The Ripple Effect
“Are there any tickets left?” I asked, breathless, as we arrived late to opening night of The Endless Summer 2. Growing up a landlocked US East Coaster, I naively expected it to be sold out. “Uh, yeah,” the usher replied, “there are tickets left.”
We were the only three in the theater.
Wherever I lived throughout the years, be it Philadelphia, New York, or Israel, I’ve made the trek to the water no matter the distance. My summers during higher education weren’t spent interning. I took jobs as a surf instructor on the West Coast in Malibu and Santa Cruz. You could always tell the difference between those who took a lesson as if it were a bungee jump and those who got the bug.
My surfing adolescence was spent in New England, braving the below-freezing temperatures in 7-millimeter wetsuits. I began college there in the pre-internet era, receiving my first email address only midway through my education. I chose my university by chance after my older sibling utterly rejected the school. “We’re not far from the beach, you know?” my parents told me. I couldn’t wrap my brain around the idea that the water was mere minutes away. The only context I had for beach life was New Jersey and Florida where the city met the sand. The campus’ surroundings where we were looked more like Upstate NY.
As I stepped out of the car at the town beach, the waves were properly overhead. I’m not sure I ever saw the town beach bigger. And just like that, with no research, I randomly chose one of the best surf schools just a five hour drive from my hometown. Back in those days, the magazines defined surf culture. Whenever I told people I surfed, no matter where I was, the constant refrain was, “Is there even surf on the East Coast?”
Not long into my freshman year I met one of my closest friends, Jon, at an event advertising a ski trip, of all places. We hit it off right away. The big difference between us is that Jon had a car. “I’ll pick you up at 5 a.m. on Tuesday,” he told me. I didn’t even know people got up that early, let alone to surf. To this day, sessions that don’t begin in the dark almost don’t seem worthwhile.
The surf was better than anything I’d ever seen — well, definitely better than anything I’d ever surfed before. Most of the spots were peeling green walls, groomed by stiff autumn offshores. There were times that Jon and I surfed overhead perfection with no one else out. When others were around, I couldn’t help myself. At the time I rode strictly longboards and I would take any wave I could scratch into. “You're a wave hog,” Jon told me. The news hit me hard but that’s because it was true. From that point on I did all I could to share the lineup.
Before my college career began, I was told there was a student surf club. Upon my arrival, I found it not to be the case. A surf buddy of mine and general school enthusiast, Lauren, and I quickly set about changing that. We rebirthed the surf club which limped along until my graduation. There were two yearly events: Welcome Day and the Spring Break Surf Trip. Each year began with a “Learn to Surf Day” at the town beach. It never garnered us much membership but we got a lot of people in the water. A few of those people joined us for the Avon, NC Spring Break surf trip. We loaded upwards of thirty people into a beach house and did nothing but surf for the entire week.
One of our ventures South was blessed with a solid swell — shoulder to head-high plus. Avon, like Hatteras, is notorious for punchy hollow beach breaks. Surfers who grow up there, like Brett Barley, have minimal learning curves at places like Pipeline. One morning, when the waves were dredging, short rides — a massive wall of water came barreling down on us. I was not in position for the wave, but someone gifted it to me nonetheless. The ride seemed to be endless. When I returned to the lineup, I asked why he didn’t go. The other student shrugged it off as nothing. That afternoon we visited a local surf shop and I was regaling the story of the morning wave. “I heard about that,” the shop owner replied. I felt as if I had cheated on a test. It wasn’t really my wave.
The number of days I spent surfing solid Northeasters, staring up at the snow have become a blur at this point. But one string of swell sticks out in particular. The hurricane season of 1999 almost killed the majority of us — not necessarily because of its size but rather its duration. The East Coast mentality is you have to go when it’s good because it’s fleeting. In the days when we called surf shop answering machines to find out the conditions three hours ago, no one predicted a straight month of swell. When it came to an end, we were all gutted — arms rubbery, skin chafed, and feet cut from unending rockdances.
There’s a specific image from that fall that's forever seared into my memory. We all knew the waves were big but it felt taboo to say 20 feet. It was the East Coast, after all. But proof came about a month later. There had been rumors that Aaron Chang, the famed Surfing Magazine photographer, had been in the neighborhood. Things like that didn’t just happen. West Coast photographers never wasted their time traveling east.
But there it was, in our hands a month later — documented evidence of a lone surfer, taking on some of the biggest waves any of us had ever seen. The board he rode must have been at least an 8-foot gun and midway down the face there was significant space both above and below him. In a way, that exposé shattered the myth that there’s no surf on the right coast.
When the time came for me to move away from my old college town, something broke inside of me. I knew I’d never be the same and I knew I would never find its equal. And in some ways that’s true. I moved from there to New York for a time, hitting up Far Rockaway and Long Beach, ultimately landing in Israel, where I still surf regularly. For years I would visit the States with my family. I had a standing arrangement with my wife — if the surf came up in that old college town when we were in New York, I’d make a strike mission to catch dawn patrol one more time and be back before evening fell.
The agreement lay dormant for nearly a decade until the stars finally aligned. I milked it for everything I could, leaving midday so I could get evening glass off and then dawn patrol before returning to my familial responsibilities. Something was different about that first session. It wasn’t the waves though. Serendipitously, the large majority of the surfers I knew descended on the same spot. It felt like the scene in Big Wednesday when Jack comes home and surfs for the first time after his tour in Vietnam. The vibe felt like a homecoming.
Then one of the people turned to me and asked if I remembered him. Even after multiple memory jogs, I still wasn’t fully sure. Then he told me something I couldn’t believe — “You pushed me into my first wave at the Surf Club’s Welcome Day,” he told me. “And I came to North Carolina for spring break, as well.”
Still reeling from the sunset session, maybe high from the nostalgia, I found myself stumbling into the Student Union as the Surf Club happened to be meeting. When my tenure ended, I didn’t even know if anyone took over.
I snuck in early and watched people file in. I wanted to be a fly on the wall. Unlike the early days, they actually got things done. The club I watched was almost unrecognizable to its humble roots. As the meeting came to a close, the organizer addressed the group. “You know, we're very lucky tonight because one of the founders of the Surf Club is here, with us.”
As I recently made my way to the beach in the dark, I wondered when my children would be old enough to join me on a predawn adventure. When would they learn the lesson that “it’s first light or it ain't right”? They’ve already spent plenty of time in the water, and surfing is definitely more than a bungee jump for them. But it’s clear that these little pushes onto waves, and time spent surfing with those around us has ripple effects that we may only understand in retrospect.
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