Surfboard collector Hank Marx provides a tour of his private collection spanning 60 years.
Virginia Beach may have terrible surf, but it has a surf scene nonetheless. In fact, you could argue that the thriving surf community is augmented by the lack of waves. It’s an idiosyncratic and tight group that journalist, author, former pro surfer and Virginia Beach native Jason Borte has endeavored to capture the spirit of in his upcoming book.
If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’ve seen Borte’s work already. He wrote the Kelly Slater biography Pipe Dreams: A Surfer’s Journey, The Kook’s Guide to Surfing, and has contributed articles to pretty much every major surf publication (including The Inertia). He also launched his own surf school in 1997, the longest running camp in Virginia Beach, and was inducted into the East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame in 2016.
Borte recently left his job of 15 years as a public school teacher, which gave him the time to turn his journalistic eye to the surfers of Virginia Beach. The idea originally came from a friend, but Borte decided to run with it. He conducted interviews and enlisted photographer Andrew Tonra to create images to accompany them. The result is Virginia Is for Surfers, a coffee table book dedicated to the surfing soul of Virginia Beach. The book is being self-published through Kickstarter. As of this writing, there are 19 days left and he’s just over halfway to his goal. However, it’s an all or nothing deal – if they don’t make the goal by the end of the fundraising window, the book doesn’t release.
With that in mind, we spoke to Jason about what makes Virginia Beach a special place for surfers – even if the waves are terrible.
What made you want to write this?
A friend of mine had the idea. I never would have thought of it – I would have probably just tried to do like a history or something. The idea was to just kind of pick 50 people from across the whole kind of lineup and from all different backgrounds, and get all different viewpoints on the culture here.
It was fascinating to me to hear all the different perspectives – a lot of things that I never considered and a lot of people I have known my whole life, that I learned all kinds of things about them by sitting down for a couple hours and asking them some questions.
Former Top 10 surfer Wes Laine recalls being unproven and feeling like a kook in Hawaii.
So you’ve lived in Virginia Beach your whole life, what were some of those things that surprised you?
Oh, so much. I can’t even imagine trying to write it from my very specific perspective. I was very competition centered and in the industry and all that. The biggest thing probably was just hearing the stories of the outsiders and their perspective. There’s so much more than just our one main break where I always kind of surfed. It’s a big area, where people are really spread out. That’s the main thing that I got from the experience, was just hearing all the different perspectives and how people came into it from completely different vantage points, and got different things out of it.
Jason Borte interviews furniture designer and surfer Philip Goold.
What makes Virginia Beach special, as far as surfing?
I think the challenges that we face: The extended flat spells. That even when it gets good, it’s not good. It gets really cold. There’s a ton of tourists. The cops are chasing us, trying to give us tickets. Summertime, we’re kind of cooped up in one little area, all trying to catch waves that aren’t even really there.
I think it just builds really special bonds among the surfers that I still see. I mean, I’ve been surfing here for four decades, and I’m still hanging out with the guys that I hung out with as teenagers surfing here.
How do those conditions make Virginia Beach surfers different?
Whether it’s people that that stay here or people that go on to do other things, I think it just kind of builds a resilience. You don’t really get jaded, living here. Every once in a while, you can run down to Hatteras and get really great waves, but I think it just makes you hungrier (as a surfer) than a lot of other places.
The kickstarter for Virginia Is for Surfers can be found here.
