Meet Benny’s Surf Club, New York’s queer, BIPOC surfing collective🏄 Founders Johnny Cappetta and Momo Hudes on their efforts to make the sport less white, less straight and more inclusive:
. Growing up in New York, Momo also recalls an uneasiness within the surfing community there.
Benny’s aims to rectify this and reckon with surf culture as a whole, while making surfing more accessible for anyone and everyone in New York. Alongside lessons, surfing meet-ups in The Rockaways and round-table discussions on proper technique and etiquette, Momo, Johnny and the Benny’s crew, are actively fostering a community of surfers who, regardless of experience level, can reap the benefits of the sport in a holistic and inclusive fashion.
JC: I think the New York scene is definitely more diverse and a little bit more chill than California. California surf culture — people take it pretty seriously. I was lucky that I had some older friends who would surf with me, but as a very small, skinny kid, [I'd] have grown men threatening to fight me on a regular basis. It's just pretty aggressive.
MH: We're still figuring it out. Our last meet-up, compared to our first, had a turnout of people we didn't know at all. It was a great time. We took up this one block of water and gave people the space and support that they needed. I gave people who hadn't surfed at all lessons, and then everyone else just got in the water and paddled around. We were giving people tips, watching them surf. It was all of us surfing this little lineup.MH: It's been a great thing for me.
JC: Surf culture is the thing I had a falling out with when I came out, and when I left California, I felt like that was a chapter in my life that had to be closed because the community was so conservative. In the last five months, as the nation as a whole has taken a little bit more time to do a moral reckoning with our culture at large and our history, I started feeling like I can't speak to America as a whole — I don't know how to engage with that. But I know surfing.
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