Photo: @surfsupny
We all know that photos of tubes at beachbreaks are often deceiving. We see those almond-shaped openings to what appears to be a corner, a little bit of glass on the face, and maybe a slight mist coming off the lip thanks to an offshore breeze and think, “Oh, man…dreamy.”
That one single frame is definitely dreamy. But the one before that moment? Or the one after it? Not so much.
New York’s Rockaway Beach is one of those places where such sequences are a part of life. Those open tubes could be the real deal one day or they could just be closeouts disguised as invitations. You don’t have to live in Queens to know this experience breeds a certain kind of tube hound — one who hucks themselves over the ledge and into closeouts well over 50 percent of the time but regrets it zero percent of the time.
PITTED PIRATES of the Penninsula captures that spirit of the Rockaway Beach tube hound. The first annual event on October 7 was an afternoon expression session devoted to finding those corners and celebrating the board-breaking closeout.
“There’s not too many contests going down with epic surf on the East Coast, especially in Rockaway Beach, Queens,” Peter Shaw of SurfsUpNY told The Inertia. The idea to address this was pretty simple: get some of the area’s best together and judge the best barrel.
“Luckily the wind went offshore at 3 p.m., so a lot of surfers and spectators were able to join us after work (and) school,” Shaw explained. “We had a few epic rides go down and one board-breaking mega wedge came through that was a real crowd pleaser. We wanted to hold a fun event so the growing surf community here could be inspired by seeing some local pros ripping the home break on a rare world-class New York hurricane swell.”
And just like that, New York surfers got their own new comp.
