For our inaugural feature article, we decided to pay homage to a pioneer in surf info websites, Joe McGowan. Joe started The Surf Info Page in 1998 for his own use and it grew into a highly regarded, grassroots operation that was visited as many as 3,000 times a day when it ceased operation recently. Joe describes himself as a “husband, father, grandpa, surfer” and he sat down with us recently to share some thoughts on what makes him tick.

DS: When did you start surfing?

JM: I started surfing in 1967 on a Windansea Titan, a pop-out of the old school, that somehow made its way to New Jersey. I bought it for the $35 I had in my pocket when I met a kid who was buying an upgrade board that day. I caught my first wave on it in Lavallette when I was 15 years old. I actually felt like a surfer ever since I knew there was such a thing at around age 12. I heard about it from an old Army buddy of my uncle, I remember him describing it as “schwooshing down a wave”. I don’t know, it was something about the way he said it or moved his hand through the air that made me get it right away. That was right around the time that the original Endless Summer came out, I saw that a bunch of times and it really made me feel like a surfer somehow. It wasn’t until we moved to Lavallette in ’67, though, that I really had the chance to start.

DS: I bet you’re happy your family made the move, huh?

JM: Sure, even beyond the surfing, it was an unbelievably great adolescence, growing up and coming of age there in Lavallette. We were a great gang of scoundrels in a small town where the quiet winters lent themselves to all kinds of mischief and fun. I wouldn’t trade that growing up for anything!

DS: Speaking of your life, fill in the gaps for us...

JM: When I started surfing as a kid it was among a crew of really, really good surfers. Klank, Smoochie, Smoothie, Wags. Man, it was impossible for me to get any attention in league with these guys. I surfed with them for 7 years or so until I went into the Army and that kept me out of the water for a time. 

I graduated from Point Beach, class of ’70 and after a couple of years as an apprentice auto mechanic I enlisted in the Army, just ahead of getting drafted. This was in the ‘Nam days but I was very lucky when it came to that. My assignment to the 1st Cavalry Division, of Operation Iraqi Freedom note, came just as they were rotated back stateside. I spent my entire tour at Ft. Hood, Texas. After leaving the Army I had a couple of factory mechanic type jobs and then decided to take advantage of my GI Bill benefit and went to college to get an engineering degree.

DS: How’d that go?

JM: Pretty good, very good in fact. I was a lousy student in high school so I remember being kind of unnerved by the whole thing at first. I definitely wasn’t your typical freshman. I was 24 and married with two kids! Those were some tough economic times for us Macs let me tell you. But somehow we muscled through every one of those long 4 years, with DonnaMac working way harder and enduring much more than she ought. That degree was her accomplishment as well as mine.  The earning power it brought as much hers as it is mine.

DS: What exactly do you do in your day job?

JM: I’m an electrical engineer and have spent my entire career working for the Army. I’m about 26 years in it now, 29 if you count my actually Army time. I’m a real patriot, as anyone can tell you, I see us as being among the good guys and war a sad necessity, as all of human history testifies, of being human. I’m proud that I dedicated my career to our soldiers–the equipment and capabilities that we see on CNN today are a vastly different from the much more primitive kind of battlespace that existed when I first came out of school. A lot of what you saw, from weapons to maneuvering aircraft and ground vehicles to cool map displays with moving icons representing force locations, I’ve had a hand in many, many of those things in some way. We prosecute our bad guys better because of me.

DS: Did that success require any sacrifices?

JM: Sure, and it kind of just snuck up on me. There was about 12 years there when I didn’t surf at all. I was so driven with my career; all I did was work, work, and more work! Long hours at the office and then a briefcase full to bring home. As you can imagine this was also tough on my family life. I’m sure that I left many things undone as a husband and father in those days. Luckily my wife and kids still love me anyway!

DS: What did it? What brought you back? Was it some sort of epiphany?

JM: I wish I could say it was that deep or that moving but it was really just a random happening that brought me back. I was cleaning my garage one day and at one point I moved aside a pile of tarps and drop cloths. Underneath was my 5'8" Bahne Standard, vintage 1968 or 69, the first new surfboard I ever owned. I don’t know what it was but I couldn’t take my eyes off it after I stood it up in the corner. I started running my hand over the rails, actually remembering some best rides, and that was that. I actually paddled out that day on that board and the rest, as they say, is history. As a footnote, DonnaMac says that surfing and being a surfer has restored me to “that nice guy she married”. Having surfing back in my life has brought me to a great balance between work and play and between whimsy and serious business.

DS: How did you get started with the Surf Info Page?

JM: Once I had access to the internet in the mid 90’s I quickly discovered many public domain websites provided by NOAA’s NWS and other publicly funded weather sources. On my computers I had all of those sites marked as favorites but when I wasn’t at my own computer I could never remember all those cryptic URL names to retrieve them. Using the little bit of “vanity” website space that my internet service provider gives me I set up a simple website that was, quite literally, JoeMac’s Surf Info Page. I was the only one that knew how to get to it. Once my buds saw it and started using it word got out and all of a sudden the site was getting hundreds of hits a day.  It was kind of unbelievable, the site had no style to it, it was simply a linked listing in black text on a white background to the sites that I used to check the surf conditions. At first I started hacking around, putting up pictures, shout outs and remarkably the hit counter just kept growing.

It developed into what it was at the end for 2 reasons. I was constantly trying to improve the content, that is to say its usefulness as a reporter or predictor of conditions, without increasing my own workload. Second, it was an absolutely pure outlet for my creative side. The look and feel of it, the parts of myself that I revealed in my Ravings and bulletin board content, all of that was an outlet that I enjoyed, a side of myself that probably wouldn’t be coming out if I hadn’t become a recovered surfer.

DS: What were you most proud of with the site?

JM: Probably the Surf Reports Page. When we started that service there were surf-centric websites around, but none that tell you, reliably and every day, if you should be heading for the beach right now.  No one had done anything like it before and I’m way stoked to see that kind of thing continue here on your site and a few others out there. We took some heat in the beginning while we figured out the right balance between useful reports and overexposing specific breaks. Once we had that formula down and along with some simple editorial “rules” that boil down to don’t embarrass my mother and don’t forecast we had really started something. I was among its most avid users as I made my way through an office-bound workday.

DS: Why did you pull the plug on the Surf Info Page?

JM: As I explained in some of the last essays that I published on the site, it came to feel as if I wasn’t getting enough back out of it, not enough to encourage further effort anyway. I feel great about it though, I really feel like I started something. The Surf Info Page was the un-commercial surfers website, as our tag line used to read, “for surfers, by surfers”. I made a good start at defining what content makes that work . You guys in the next gen, if you will, are going to have to figure out how to make it pay. At this point in my life I decided not to take that on as a workload generator. I’d rather surf or play with the grandkids!

DS: What’s next for Joe Mac?

JM: If you’ll permit me to quote George Bush the 1st as he left the White House, “I intend to go heavy into the grandfathering business.” I’ll keep working for another 5 years or so for the Army at Fort Monmouth until it closes and they move my job to Maryland. I’ve already caught a bunch of DPs that I wouldn’t have with the care and feeding of the Surf Info Page so that’s a good thing. I started a shirt series just before shutting down the site. Each shirt features some surf break that is easily recognized by its locals because of some land or man-made feature rendered in silhouette.  My last one didn’t sell very well until I said I was closing, LOL, but I’m chalking that up to bad marketing on my part. I hope to put them in a shop or two, so stand by for that.

Some of your visitors may remember my “Buoy Gauge” Windows software. I gave it away as freeware sometime last year. I’ve got an enhanced version of that in the works and I’ll be looking to sell that for a small aount per copy when I complete it. One of those enhancements, by the way, will incorporate the results of a statistical analysis of 5 years worth of Surf Report and buoy data looking for buoy patterns that would cause the program to sound an alarm or send you an email.

One habit that I took up from my time as the Webmaster at the Surf Info Page is writing essays, my Ravings to you erstwhile readers. I always seem to have 10 or so in some state of un-readiness at any given time. I intend to keep that up and put those out to surfing and other sites like this one and maybe one day have a paid gig as a feature writer of some sort.

DS: Best Wave?

JM: It was last fall during one of the few hurricane swells that we got and it came in at just the right angle for one of my usual spots to take it just right.  Insane drops into thrown over hollows.  I got shacked twice on that wave, practically standing up, on my 9’8” Cosmic Bull, and came out the front both times!  It was big and fast, any blunder would have taken me out, but I did it all right! I love it when that happens!

DS: Is there something you can tell us, something nobody knows about JoeMac?

JM: Well, my buds already know this, but I’m kind of an odd surfer I guess, for two reasons.  First, I don’t really read the mags for the most part and until recently the only websites that I ever used were CNN and The Surf Info Page (I miss it too!). I have very little interest in the stars unless they’re surfing right there with me and having the same good time. Secondly, I am very content surfing the same old breaks time after time. I’ve been riding the same dozen places my whole life and so far, that’s been ok with me. That wanderlust that seems to affect every other surfer is strangely absent in me. It drives my pals a little crazy sometimes, when they’re up for some kind of roadtrip adventure session.

DS: Last question, what do you think of Duke Storm?

JM: I love it!  First of all it is beautiful looking, very soulful. You guys are doing a great job with that. I’m stoked to still have your forecasts; I’m happy to say that you continue to live up to that “foresee-er” hype that we started together! I also love the fact that I see old familiar handles among your surf reporters, LBCrew, Aloha Ric, DArc. Those guys added a lot of personality and useful content to The Surf Info Page and I’m glad and grateful that they are showing more stick-to-it-iveness then me!

DS: A big mahalo and thank you Joe for sharing your thoughts with us. You started something great, homegrown, grassroots, soulful and at times insightful. Hopefully, we will carry on that vision of grassroots writ large and continue to share that stoke here at DukeStorm.com.