BY SKY DYLAN-ROBBINS
It was 5 A.M. on a recent Saturday, still dark, and my colleague Shauna Lyon and I were driving through Queens, each of us clutching the largest cup of coffee that an East Village diner had allowed us. We were on our way to meet Brandon d’Leo, the co-owner of the Rockaway Beach Surf Club. Shauna wrote about the food served there in last week’s issue.
D’Leo owns the club with his pal Brady Walsh, a firefighter who was on duty during our visit. Though it’s been more than a year and a half since Hurricane Sandy hit the Rockaways, it’s still difficult to speak with locals without mention of the storm flowing into the conversation. Nevertheless, based on both appearance and verbal testimony, the beach and those who love it have moved far past the disaster. The Rockaways are thriving, in fact, and Brooklyn and Manhattan wanderers, enticed by the waves and a rawness that suggests an earlier iteration of Williamsburg, have shown up, welcomed by the local community like high winds on a morning of surfing.
The sun rose, an hour of driving went swiftly by, and, by six o’clock, Shauna and I were walking next to a wetsuit-clad (and very awake) d’Leo on Rockaway Beach. I held the camera, d’Leo his board, and our day with the surfers began.
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