Riding the waves along the Oregon Coast

The Newport surfing scene: then and now

By Steve Card

Oftentimes when people think of surfing, images of Southern California or Hawaii come to mind. But the Oregon Coast, and Newport in particular, has developed its own surfing culture over the years, and riding the waves along local beaches has become a popular activity for everyone from beginners to experienced surfers.

How Oregon surfing became a thing

The person credited with being the first to surf in earnest along the Central Oregon Coast was Scott Blackman. It was the summer of 1964, and Scott had just spent four years in the Air Force, stationed in the tropical waters of Guam. After returning to the Central Oregon Coast where he grew up, Scott began surfing at Newport’s Agate Beach. It wasn’t long before others starting noticing Scott out there on the waves and also got excited about surfing. Two teenaged boys — Rick (Ohana) Bailey and Larry Tucker, who both lived above Agate Beach — soon joined Scott in the surf, and the next year, the three of them organized the Agate Beach Surf Club, which sponsored the first surf contest in the area in August of 1965.

Scott was also an artist and became interested in photographing his fellow surfers, documenting the pioneer days of Oregon Coast surfing in the 1960s and ’70s. He and his wife, Sandy, would later publish books about the Oregon Coast surfing culture, with a particular focus on Newport and the surrounding area, which has become known for its welcoming culture to surfers of all levels. Learn more about these early days of surfing at surferscott.com.

What is unique about Oregon Coast surfing?

There are several things that make Oregon Coast surfing special and unique — things to excite any surfer.

There are a lot more waves and a lot less people competing for those waves. At the local beaches, 10 people is considered a crowded day. At most, there could be as many as 50 people, whereas if you go to some beaches around San Diego, it could be 3,000 or 4,000 people trying to surf on the same day.

Another attractive thing about Oregon surfing is that it’s a more of a natural setting — no row of high-rise buildings along the beach. The water is cleaner, and there aren’t freeways running along the coastline.

Many people have a hard time understanding why anyone would want to surf in Oregon because the water is so cold, but with advancements in wetsuit technology, surfing has exploded in the Pacific Northwest. The wetsuits are much more flexible and much warmer — people can stay comfortable for two, three, maybe even four hours with the right material, making it a much more enjoyable experience.

Introducing surfing to beginners

For people who would like to experience surfing but know nothing about the sport, there are a couple of surf shops in Newport that provide lessons to help them get up and riding the waves. These lessons include the use of all the necessary gear, so learning to surf doesn’t require a big initial investment.

Ossies Surf Shop (OssiesSurfShop.com), located at 4900 Oregon Coast Highway in north Newport, has been meeting the needs of surfers for the past 28 years. It is owned by Dan Hasselschwert, who first started teaching surfing to students when he was a teacher at Waldport Middle School.

“I was doing a middle school surf club in Waldport and was looking for gear for the kids to use,” Dan said. He contacted the person who started the original Ossies Surf Shop in Otter Rock. “I connected with him, (and) he let us use the gear,” said Dan. “He kept pitching to me ‘Hey, you ought to buy the stuff off me.’”

And that’s just what Dan ended up doing. After opening Ossies Surf Shop in Newport, “we had some goals, (and) we just blew those goals out of the water financially,” said Dan. “I hired an employee, and we just kept it going.”

One focus for Ossie’s is helping beginners get started.

“The majority of our lessons are going to be those beginners, the people on vacation that want to get a taste of it,” Dan said. “The next level, I’d say, is we get these annual customers that come through. They’re improving each year, (and) eventually they get their own boards. And then we get what we call the intermediate surfer who says, ‘Hey, I’ve been surfing for X number of years, and I just can’t get over the hump.’”

Dan has also partnered with Oregon State University. “I’ve been teaching surfing for college credit there for 20-plus years,” he said. “And this spring, for the first time ever, I’ll be doing that with the University of Oregon.”

Russell McClanan is the owner of South Beach Surf Shop (SouthBeachSurfer.com), located in the Aquarium Village at 3101 SE Ferry Slip Road, #810, in Newport. Russell began surfing when he was just 10 years old. As a late teen, he was already on the U.S. Surf Team. He later became a coach for that team and also earned multiple certifications. He enjoys introducing people to the sport.

“My motto is if you can do 10 pushups and can swim, I guarantee I can teach you to surf,” Russell said. He said his students have ranged from children as young as 4 to an adult pushing 70. Lessons can be one-on-one or groups as large as 30.

“A lot of times we’re only in waist-deep water,” said Russell. “You can get your feet on the bottom, I can teach you how to paddle the board, how to sit on the board, how to turn on the board with your legs. And then the first couple of times I’ll push you into the wave and I’m going to body surf behind you. I’m holding the board and taking the person through what’s going on. Then I’ll let them go and they’ll surf.

“It’s therapy for a lot of people, too,” Russell added. “They just want to be around it. They want to learn, they want to be outdoors and around nature. If you go surfing with me, you’re going to have a good time. You’re going to stand up and catch waves. You’re going to be stoked, and you’re going to see why I do what I do.”

Creating a welcoming environment

Dan Hasselschwert moved to the Oregon Coast from Ohio in the 1990s, and he first began surfing when he was 22 years old, later than kids who are born and raised in the sport.

“I remember being new,” he said. “Surfing has a lot of exclusivity to it. There’s something called ‘localism.’ When I moved here there was one shop in town and they didn’t rent boards, they didn’t do lessons. If you weren’t born and raised here and they didn’t know you for 10 years, they weren’t nice to you.”

So when Dan started Ossies, he made it his mission to be welcoming to all surfers. “I didn’t know any different than to be nice to everybody, be welcoming to everybody, accepting to everybody. So that’s kind of how I set out,” he said. “In our mission statement, it says if you’re a blond-haired 16-year-old surfing pro, or a white-haired 80-year-old lady, we’re going to treat you the same.

“I would say Newport’s moniker of ‘The Friendliest’ is kind of extended through Ossies into the community,” he added. “I don’t know that you’d find quite as much welcoming and acceptance in a lot of communities. I believe Newport is the raddest city on the Oregon Coast.”

Dan said Ossies has become the shop for many of the best surfers in the area. “This is their shop, they’re our instructors, this is where they get their gear,” Dan said. “But on the other hand, we also really are welcoming to beginners, and we have the weekend warriors, we have an extensive selection of used stuff that’s really inexpensive.”

Russell McClanan worked at Ossies before deciding to open his South Beach Surf Shop. And another local shop, the Newport Surf Shop, is also owned by someone who first worked at Ossies.

“Both of those are my ex-employees,” said Dan. “On one hand it’s like you’d love to be the only shop in town, but at the same time, that doesn’t really make the surf scene. Competition is good. As soon as I heard they were opening shops, we started doing things we hadn’t done — incentive programs, customer appreciation things, newsletters.”

Surf contests bring people together

Several surf contests take place each year along the Central Oregon Coast, but one of the most popular is the Agate Beach Surf Classic, which is held in September.

“There’s about 180 participants, and I’d say they’re from all over the world,” Dan said. “We’ve had people from Puerto Rico, we’ve had people from all over the West Coast, from Hawaii.”

He added that a surfing scene is only as good as its individual members. “We’ve got some people in this community who’ve got connections to the pro surfing world. We have people who have connections to the roots of everything going on. We have people like Ossies who are connected to the industry, to the school systems. So when those contests are going on, all those people are saying to all of the people they know, ‘Hey, you should come to this contest.’”

Although local surf shops help out with the Agate Beach Surf Classic, the event is officially put on by the City of Newport, and the goal is to raise money for parks and recreations scholarships for kids.

Other local surf contests include the Otter Rock and Roll, a youth surf contest, and the Oregon Surfing Championships, which was started by the South Beach Surf Shop and will be holding its fourth annual event this year.

How technology benefits the surfing community

With technology and forecasting tools, it’s never been easier to predict when it’s a good time to go to the beach to surf.

There is information provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and by the U.S. Coast Guard. There is also a wide variety of information to be found online, with dozens of websites providing real-time data about the surf conditions.

And then there are the Surf Cams. People can pull up the camera’s view on their computer and see if it would be a good day to go surfing because it’s a live-action camera, running continuously. There are two cameras in Lincoln City, one in Otter Rock and one at Newport’s Agate Beach. People can access those cameras at surfline.com Another favorite website among surfers is windy.com.

Russell, with South Beach Surf Shop, is also getting ready to launch a YouTube channel and start producing a podcast to share information about Oregon Coast surfing. After the launch, links to those sites will be on his website at SouthBeachSurfer.com.