Learning to Surf in Queens

Some New Yorkers have long known there are good surf spots within the city limits. Now that knowledge is spreading, and the New York Times reports on surf lessons at Rockaway Beach, a small corner of Queens that has also become something of a hipster summer hangout.

I knew people surfed in the Rockaways; I just figured they were all hard-core, wet-suited hipsters. But kids?

Though no one we knew had ever gone, we signed up for surf camp for the first week of July and hoped for the best.

After an hour of instruction Paulina and nine other city kids were standing, catching waves, as their parents watched, jaws wide open.

“I figured they’d get up later in the week,” said Heidi Meier, mother of Victoria, 10, and Leah, 6, who live in the Rockaways. “But I was shocked. My kids are now surfers.”

By Day 2 the campers were knee deep in surfing lingo, peppering their speech with “gnarly” and giving each other the shaka sign.

For the past three years Skudin Surf, an outfit based on Long Island, has been teaching city kids to surf at Rockaway Beach, immersing them in a culture that many parents must have assumed was way out of reach.

To read the rest of the story, click here.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 21st, 2012 at 7:00 am. It is filed under New York City, Surfing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.