When my 8-year-old daughter, Paulina, announced she wanted to learn to surf this summer, I thought, “Sorry, kid.” Short of moving to Hawaii or Southern California, I figured that was one dream that would fall by the wayside.
Then I started surfing the Internet and came across a surf camp in the Rockaways. 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. Cliff Skudin, who runs this nationally accredited school with his brother Will — both world-class, big-wave surfers — said some Rockaway parents who had taken classes out in Long Beach, on Long Island, had lobbied for a school in Queens.
“When I first got out here, this beach was just full of sea gulls,” Mr. Skudin said. “Now it’s full of kids on surfboards. In New York, we forget that the ocean is right in our backyard. The beach gets overshadowed by the Statue of Liberty.”
For $375 children 5 to 18 surf at the camp on Beach 67th Street from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., Monday to Friday. They can also sign up for a single day of surfing for $90. After registering they need only show up in a swimsuit, with towel, sunscreen and a packed lunch. Boards and rash guards are provided.
The campers are divided into two groups — one with yellow rash guards and the other with red — which take turns surfing in half-hour intervals. Instructors teach them how to hold onto the rails (the edges of the board), how to push themselves to a standing position and how to place their feet on the “cheat sheet” line down the middle of the board. The rest is taken care of by the ocean waves.
“We give them a skill set so they have a high comfort level,” said Keith Mekeel, an instructor who has a master’s degree in education. Surfer-to-teacher ratio was a reassuring one to one on the first day of camp, then dropped to two to one as more campers signed up. More teachers were added midweek, from a seemingly endless pool of Long Beach and Rockaway surfers.
“We try to keep it local and employ the surfers in Rockaway,” said Mr. Skudin, whose family has been teaching surfing for decades.
Maureen Luerssen, who has been working with the Skudins in Long Beach since they started that school five years ago, spent her first day ever in Rockaway on the Fourth of July, teaching an enthusiastic group of children from Brooklyn and Queens. “It’s definitely a cool vibe,” Ms. Luerrsen said. “These kids have a little more attitude than the Long Island kids. They’re tougher.”
The A train stops a few blocks away, though most parents drive their children in. For us it was 35 minutes by car from Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn. Some parents stayed on the beach and caught some sun, while others went to work. “Most parents don’t want to hang out at camp,” Mr. Mekeel said. “But this is different.”
For Jeanne McLaughlin and Suzanne O’Neill, two mothers from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, signing up their sons was a chance to do some tag-team relaxing on the beach. “It’s 40 minutes to midtown,” Ms. O’Neill said. “I was able to leave and go to work for a while yesterday.”
Ms. McLaughlin, her head covered in a straw cowboy hat, eyes squinting to watch her son in the surf, said the Rockaway camp was giving them both some much needed outdoor time. “You feel like you’re not sacrificing anything by raising your child in the city, until somebody catches you at one of those sprinkler parks,” she said, grimacing. The camp, she said, was also giving her son a sense of accomplishment and confidence. “He’s not the type of kid who’s going to be a football player. But he was able to get up that first time and feel like he’s really good at something.”
The women’s sons, both named Jackson, were quickly dubbed the Jackson Two by the camp’s energetic staff. Between waves the instructors taught lessons on ocean safety, played beach games with the children and told scary stories — one involving a banana-chocolate sand monster who lives under the boardwalk.
“They’re not only great instructors, they’re really entertaining the kids,” said Conrad Karl, who brought his 6-year-old daughter, Maya, from nearby Belle Harbor, Queens, for lessons. “They really picked the right group of people.” In April the Karls visited Hawaii, where Maya caught her first wave. As soon as they got back home, her father signed her up for lessons in Rockaway.
“It’s so awesome here,” said another camp instructor, Clifton Dunn, a 24-year-old actor and surfer who moved from California to Rockaway a year and a half ago. “These kids are shredding. I’m stoked on life right now.” Every time a child caught a wave, Mr. Dunn would give a high five while the surfer was nearing the shore. “That was sick!” he would yell. “You charged it!”
His only wish was that the waves were a little bigger. “But they’re totally perfect for learning,” he said.
Lila Shulmister, a 9-year-old from Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, said her favorite part of camp had been that first wave she caught. “The first wave you ride,” she said, “is the best feeling ever.”
Midweek campers were given T-shirts featuring a photo of the Skudin brothers surfing a 40-foot wave on the outer reef of Hawaii. “That’s a big wave,” Paulina said, looking warily down at her shirt. “Were you scared?” she asked Mr. Skudin, whose family is from Long Beach but who spent his early childhood in Hawaii.
“No,” he said, “It was awesome. If you practice enough, maybe you guys can go there someday and surf big waves.”
Lila, 9, nodded. “I wasn’t sure I’d be able to surf at all because not many people learn how to surf in Brooklyn,” she said. “But it’s been my dream for a very long time.”
LIFE BY THE SEA
SKUDIN SURF CAMPS Two locations: Rockaway Beach, at Beach 67th Street, Queens; Long Beach Boulevard, Long Beach, N.Y.; (516) 318-3993, skudinsurf.com. Last session ends on Aug. 31.
WHERE TO EAT AT ROCKAWAY BEACH Blue Bottle Coffee, Caracas Arepa Bar and Steve’s Ice Cream, Rockaway Beach Boardwalk and Beach 106th Street, (718) 474-1709; Ripper’s, Rockaway Beach Boardwalk at Beach 86th Street; Rockaway Taco, Rockaway Beach Boardwalk at Beach 96th Street, (347) 213-7466, rockawaytaco.com.
IF YOU GO Events, directions and a complete list of boardwalk restaurants are at rockawaybeachclub.com.
