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Tracks Across America 1 – New York City Surfers

The low down on all the surfing tribes of New York with local Matt Clark.
The low down on all the surfing tribes of New York with local Matt Clark.

Wax up your shooter, start rooting for your favourite surfer and get ready to drop in on Uncle Sam. Tracks is heading to the US’, following the tour from New York to Trestles and getting pipe deep in all things septic tank. We’ll be covering the action in and around the events, via a series of blogs, so stay tuned to Tracksmag.com over the month of September; it’ll be the next best thing to going for a burger and fries with Obama.

Below, Tracks’ man on the ground and resident New York photographer, Matt Clarke, provides a run-down on what to expect wave-wise for the contest and talks about the vibrant NY surf scene.

Classic view of a draining barrel across the beach on a more easterly swell with NE winds. Pic: Matt Clark

A SURFER IN NEW YORK

The contest area will be looking for a more northerly wind (NE – WNW) during the contest period, which starts on the 3rd of September. Ideally, New York would get a long period ground swell from a Hurricane that hooks out into the Atlantic and doesn’t make landfall in the Northeast United States. A swell direction coming from S, SE, SSE, E, or even ENE  can work along Long Island’s beaches.

Long Beach, where the contest is held, is a series of jetties, each of which has it’s own characteristics depending on swell direction and size. With a good south swell, you can expect long lines with lots of big sections to hit depending on the size. Too big and it will begin to close out. On a more Easterly long period swell, the lefts off the jetty will suck up and grind across the beach with plenty of tube time and sections to air over and scoot back into the barrel before doing a turn at the other end of the beach.

Keeping an eye on the north west coast of Africa is a good spot for indications of coming storms that could potentially dish out the swell that the contest will be running on. It takes between 6-10 days for a low pressure system that moves off Africa’s North West coast to make it’s way across the Atlantic Ocean, curve north west of the Caribbean, and hook back north east off of Long Island, NY to give us swell. There’s potential for a storm to pop up off of the south eastern United States or Caribbean as well, so keeping your eyes peeled and the weather channel on is a daily practice living on the East Coast. 
There are quite a few groups of surf communities throughout New York. There’s the east end surfers who are made up of underground shortboard guys who don’t get too much attention, though they have a great surf art scene out there and really live a more 1970s type of lifestyle – quite a few very good longboarders out there as well. Then there’s the Central Long Island surfers who don’t have too much of a scene, they tend to associate with either the western side or eastern side surfers.

This is the view through the boardwalk of an average day. Pic: Matt Clark

Central Long Island is a somewhat long strip of sandy beach breaks that get good somewhat often though are missing the diversity of breaks that the Eastern End has and also lack the jetties that the west end have. The west end of Long Island, closest to NYC is what most people think of when they think of surfing in NY. There’s lots of great beachbreaks, shorebreaks, and jetties.

The closer to NYC you get, the worse the waves tend to be as a general rule of thumb, with the best spot for the contest and surf being the eastern edge of the western section. The Long Beach area has it’s own little vibe, it’s very surfie with people riding bicycles instead of driving cars and it features a two-mile wooden boardwalk. There’s dozens of jetties, most of which are named after states or presidents of the U.S. Further west towards NYC you come to the Rockaways (Made famous by the song “Rockaway Beach” by the Ramones who were fromQueens). The Rockaways are on a bit of an upswing as of late with less and less nude crazy people who are either on drugs or just plain crazy to be found out on the beach, but as anywhere in NY, they can be found if you look. This is where most of the “city” dwelling surfers surf, though depending on a couple of factors, they may also be found surfing out in the Hamptons in front of the multi-million-dollar homes, which line the beachfront.

New York grommet James Theobald pulling in on the left at Long Beach. Pic: Matt Clark

Matt’s Overview of The Local New York Surf Scene

There are all types of people who surf in NY, from the NYC business men who work on wall street and deal with the finances of the richest and most powerful and shop at the surf shop in New York City to the hipsters who ride 900 dollar single fins once a year to the Long Beach surfers who have helped make NY a modern surf state, to the east-end rich/famous/artsyfartsy and everyone in between. You can take a trip from where New York City is nearly hanging over you in the lineup, to Montauk Point where eroded cliffs and reefs can be found. September is the best month for a visiting surfer because we start to get the offshore winds of fall but still have the warm weather and long days.

Late mail: Early Swell Report:

Sept. 6: 6-foot at 15 seconds, north winds 10-20 mph

Sept. 7: 8-foot at 15 seconds, north east winds 15-30 mph

Sept. 8: Still getting bigger…

Matt’s photo features in the official Quiksilver Pro, New York poster. To check out more of Matt’s work go to www.clarkography.com/

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