The short, brutal, friendless lives of Virginia Beach surfers

"The locals remained strangers, objects to study and learn of their tendencies so as to maximize my wave count but never comrades in surf."

There is a framed photo on my home-office desk of a glassy, overhead peeling wave. The picture is grainy and sepia-toned, suggesting an early morning fog.

There’s a surfer dropping into the wave, and one other guy sitting out just beyond the peak. A little further behind him is a fishing trawler, its bow pointed out toward a misty sea.

The wave has New England vibes, the trawler dredging up memories of thick fishermen beards and knit wool caps, the empty lineup suggesting a break way off the beaten path, the surfers’ all black silhouettes implying 4/3mm neoprene from head to toe, the clean, solid groundswell reminiscent of 1980s Surfer mag features spotlighting cobblestone shorelines and lobster dinners.

You would never know the image instead was taken at arguably the most crowded, VAL-filled wave on the East Coast, the perpetual host of the oldest continuously-run surf contest in the world (ECSC), a place in the Mid-Atlantic beloved by its regulars and reviled by just about everyone else, a spot that is derisively described as the Right Coast version of Doheny.

I surfed Virginia Beach’s First Street for the first time in 1991, nearly three decades before the picture was taken.

I was fresh out of Florida, hot off a run of memorable surf trips, desperate for a spot I could surf before, after and in between my college summer jobs.

I actually premiered my Virginia Beadch surf journey at pre-parking ban Croatan, a spread of beach just south of Rudee Inlet (First Street breaks off the jetty on the north side of Rudee) adjacent to a Tiffany-encrusted neighborhood.

Croatan features a tidy collection of sandbars and multiple break options — i.e., it’s a place where with a little luck you could find a lineup to yourself from time to time.

In those pre-Surfline days I knew about First Street from what (the relatively friendly) Croatan locals told me — stay away, the place is jam packed even on light days, everyone’s an asshole, the wave isn’t worth the hassle, etc.

But seemingly every time I drove over the Rudee Inlet bridge, I could see lines coming off the north side of the jetty, even on days when Croatan was mostly flat.

So one late summer day, I parked on the loop, waxed up, walked over the boardwalk, and paddled my 18” thruster out into a sunny lineup featuring a mediocre 2-3 foot groundswell.

The first thing I saw was some guy coming down the line and pulling a sliding 360, a maneuver that counted as fairly progressive in those pre-aerial days.

Out in the lineup, the chatter was fast and thick among a cluster of regular shortboarders who clearly had spent a lot of time together. The chatter crew dominated both the conversation and the sets, leaving everyone else scrounging for morsels.

I didn’t blame them. Without some regulation, an already chaotic lineup would have descended into pure mayhem.

But it wasn’t for me. I took my Floridian talents back south to Croatan and didn’t venture north across the inlet again that summer, or the next, or the next.

The years passed. I moved away for more jobs — and even more school — before eventually finding myself back in the region in the early to mid aughts.

By then, the city had cracked down on Croatan parking in response to the constant complaints from uptight neighbors about wetsuit-stripping surfers exposing themselves in front of the neighbor’s multi-million dollar villas.

With Croatan on parking ordinance lockdown, I bounced around to some alternate waves, mostly on the North End, which is to say pretty much any spot north of 42nd Street. But the sandbars were fickle, and my available windows were tight — I didn’t have the luxury of checking three to four spots before paddling out.

More and more I found myself drawn to First Street, by far the most consistent spot in the area, a place that could turn even a whisper of windswell into a rideable wave.

On its best days, the wave lines up and features a long, running righthander that can stretch from out beyond the jetty all the way to the sand.

Plus, it doesn’t hurt that the current running out to sea adjacent to the jetty acts like an aquatic conveyor belt to the lineup, usually with nary a duck dive required, even on overhead days.

After a few tentative test runs, I gave in to the jetty’s siren song. From 2010 through 2019, when in town I surfed First Street nearly exclusively.*

In the early days of that stretch, I figured out where to sit on my 5-10 Jesse Fernandez fish, either far enough inside the by-then-ubiquitous longboard crew to catch the smaller set waves that snuck underneath them or up the beach enough to catch the wide sets that hit the second peak north of the jetty proper.

I also started hitting the lineup before first light. It was nearly impossible to beat the hardest core of the local crew into the lineup, but you could usually find at least an hour or so of relatively uncrowded surf before the crowd filled in.

And winter helped. In the dark days of January and February, water temps would dip into the low 40s (F), and the crowd would shrivel up almost as much as your testicles.

As time passed, I eventually succumbed to the virus that afflicts many surfers in their 40’s, or at least those who find their athletic prowess slipping and yearn for a way to catch more waves in crowded lineups, especially lineups dominated by old school long boarders — I shelved my shortboards and began heading out on craft that maximized my dwindling paddle power and gave me a fighting chance against the increasingly longboard-dominant lineup, first on an old school single fin log I picked up off Craigslist, and later on another Jesse Fernandez shape, this time a mid-length.

All of which is how I found myself in the right spot for waves like the one depicted in that grainy photo on my desk.

Years of paddling out, learning the lineup, tracking the sandbar back and forth across the few hundred yard playing field encompassing the break, sometimes taking off outside the tip of the jetty, sometimes tracking north a few dozen yards, sometimes sitting right on top of the jetty and paddling into the refraction off the rocks (a la Sebastian Inlet), but in all events constantly chasing the ever-mutating dimensions of sand bottom contours and swell direction and dredging projects.

And I did it all in virtually complete anonymity.

I never considered myself a First Street local — in my surfing mind I never permanently left Florida.

I got to know the local faces, but they remained strangers, objects to study and learn of their tendencies so as to maximize my wave count but never comrades in surf.

Selfish, I know.

There was Andie L, who’s been surfing the zone since the 1960s and somehow still always caught the best waves of the day (so long as the swell wasn’t overhead, in which case he wouldn’t venture out).

There’s the shortboarder who looked (and sounded) like Thomas Haden Church’s long lost twin.

There’s the younger longboard crew, the locally famous group who were veterans of the contest circuit and approached the lineup like one imagines Caesar or Cleopatra might have if the denizens of the ancient Mediterranean surfed.

There’s the older longboard crew, the gritty blue collar workers with salt perpetually crusted on their mustaches, the ones who were always first in the lineup no matter how early I showed up, and the ones who inevitably (and deservingly) grabbed the majority of the best set waves.

There was even the world’s only respectable SUP-er, a very fit young Asian guy who gave away more than his fair share of waves, stayed out of people’s way, and generally ripped when he did take off.

And all of it was (and is) documented by the venerable water photog legend, Ed Obermeyer, a sexagenarian who nonetheless would shoot from the water during nearly every decent swell event.

Sure, there were assholes, and at times the lineup became too unwieldy to navigate no matter how familiar the terrain.

But over time it became like a second home, a familiar place that guaranteed a few rides on the worst days and on the best days made you feel like you had stumbled upon one of the Mid-Atlantic’s best kept secrets.

With the early morning sun just peeking over the ocean horizon, a pod of dolphins lazily rolling by, and a decent bit of energy moving the water underneath, you could forget about the rest of the world, if only for an hour or two.

I left the area in 2019. It’s now been several years since I last paddled out at First Street. All of these faces and scenes are fading away.

In the years since, I’ve put in time at multiple spots far removed from the East Coast and been reminded anew of what world class lineups feel like.

But lately those fading dawn patrol memories have been rekindled by the IG algorithm, which has been flooding my feed with VB-centric surf content.

There’s the Wavegarden Atlantic Park pool that’s due to open this summer a few blocks up from First Street and hopefully give the wannabe rippers and countless VALs who swarm the area from Memorial to Labor Day an excuse to stay out of the local ocean lineups.

There’s a book project sponsored by ex-professional Virginia Beach surfer Jason Borte, which is also due for release this summer.

Titled Virginia is for Surfers — a play off the long-standing Virginia tourism slogan, “Virginia is for Lovers” — it’s being flacked as a coffee table type edition with lots of photos and words discussing Virginia’s long love affair with surfing (here’s the Kickstarter link, if — unlike every BG commenter ever — you are so inclined.)**

And then, of course, there’s the East Coast Surfing Championships (sponsored by Coastal Edge), the venerable contest that runs every August and is basically the biggest surf-themed beach party anywhere in the country not named Huntington.

But I don’t recommend any of it (except maybe tossing a couple bucks Borte’s way).*

Instead, just skip all the social media hype.

Wait for winter.

Meander down to the Rudee Inlet parking loop before dawn.

Squeeze your yawning flesh into a hooded 4/3 (or 5/4), pull on your lobster gloves and 5mm booties.

Take the conveyor belt out beyond the jetty and sit a little wide of the OG longboard crew.

Enjoy the sunrise. Keep your eyes peeled for dolphins.

And if you haven’t been a prick in this life or the last, the wave gods might smile upon you.

With any luck, they’ll send you a Jetty Dreamer — a perfect east coast nugget that will transport you far from wave pools, and contest raves, and boardwalks crowded with tourists, and bring you back to the essence of why we all became obsessed with this silly little pastime to begin with.

*To be clear, the waves in VB generally don’t hold a candle to spots on the OBX, which on the right day feature some of the better beach breaks anywhere outside France.

**I don’t know Borte, have never met him, and I have no connection to his book project whatsoever.