in Sea Isle in 1964, then changed the name to Heritage Surf and Sport in the 1970’s. The Heritage family continues to run a string of Jersey surf shops, despite Dan’s untimely death in 1997, just after his induction by Greg Noll into the inaugural East Coast Legends Hall of Fame roster.

Delaware and Maryland Historically, Delaware and Maryland have lagged behind neighboring states in maturing a population of surfers and, thus, surf advocacy. Nevertheless, a large contingent were regularly hitting the Indian River and Ocean City waves by the late 1960s. Skip Savage ran Surf Shop East during the 1960’s attracting large crowds of longboarders to Rehoboth Beach. Since then, Ocean City has become the focus, providing a home for many modern surf shops and the year round crew are always ready for action regardless of the conditions.

Virginia During the 1920s and 1930’s, a few solid surfboards, made of redwood or mahogany, arrived on the Atlantic coast from places like Hawaii and California before the Tom Blake paddleboard era arrived in the late 1930’s. Tom Smith and Babe Braithwaite were notable Virginia beach locals, responsible for introducing the first solid board to Florida pioneers, Bill and Dudley Whitman. Some teenagers got to stay at home and surf through WWII, but things were pretty quiet until about 1951, when the first balsa boards started to filter through from Hawaii and the West Coast. The most popular spot in Virginia was the Steel Pier, which was located at Rudee Inlet; modern-day feuds with fishermen were as yet non-existent, and shooting the pier was a common pastime. Bob Holland opened Virginia Beach’s first surf shop in the early 1960’s, stocking Jacobs, Webers, Hansens, and Hobies, but the shop closed soon after, partly because people thought the logo T-shirts in the window were actually undershirts, not street wear. Surf fashion was in its infancy! But the late 1960’s surf explosion brought surf clubs, competitions, local board manufacturers, and crowds to the line-up. Virginia then followed the rest of the East Coast into the stale 1970’s and anonymous 1980’s before the 1990’s brought renewed interest and the desire of local governments to embrace and expand surfing within the state. A large amateur competition scene has grown up in the Mid-Atlantic states, and over the years a few notable surfers from Virginia (including Wes Laine and Todd Holland) have made the transition to the professional ranks and the world’s liquid stage.