51.0°,
Overcast World’s top surfers are coming to Long Beach
City prepares to host Quicksilver Pro N.Y.
Dave Juan has surfed for 23 years, in sun, rain or snow. At every opportunity he grabs his board and heads for the beach.
When he isn’t working afternoon shifts at his surf shop, Unsound Surf on East Park Avenue, or spending time with his wife and 2-year-old son, Juan surfs for two or three hours at a stretch, sometimes longer. Surfing is not only an addiction, he said, but one of his greatest passions.
“It’s pure enjoyment,” he said. “Your mind is completely clear when you’re surfing. Just imagine having one of the best experiences of your life. Imagine having that over and over again. That’s what surfing brings you.”
The sentiment is shared by a growing number of surfers, and it has made Long Beach something of a surfing mecca in recent years. The city’s growing popularity in the professional surf community was a main reason Long Beach landed the
Quiksilver Pro New York competition Sept. 4-15, the sixth of 11 events on this year’s Association of Surfing Professionals world tour and one of the largest surfing contests in the country. It will be the first ASP World Title Race event ever held on the East Coast.
The event, announced by Quiksilver and the association on Jan. 26, has already created a buzz in the local surfing community, Juan said. What’s more, the contest will offer competitors an unprecedented $1 million prize purse — more than twice that of any other event on the world tour, which travels from South Africa to Brazil to French
Polynesia to Hawaii and Australia.
Juan, a co-owner of Unsound Surf for nearly 14 years, said that visitors to the shop — surfers and non-surfers, teenagers and adults — can’t stop talking about the event. “A lot of people are going to be coming into town,” he said. “It’s going to bring in a really good crowd.”
Juan explained that the Empire State
Trials, in which the top 16 New York surfers compete, will take place on Sept. 2 in Long Beach. The winner will move on to the
Quiksilver Pro Trials, sponsored by Unsound, the following day, and the winner of the Pro Trials will join a field of 34 of the world’s top surfers in the Quiksilver Pro New York. All of the competition, Juan said, will take place on the beach at National Boulevard.
