RIP

Surfer magazine, the “Bible of the Sport” and cultural touchpoint, has been officially mothballed after an iconic 60-year run. Word began leaking yesterday afternoon that the staff had been notified of impending furloughs and that the title, along with many other extreme sport titles in parent company A360Media (née American Media Incorporated) portfolio.

Founded in San Juan Capistrano, California, 1960, by high school teacher and surf film maker John Severson, the title was home to some of the greatest surf writers, surf photographers and graphic designers to ever toil under the glorious brine-filtered sun.

AMI had purchased Surfer, along with the entire Enthusiast Network, a little under two years ago. Staff was slashed but production continued until yesterday when the final decision was made.

Peter Taras, one of the greatest photo editors to ever do it, announced via Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CF3J4vkHYyT/

It’s with great sadness that I write that today was my last day at SURFER. Between Transworld SURF, SURFER, and SURFING, that was half my life. 21 years between the three. It’s really hard for me to put into words right now the feelings. I’m a weepy mess. I taught. I was taught. I cared so much for all the creatives I worked with over the years. We were family.

Stab magazine, based near Venice Beach, California, erroneously suggested that the decision to take Surfer offline was tied to the staff’s recent decision to endorse Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. An easy assumption seeing that A360Media is President Donald J. Trump associate David Pecker but entirely without merit and wrong.

The sort of very poor surf journalism regularly practiced by fully grown men under five feet tall who furiously back-peddle, weeping, when gently confronted over social media by Ace Buchan.

In truth, Pecker was generally unaware of Surfer and the move to furlough staff and shut down the title, along with others in the Enthusiast Network portfolio, had been continuously broached at the upper levels of management for months.

The issue just on stands will be the final one.

The end of an era and sad for anyone who ever laid on a small twin bed in an overcrowded childhood room, flipped through page after page exuding the greatest life possible and dreamed.

Come one come all!

Rockaway, the very famous peninsula jutting off New York City, has long been a relatively lightly trafficked stretch of beach even though it is merely a subway train ride from Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn. Millions upon millions of people right there but generally ignoring it because there has been no place to stay or really eat or much of anything to do.

Until now.

CNN just published a story sure to thrill the local surfers titled: New York City’s only surfing beach is finally primed for overnight tourists.

Surfers, as you know, are lonely and enjoy making friends and get sad when there are no friends to make. Those frown town Rockaway days are over, though, as D.F.Ders (down for the dayers) can now stretch those single days into multiple days and paddle Wavestorms around the inside and go straight on the outside.

Per CNN:

It’s actually the only legal surf spot in all of NYC, and, perhaps more importantly: it’s the only beach that gets a surf break.

“You can’t just make a surf break. It’s either there or it’s not,” Jon Krasner, one of The Rockaway Hotel’s partners and owners, explains. Terence and Dan Tubridy, brothers and third-generation Rockaway residents, are the hotel’s other partners, along with Michi Jigarjian.

Not surprisingly, expect to find the requisite surf shops and surf crowd who have either decamped permanently to the Rockaways to divide their time between well, surfing, and whatever work will keep them afloat (sorry, not sorry!) or who won’t hesitate to play hooky if the surf looks promising.

“I had three friends today call in late to work, to come surfing in the morning and then they jumped on the ferry to go into work,” Krasner says.

Putting this past summer aside, Rambaran doesn’t understand why the Rockaways hasn’t gotten more attention worldwide: “it’s baffling that the area isn’t more of an international destination.”

Well, now that the surf life is easier than ever and regular life is easier than ever, millions in the water are almost guaranteed.

Many new friends for existing surfers.

Thrilled and thrilling.

But also, you can just make a surf break FYI. It’s called Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch or, actually, WaveGarden.

Fun.