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This story submitted by Rob Cummings;more of his writing and tales from his incredible around-the-world surf odyssey can be found at his website www.coastalsurvey.com

It came from the Bronx in rivulets and streams. It flowed from Queens in torrents and tributaries and it bubbled up from Brooklyn in sluicing torrents of trash.

The Noreaster yesterday swept the city clean, flooding sewers and drains with weeks of detritus, flushing it down the Hudson, out the East River, through Jamaica Bay and right past Coney Island.

Why surf Coney Island? I don't know. It came to me in a dream, or after a dream, when the wind that had been howling all of Saturday stopped and I awoke, well past midnight to a sudden stillness. I flicked on the weather radio. It was Victory at Sea time. The bouy 20 miles out from Fire Island Inlet was reading swell in the 16-18 foot range and Ambrose Tower, the bouy at the mouth of New York harbor, was reading a solid 10 foot. With the wind at 20 to 30 knots out of the East, most of Long Island's south shore would be a hash. A protected beach was needed. City Island in the Sound would be a longshot, but Coney Island, little Coney -- from the Dutch word for rabbit -- hiding in the lee of Breezy Point, might just break.

I decided to try Sunday afternoon, on the outgoing tide.

The kid on the subway platform with the goatee and the Buddy Holly glasses did a double-take when he saw the board tucked under my arm. "Are there waves today?" he asked.

"Uh, yea, we got a little Noreaster goin on."

"So where you going, Rockaway?"

"No," I said, "Coney Island."

New Yorkers are a pretty blase lot. I could probably strip naked and bring a giraffe on a leash through the subways and nobody would blink, but for some reason a surfboard
invites conversation. Here are some things New Yorkers have said to me when they see the surfboard (usually wrapped in blanket or board bag) on the subway:

"Is that a kayak?"

"Where you goin, Hawaii?"

"You got to wrap it up, so it don't blow away." (huh?)

"Is that a surfboard?"

"So, what kind of instrument do you play?" (It's a cello, lady.)

On the G and the F trains under, and over Brooklyn, past Prospect Park and Greenwood Cemetery, final resting place of Samuel Morse, Horace Greeley and retired mobster Joey Gallo, through Borough Park and Bensonhurst, finally making the turn at Sheepshead Bay (final resting place of many other illustrious mobsters, currently sleeping with the fishes) the F Train clattered to a halt at the Aquarium, Coney Island, and I got out.

In the summer, Coney Island is a walking freak show. But on a chilly, overcast day in the fall, it was strangely quiet. I could hear the barking of the seals in their tank at the aquarium and the susseration of traffic on Surf Avenue.

I had to piss bad. The bathroom on the beach was bolted shut for the season, so I ducked under the boardwalk. There was a fisherman-dude there doing the same thing and another guy a few yards away, taking a dump and eyeing us warily over his shoulder. Welcome to Coney Island.

The beach was wide and pounded flat from the hard rain. There was a swell there, but the waves were just walling up and closing out. I walked down the beach toward the pier. A few couples in overcoats were walking on the strand and a pair of treasure hunters were listening to the sand with metal-detectors and earphones clamped over their heads. There was an amazing amount of stuff in the incorporated into the beach: tampon applicators, bubblegum wrappers, balls, brooms, cans, condoms, fish, styrofoam and one ex-seagull, mostly decomposed.

The pier, oddly enough, had formed no worthwhile sandbars at all -- no break. I turned around and walked back toward Brighton Beach and the Aquarium. A girl with a shaved head was kicking at a stick in the sand with her army boots. She looked up from that project to say hi.

"Are you going surfing?" she asked. She was German. German tourists show up in the strangest places. She had a nice smile, kind of cute, except she had no hair.

"Yea, but not here. It's no good."

"I think you should give it a try," she said.

"Well, I'm here. I guess I have to."

Nothing doing at Brighton either. The best break was a closeout across from a 20-story apartment building. The set waves were about head high and the water was shit-brown and cold.

A small crowd gathered on the beach to watch me get launched from thick lips and drilled into the knee-deep water below. I got a couple of short rides, but mostly it was Punch and Judy action with the Atlantic doing most of the punching. One by one, the crowd turned away and dispersed. They were expecting Pipeline, maybe?

I, however, found this abolution in filthy water inexplicably therapeutic. Kept getting dumped and paddling back out. Finally, it got hard to see. It was still light out, but there was some sort of shit in the water that was making my eyes film over. Time to go in.

Now, squinting at the screen, nose draining, imbibing cheap scotch and mildly concerned about contracting hepatitis, I wonder why the fuck I bother. I don't know.

I'm here. I guess I have to.

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