New York's urban aloha in the NYT

Excerpt

"In New York City, slipping off to ride waves virtually within view of granite Gotham provides a unique, slightly illicit, dreamlike pleasure. Surfing shouldn’t be possible here, and yet it is.

Artists, writers and others in trend-conscious fields are plugged in to New York’s surf scene now, but most of the rest of the city is not, and riding the subway with a board clasped to one’s chest like a dance partner still elicits smiles and queries from otherwise game-faced straphangers. There is something disarming about the sight of a surfboard in New York, where it has a nutty, quixotic quality, like a pair of wings.

When New York City surfers cross paths, they greet one another, exchange notes. Because so many of them are new to surfing, having taken it up in adulthood, they are less like seen-it-all New Yorkers than surfers in pre-“Gidget” California, who would pull over when they passed another car of surfers and introduce themselves. Anyone who has surfed in Santa Cruz or Huntington Beach — chilly, xenophobic “surf cities” — knows how exceptional this urban aloha is."

Full article. New York's Urban Aloha by Thad Ziolkowski in the New York Times