NYC Parks BAN Boogie Boarding?!

[link to rockawaytimes.com]

For the first time in history, an ocean facing international city has banned the outright use of boogie boards.

Chicago, which is a landlocked city, had banned them only to lift the ban when they legalized surfing. So why is our city going in reverse after we legalized surfing in 2007?

While most peninsula people know that technically it has been frowned upon to boogie board, it has been at the determination of area lifeguards to allow it or not.

Not this time, it is BANNED!

With little explanation and certainly no response to official emails, the NYC Parks Department has banned their use across all of NYC’s beaches. One PEP employee said on Wednesday, Aug. 6, that the official directive came from Jill Weber, Parks Department Rockaways Administrator On Monday Aug. 4. When Jill was asked privately by one of our friends on Saturday, during the Craft Fair, she stated “There has been an increased use of them and we have to ban them for people’s safety.”

For the last month, when coming home from work and asking my two surfing groms how their day went at the beach, both were dejected and complained that they couldn’t boogie board. I surely thought they were confused. But sure enough when having a summer Friday, I took them to the beach at the end of my block, as soon as they hit the water with their boogie boards a 20 year old lifeguard was harassing them to get out of the water. I walked over and said they’ve been boogie boarding since they were a year old at this same stretch of sand.

“No flotation devices! You can thank Bill de Blasio for that” he barked at me.

I said you’re absurd, that means “pool inflatables.” I was a part of the legalization of the surfing beach and we wanted the “definition” of flotation devices to mean pool inflatables as it was too broad a meaning.

Google “flotation devices” and you get life preservers. Even Wikipedia states “A personal flotation device (abbreviated as PFD; also referred to as a life jacket, life preserver, Mae West, life vest, life saver, cork jacket, buoyancy aid or flotation suit).”

Surfing has its factionalism, short boarders generally hate all other forms of surfing. They rag on about SUPs, long boarders, but mostly boogie boarders have long time gotten the heat. But what this message the city sends now is complete DISCRIMINATION against a singular type of surfing.

Tom Morey invented the boogie board in 1971 and it has gone through radical changes since then. He was even recently an advisory to a company called Catch Surf who developed a short soft top surfboard called the “Beater.” These boards were invented so they could be used in swimming areas of California to “beat” the Black Ball zoning, an area defined for swimmers only. And guess what else gets the love in the swimming areas? Boogie boards!

Back to the beach, after dealing with the lifeguard, I asked to see his boss.

Lieutenant Robert Huerta came down and I asked “Why is there no boogie boarding?

“No boogie boarding!”

Me: “But why? My kids have been boogie boarding this beach for 11 years!”

“No boogie boarding!”

“Why no boogie boarding?”

“No boogie boarding!”

That was pretty intelligent!

What truly kills me about this is boogie boarding on our peninsula is basically a birth right. And here is the Parks Department ripping that away from our kids.

As of this being published, the Friends of Rockaway, RB Civic Assoc. and the newly formed Rockaway Beach Surfers Association have sent letters demanding the lifting of this ridiculous ban and discrimination against users of this equipment. If by Friday Aug. 15 we have not heard from the authorities on the lifting of this ban, we will be protesting en masse with our boogie boards on the weekend and alerting the international media what a farce this Parks Department is and the rules they love to make up where no rules exist.