Flat First Street To Freedom In D.C.
by Zach Weisberg

I saw my breathe tonight.

It was a pivotal moment on the trip. Things got cold in a hurry as soon as we arrived in Virginia Beach.

Just a few hours earlier Virginia Beach had been referred to as the “Huntington Beach of the East Coast,” and here were were livin’ it up in the big city. After meeting my buddy and local surfer, Graham Young, at 63rd Street on the North End we met up with Volcom super-rep and local pro, Granger Clark for BBQ and beers at The Smoke House on Shore Drive.

For a Southern spot, I would have expected more authentic Southern cuisine. Maybe it’s just me, but the waitress shot me alien eyes when I told her I had a hankering for sweet potato fries. Maybe I am crazy, though.

Regardless, a bottle of beer and five potstickers later, Granger got into it about Virginia Beach as a surf town and East Coast industry stalwart.

“Everybody kind of knows everybody here, and it’s pretty mellow,” said Clark. “Virginia Beach is its own epicenter. A lot of things kind of got started here both surf and skatewise, and any day at ECSC in the summer is going to rival the Huntington’s US Open for sure – at least as far as East Coast goes.”

Talk of California inevitably led to comparisons between the two coasts, and most surfers recognize the advantages and drawbacks of each side, but have a preference. Granger wasn’t shy about voicing his.

“I could never live in California,” said Clark. “You can’t get away from everything there like you can here. Being able to just escape down to the Outer Banks and come back here is the best. It doesn’t even compare to being in California.”

We checked out another local bar, but things were mostly dead on a Wednesday night in late October, and Granger rehashed the fall phenomenon:

“There are a lot less people around in general in the fall. it gets more like a ghost town. It becomes just locals in the water, but we need the tourism to survive.”

And like every other town we’ve visited, it was time once again to resurrect ourselves as tourists, for today was a big day: We were crossing the Mason-Dixon line. That’s right. No more syrupy south. It was off to a place where the pizza flows like wine and racketeering is a family business - at least in the movies: New Jersey.

Not without hitting Washington D.C. After all, we’ve got the most important election in recent history coming up in just a couple weeks. Didn’t Corky Carroll scream Surfer For President? We figured we should pay homage to the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial before advancing north. If not just for unity’s sake. Hey, Fugheddaboutit!

- Zach Weisberg
Online Editor

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