Long Beach's Real Surf Season Isn't Summer. It's Right Now.

If you had to guess when Long Beach hosts its biggest surf contests, you'd probably say July. Beach passes are in full swing, the boardwalk is packed, and every visitor guide calls this "the season." You'd be wrong on all three counts. The city's own surf history says otherwise, and so does the swell.

The City of Long Beach and Skudin Surf had scheduled the King and Queen of the Beach Kids Surf Contest for Saturday, September 19, on Riverside Boulevard beach, in memory of Daniel Bobis and Brian Ward. It is part of a surf-event history in Long Beach that goes back well over a decade.

The City's Rulebook Already Treats Fall Like Prime Time

Long Beach doesn't run its surf beaches on a summer clock, and the rules make that obvious once you look at them. Azores and Lincoln Boulevard beach is a permanent surf zone, open to surfing seven days a week, all year, no rotation required. Every other surf beach in the city rotates on a schedule set at the discretion of the Chief of Lifeguards, which shifts through the fall rather than shutting down after the last beach pass sale. Fishing is banned outright on any beach designated for surfing, and foil boards are prohibited everywhere, no exceptions, no seasons. That's not a summer-tourist ruleset. That's infrastructure built for people who surf here in October just as seriously as they do in July.

Lincoln Boulevard, in particular, has a reputation that outlasts the season. Surfline's own writeup on the break calls it the most happening spot in town, an average beachbreak with slightly better lefts than rights, made unpredictable by sandbars that shift enough to move the best peak from one jetty to the next within the same month. That kind of local nuance doesn't get written for a beach nobody surfs in September.

What the Swell Charts Actually Show

Here's the number that surprises people who think of Long Beach as a July town: according to surf-forecast.com's climate data for the break, autumn, and specifically September, is the most reliable month of the year for clean, rideable surf here. Clean waves show up roughly 42 percent of the time in September, while the beach is blown out the other 51 percent. That's not a great record in absolute terms. But stack it against a July that's mostly small windswell and glassy flat mornings, and 42 percent starts to look like the best odds Long Beach offers all year.

The mechanism behind that number has to do with geography, not luck. Long Island juts due east into the Atlantic, which gives its south-facing beaches an unusually good hurricane swell window, something the winter months can't replicate because straight northeast groundswells mostly miss these breaks. Late summer and early fall put Long Beach directly in the path of storm systems spinning up the coast, at exactly the time of year when the water is still warm enough to paddle out in a spring suit instead of a 5/4. Winter can deliver size too, but you're covering up head to toe for it. September gets you both the swell and the comfort.

Every Major Contest in Town's History Landed After Labor Day

The clearest evidence that locals already know this isn't the forecast data. It's the calendar of every serious surf event Long Beach has ever hosted.

The Long Island Herald reported that the Quiksilver Pro brought the world tour to town in 2011, the sixth stop on that year's ASP calendar and the first time an event of that size had come to Long Island surf. It nearly got canceled by Tropical Storm Irene and still pulled in close to 100,000 spectators, with local surfer Balaram Stack earning the contest's first wildcard slot and paddling out against eleven-time world champion Kelly Slater. It was a major surf event held during storm season.

Fast forward to September 2019, when the World Surf League brought its Longboard Tour to Long Beach for a run scheduled September 6 through 12, the third stop on a circuit that had already passed through Noosa, Australia and Galicia, Spain. The event was hosted by Skudin Surf, the shop owned by professional big-wave surfers Will and Cliff Skudin, and Moku Surf NY, the West End shop that has run its own Longboard Classic every September since 2014, stepped in to run the local trials that fed surfers into the main event. Two shops, one neighborhood, organizing surf events in the same month years apart. Together, their events show the fall's place in Long Beach's surf calendar.

In 2026, the pattern appeared at a smaller, more personal scale: the King and Queen of the Beach Kids Surf Contest was scheduled as a youth event built around community and memory, on the same stretch of Riverside Boulevard beach where Skudin Surf operates day to day. Its planned timing echoes the post-Labor Day dates of earlier events.

The Shops That Read the Charts Every Morning

Part of what makes this pattern visible is that Long Beach still has a working surf economy, not a nostalgic one. A handful of shops anchor it:

• Skudin Surf, based on Riverside Boulevard, run by professional big-wave surfers Will and Cliff Skudin, and the city's partner for the youth contest that was scheduled for September 19.
• Moku Surf NY, on West Beech Street in the West End, which has hosted its own Longboard Classic every September since 2014 and ran trials for the 2019 World Surf League stop.
• Long Beach Surf Shop, on West Park Avenue, a family-owned operation stocking more than 300 boards out of a loft-like 1928 warehouse building two minutes from the break.
• Unsound Surf, on East Park Avenue, one of the shops that sponsored the trials back when the Quiksilver Pro rolled through in 2011.

These aren't seasonal pop-ups that shutter after Labor Day. They're the businesses that watch the same swell charts locals do, stock boards for water that's still warm enough to surf comfortably well into October, and organize the events that keep proving September is the month that matters.

What the September Contest Says About Long Beach

The King and Queen of the Beach Kids Surf Contest was scheduled for September 19 on Riverside Boulevard beach. Its planned timing makes it an example of Long Beach's fall surf calendar, which includes major events dating back to 2011.

The beach passes come down, the crowds thin out, and the water gets better. That's not a coincidence built into the calendar. It's built into the coastline, the storm tracks, and a swell window that the summer months simply don't have access to. That is why Long Beach’s surf calendar extends beyond summer.

We're partial to this town in every season, but fall is when it shows you what it's actually made of. If you're the kind of person who wants a life built around mornings like this one, Lucky To Live Here would love to help you find your place in it. Contact us whenever you're ready to talk about calling Long Beach home.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.