Go East, Golden Boy

The general feeling was that it could .never happen here. Surfing, and the way of life it suggested, was something that was practiced only by the golden boys and girls of the West Coast and duly celebrated in B movies, featuring beer, broads and orgies. But last week, from Maine to Miami, beaches with a rolling surf were bristling with the sleek Fiberglas slabs. The staid old resort of Narragansett, R.I., has found itself inundated by board-bearing interlopers, who have discovered that the once Brahmin beach has just the right kind of waves. On Long Island, where 40 surfboards were sold in 1960, 4,000 have been snapped up this year, with the season just under way. Over 300 surfers were counted in the water recently at Gilgo Beach on Long Island's South Shore, and 900 more were catching their breath on the sand. George Pittman, a surfboard dealer in Ocean City, Md., reports happily: "The fanny-dippers [ordinary bathers] are in the big majority now, but in the future the situation may be reversed."

Surfing Safaris. Even landlocked youths strap their boards on top of their cars, take off on long surfing safaris to find just the right "beach break." Af Matunuck, R.I., one of New England's surfing Shangri-las, almost a third of the cars parked bumper to bumper along the oceanfront road sport out-of-state plates. Said one surf-farer, a Wethersfield, Conn., high school senior who is president of his town's surfing club: "We travel to a different place every weekend. Next week we'll probably go to East Orleans on Cape Cod" --135 miles away. Decked out in neoprene "wet suits," booties and mittens, diehards rode the waves through last winter as far north as Boston.

After their first alarm subsided, fanny-dippers and local authorities have discovered that East Coast surfers are mostly clean-cut collegians whose hair is as short as their surfing history. In Delray Beach, Fla., the Seacrest Hotel bitterly opposed an ordinance that gave 200 ft. of adjoining beach over to surfers, claiming that they would drive away wealthy regulars. Now the hotel is happy it lost the fight. Its patrons crowd the outdoor terraces on hot afternoons to watch the surfers. Said Police Chief James Grantham: "There hasn't been a single problem. If I were younger, I'd be out there myself." Up and down the coast, towns have roped off prime sections of beach for the "belly boards," not only to protect swimmers but also to encourage the trade the surfers bring.

Warmer Water. The Atlantic being a smaller ocean than the Pacific, its waves are generally smaller and less consistent. Last month, when 4,000 spectators gathered in Narragansett for the New England championships, the sea was so still a Coast Guard cutter had to ply back and forth to make it a contest. But Eastern addicts are still getting their surf legs and seem quite content with the three-and four-footers found along most of the coast. A few weekends ago, when the rollers at Narragansett rose to California size (six feet), not a surfer braved the waves. Explained one neophyte: "If you don't know what you're doing, six-footers can be suicide."

Before long, Eastern surfers may well outnumber those in the West. Thanks to the Gulf Stream, the summer sea off Cape Cod is warmer than it is just north of Los Angeles, some 550 miles farther south. Says Hobie Alter, the West Coast's leading surfboard manufacturer: "The East has 1,500 miles of warm water in the summer. We have maybe 200 miles on the West Coast, and much of that is away from the centers of population." What is Hobie going to do about it? For a start, he already has eleven East Coast distributors, seven more than he has in California.

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