Ocean City’s rich history of surfing is about to come to life.
An exhibit featuring vintage boards, newspaper articles, photos, film and other memorabilia will be on display at the Ocean City Historical Museum, at the Community Center, 17th and Simpson, beginning May 27 and running through September 10.
“We anticipate this being such a popular exhibit that we won’t have any choice but to extend it,” said Jeffrey McGranahan, the Historical Museum’s Executive Director.
During a recent sneak peak provided to OCNJDaily, it was easy to see why McGranahan’s expectations are lofty. Still weeks from the exhibit’s official opening, the museum space was already brimming with fascinating items on loan.
Bill Simon, a longtime observer of the local, national and worldwide surfing scene and collector of surfboards and surfing artifacts, said Ocean City’s surf culture was among the strongest on the East Coast and paralleled the growth of the sport.
Growing up in Egg Harbor Township, Simon got into the sport as a teenager and surfed in Ocean City and Atlantic City, where grandparents on both sides of his family owned respective homes.
“I was always coming over the bridge and wanting to surf in Ocean City,” he said. “And I would usually stay at my other grandparents house in Atlantic City for a month or so each summer and surf there,” he added.
Simon, a diesel mechanic for New Jersey Transit became one of the region’s foremost collectors of surfboards, amassing a collection of more than 250.
“But then my wife and I began collecting children, so I had to sell off much of the collection of surfboards,” he said with a laugh.
The buyers may have taken away dozens of historic Hobies and Dewey Webers, but they couldn’t take away Bill’s knowledge of the sport and the history of surfboards, making surfboards and the evolution of the sport.
Bill’s knowledge of the sport and the subject is so vast; McGranahan said that “we are naming him the co-curator of the exhibit.”
Surfing is an ancient sport in Hawaii, where native islander Duke Kahanamoku popularized the sport as we know it today. Duke was an Olympic swimming champion who trained and lived in Philadelphia and surfed locally in Atlantic City and Ocean City. The South Jersey beaches were accessible by train and Kahanamoku wrote to his parents in 1912 that “not a single person” was surfing here when he rose atop his heavy wooden long board and caught his first Atlantic Ocean waves.
“You had to be a serious waterman to surf in those early days with no fins and no leash,” Simon said.
But that’s just the beginning of the Ocean City surfing story. It progressed from early paddleboards, to handcrafted long boards and eventually to fiberglass and foam models. In the 60s, long boards gave way to short. Ocean City and Atlantic City hosted some of the first major East Coast surfing contests, and local surf shops starting with Surfers Supply, sprung up. A culture was born, grew and thrives to this day.
In addition to the boards, there are historic photos, memorabilia of the Ocean City Surfing Association, print materials featuring vintage local advertising and much, much more.
It will all be on display at the Museum, beginning May 27th.
Much of the collection is on loan, McGranahan said, and he is looking for area residents who may want to donate items.
Simon said he is also available to look at visitors’ boards and surfing memorabilia and will gladly provide assessments of value.
“We are looking at this exhibit as something that will attract people not just from (Philadelphia and South Jersey) but also from outside the area,” Simon said.
For more information, contact McGranahan at 609-399-1801. The Executive Director will also put interested people in touch with Simon, he said.
