Winter Surfing in Rockaway
Connochie is a lanky man of 31. He wants to make it clear that winter surfing has a serious following here. This is no Polar Bear Club with one or two days of corpulent people diving into the ocean so local tv stations have a cute evergreen. According to him, plenty of?okay, at least a few?surfers hit the winter waters of New York City.
Still, on the cold and bitter February Sunday I went to watch him surf Rockaway Beach, he was the only person out on the ocean.
Connochie is embarrassed when asked about his passion for surfing. "You have to understand that I'm no great surfer. There are plenty of guys out there much better than me."
?
I'd arranged to pick up Connochie at his Prospect Heights apartment at noon. I'd told him that I always thought surfers were early birds. "I don't go out early this time of the year," he'd replied. "I usually wait till noon or so to let the day get slightly warmer."
When I blew my horn outside his building, Connochie came loping down the stairs in a winter coat and jeans.
"Dude, where's your surfboard?" I asked.
Connochie smiled at the "dude." You don't get much surfer slang back out of him. "I got a place out in Rockaway where I keep it."
As we drove through Brooklyn, Connochie told me how he came from Scottish stock and spent his youth in Toronto and Montreal. He went to the University of Toronto and received a degree in philosophy, then went on to a graduate degree in philosophy at the University of Montreal. Then he moved to New York and put those degrees to work. He got a job in advertising.
"I love New York," he tells me. "Since I've been here I've always lived in Brooklyn. When I came down here I tried to get a place in Manhattan but gave up pretty quickly. I moved down here from Montreal where the rents were like $400, then I saw the prices in Manhattan and I couldn't believe it. I had to come to Brooklyn out of economics, although now this is starting to get very expensive."
Connochie always loved the ocean, but it remained unrequited until he moved here. Surprisingly, he never surfed until he came to New York. Sometimes it takes an outsider to see the beauty and variety of this city.
"I would take day trips out to Rockaway, and I started noticing a lot of people surfing. I guess I just wanted to try it. So I went out and bought my first board, which was a 7-foot-4 fun shape board," which is a beginner's board. "The short board is popular here with the better surfers. That's a good board for big hollow days. A hollow day is when the waves are shaped like a tube and they move very fast. With a short board you can get down the line pretty fast. Then you have long boards, which are like 9 to 11 feet and are better when the surf is not good?which is the common surf day here. This is a tough place for surfing. Almost everyone on the East Coast has at least three boards. Which board you use depends on the swell size. If it's a big day and the waves are good you can go out on your short board. If it's a small day, and unfortunately there are tons of those, you have to go out on your long board.
"I mostly use a 9-foot board, because there's way more planing surface so it's easier to get moving on a small wave. I spend a lot of time on long boards, and they're fun. You can take them out on big days too."
Fine. But what madness?besides his Canadian upbringing?brings Connochie out to the ocean in the winter?
"Out in Rockaway," he explains, "the number-one draw to winter surfing is that the swell is bigger during the winter." (I later go to a website that Connochie recommends?surfinfo.com?and read up on the wave conditions in New York. It seems that the fall and winter bring the biggest waves to this area, which makes New York a kind of Bizarro World to the surf capital of Southern California, when the summer is the time to get the logs in the lineup.)
Continuing to explain the benefits of winter surfing, Connochie says that "The water is definitely cleaner. But the biggest draw to winter surfing is that there are just no crowds. On some days you have the beach all to yourself. Just you and the ocean. It's rare in New York to be that alone. I mean, if you've ever been out to Rockaway in the summer it's just like Coney Island. There's tons of swimmers and people surfing and it's not that much fun." Still, he admits that in the summer he's out in the water almost every day.
For $100 a month?and this has to be one of the best rental deals of all time?Connochie rents a small shack in the back of a little bungalow development. The shack is four 8-by-8 rooms. It's not winterized, so in this season it's just a storage area and a changing place. But in the summer Connochie tends to live there, to be near the water.
"You're allowed in the summer to surf out at Beach 88th St.," he says. "At the other beaches the lifeguards come on duty at 9:30 a.m. and they leave at 6 p.m. on the dot. So there's a lot of surfing in the off hours. The sun rises at 5 in the summer, so I can get up and surf for a few hours before work."
As we drive through the badlands of East New York I ask him what the thrill is.
"It's just a great feeling when you're up on a wave. But beyond riding a wave it's even a good feeling just to be floating out on the ocean on a board. And what I love about surfing is that the sport, outside of the initial investment for equipment, is free. It's no hassle. No one charges you to go into the water. I can get there by the subway. And you're not polluting anything. You're not wrecking the environment."
We crossed into Queens. As we drove through Howard Beach I pointed out to Connochie the pizzeria where Michael Griffith was confronted before being chased to his death by a bunch of thugs in the infamous 1986 Howard Beach incident. He nodded, then we agreed the place still makes a damn fine slice of brick-oven pizza. As Howard Beach turned into Broad Channel I asked him how often he surfs in the winter.
"Usually once week I get out there. This last December was really good. I was out every chance I could. January had bad swell, it was flat and choppy. Basically what you want for a good wave, because the beach at Rockaway faces southeast, is a wind directly offshore, so that would be a light northwest wind. You look for 3-foot swells and above."
Connochie looks out at the window to the waters of Jamaica Bay. "Choppy," he says.
"So that means what? Choppy is no good?"
"Yeah. The wind is not coming from offshore. Today it's coming diagonally southwest, so it breaks up the cleanness of the wave form. You got a dominant wave, which is the wave you want to surf, coming into shore, but it's covered with side waves, which is called chop. It makes it harder to surf and it takes away the strength of the dominant surf. Ideally you want an offshore wind. But you need a swell first to surf, and if the swell is big enough it doesn't matter what the wind is doing."
We drive across the Cross Bay Veterans Memorial Bridge. I roll the windows down to let the smell of sea air fill the car. I almost pull over, stunned by the magnificent view of the ocean. We drive by a plastic whale with the sign Welcome to Rockaway. Connochie tells me how his girlfriend read in a 1940s New York City guidebook that there was a whale in the Central Park Zoo that you could stand in and have your picture taken. When the two neophyte New Yorkers went to the zoo, no one knew what the hell they were talking about. They met an ancient park worker who told them that the whale had been moved to the Coney Island aquarium in 1968. So off they went to Coney Island, and again they couldn't find the damn whale. An elderly janitor told them they moved it out to Rockaway.
"And then we finally found our whale," Connochie says with a small smile.
?
We turn off of Shore Front Pkwy. to the street where Connochie's bungalow is located. We drive down a small block filled with little wooden saltbox houses. Parking here is easy. We walk past a bungalow with peeling yellow paint and turn into an alley. In the back Connochie shows me his outdoor shower, and then opens up the bungalow.
"This is it."
Wetsuits are hanging off surfboards, which are leaning against the wall. The back room is a storage area for bikes. The bathroom has a sink and a toilet, and the small kitchen comes with a tiny oven and fridge. I walk out to his small patio that faces a cement wall with a wire fence on top. There's an hibachi out there, and for decorative purposes a life preserver hangs near the door, with Imperial Whiskey by Hiram Walker on it. The surrounding homes are funky cottages with patios and porches strewn with surfing equipment and plastic chairs.
Connochie tells me to drive to Beach 88th St. and he'll meet me on the boardwalk ready to hit the surf. Beach 88th St. is the mecca of New York City surfing. I walk by a fence with a sign that has a picture of a huge dog and reads: I can make it to the gate in three seconds. Can you?
I walk on the boardwalk where swirling winds whip garbage around. The ocean looks like nothing but chop. The sun is watery and the sky is gray and blue. I look up and down the six-mile-long boardwalk?which, after Atlantic City's, is supposedly the longest boardwalk in the world?and see a few people out walking and jogging.
The Rockaways are a barrier beach that runs along the southern border of Queens. It began to be developed after the Civil War, when the upper crust from Manhattan wanted a seaside resort that was easy to reach. It stayed that way till the end of World War I, when the working-class Irish took over and turned it into a summer tent and bungalow city. After World War II it slowly went from a summer resort to a section where people live year round. The final stake through the summer resort heart came in 1986 when the amusement park, Rockaway Playland, was torn down. Today Rockaway is home to more than 100,000 people, a stew of blacks, Russians, Latinos and Irish. Along the 11-mile peninsula you see everything from the $300,000-and-up Cape Cod homes of Breezy Point to the slums of Far Rockaway.
Standing on the boardwalk I look out toward Shore Front Pkwy. and see Connochie loping across the street in a black wetsuit with a hood, gloves and boots. He carries his 9-foot red and white board, with its small shark fin on the bottom. An old man on the sidewalk stares at the tall, slim visage like he's seeing an alien.
Connochie is all business. He heads right to the ocean. I dawdle behind looking at my red hands. No gloves. And it gets colder the closer you get to the water. Connochie walks into the surf. One can only imagine the shrinkage. He jumps on the board and starts paddling out to sea. A gnarly man passes me as I try to take notes. He looks out at the water and sees Connochie.
"That guy trying to surf?"
"Looks that way."
"What's he crazy or something? Cold as a witch's tit on the sand. Who would go out there?"
I start to tell him that actually the water in February is warmer than the air on the beach, but he has other things to attend to and storms off down the beach in search of God knows what. I stand on the sand and watch as Connochie bobs in the water, waiting for a wave. The sand is littered with seashells and dog poop. I have been told that winter is the best time to hit the beaches in New York for a good selection of seashells. Indeed, I pocket a few beauties.
I can see Connochie getting restless. He starts to paddle after some small waves. Each time he gets smacked down. Again he tries and again he gets knocked around in the choppy water. A hundred yards out from shore another wave swamps him. He drifts closer to the rock jetty, where a few men stand in huge down coats casting their surf rods, hoping for a nibble from a blackfish.
Connochie now sits on his board, bobbing in the surf. He is 20 minutes into this and I don't know how he's doing it. I watch him catch a small tubular wave; he almost gets up on his board but slips and tumbles into the ocean. He sits on his board waiting for another wave. A minute passes and he catches a small, quick wave, gets his gangly body up on the board. Now he rides the ocean with a practiced balance. At this moment Andrew Connochie looks like the freest man in New York. He rides the wave for a few seconds before it peters out. He paddles out again and is up on his second wave for maybe seven seconds.
And that's it. He rides the board on his belly and heads to shore.
"There was no power and not enough velocity from the waves. I couldn't do too much out there," he explains. He walks back to his bungalow to change.
I take a ride down Shore Pkwy. into the forgotten wasteland of Edgemere and Far Rockaway. This district is a living indictment against the glorification of the Giuliani years. On Beach 39th St. you can cruise on a beautiful boardwalk with a glorious ocean on your left, and to your right, four blocks away, is a subway line. Yet right off the boardwalk acre after acre of land lies fallow. Nothing but empty lots filled with plastic bags, dumped car batteries, used diapers, empty beer cans, discarded condoms, old refrigerators and ovens, and worn-out tires. I walk off the boardwalk and stroll across bits of broken-up concrete on what is supposed to be a sidewalk. Here the stop signs are painted over with black paint. No one is around. Broken glass litters the street from cars that once dared park here. This could be a shorefront bit of heaven on Earth, but instead it's a no man's land filled with junk and packs of wild dogs. Even the trees are gnarly, and the birds don't sing this far down in the Rockaways.
I drive back and meet Connochie at Beach 88th St. I ask him how cold it was out on the water. "It's cold, but not as cold as you would think it is. You get used to it. The main thing in winter surfing is to cover your body and try to stay as dry as possible. You wear nothing under a wetsuit, but the suit is like a sponge, in that they get wet and hold water. So your body heat warms it up. They get heavy, but you don't notice it in the water. It's when you stand up on the board that you really notice it. It's a big difference from the summer, when all you have on is just shorts.
"It was bad today," he goes on. "It was all chop. It's hard to get a 9-foot board moving in chop. The front of the board hits the wave in front of it. There was no room to go anywhere. The waves weren't very clean. But the size of the waves was good. In terms of wave quality, I give that about a 1 out of 10."
Back in the car, we pass the Rockaway whale and turn toward the bridge. We leave the ocean smell behind. As I drive into Queens I look around at the flat mediocrity of the borough and wonder why anyone ever left the shore.