VIRGINIA BEACH — Friends of local surf culture icon Pete Smith will hold a meet-and-greet with him from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday at Dough Boy’s Restaurant on 33rd Street at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront.
Smith, 86, found out last year he has prostate cancer and has been dealing with other health challenges. But he’s staying positive, and is currently living in a rehabilitation facility he calls “cowabunga villas.”
Smith’s looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones.
“I’m already getting so stoked,” he said during a phone interview this week. “I’m going to be stoked out of my gourd come Sunday.”
The event will include a silent auction of surf memorabilia and copies of vintage photographs for sale featuring Smith and other local surf legends who helped grow the sport in Virginia Beach.
“If anybody wants them signed, I’d be more than happy to sign them,” he said. “I love signing things in my old southpaw scrawl.”
In 1963, Smith and Bob Holland opened the first surf shop in Virginia Beach. That same year, Smith helped found the Virginia Beach Surfing Festival, later renamed East Coast Surfing Championships, the longest continuously-run surf competition in the world held annually in Virginia Beach.
As a teenager, Smith spent summers at the Oceanfront working as a “float boy” renting beach equipment.
“The rafts that we rented, we took to the filling station across the street, and we pumped them up hard so we could stand on them,” Smith said.
He later worked as a lifeguard, and enjoyed surfing and friends he made on the beach and in the water, describing his youth as “the greatest years of my life.”
At age 24, he wrote a letter to Surfer Magazine heralding the surfing scene in Virginia Beach. Then editor John Severson showed the letter to California surfboard maker Hobie Alter, who drove to Virginia Beach and found Smith. Alter negotiated a deal with Smith and Holland for them to carry his boards exclusively in their store.
The meet-and-greet will include photos of those early days at Smith & Holland Surf Shop, and later, from Pete Smith’s Surf Shop.
“It’s just a nostalgia kind of a tour,” said friend George Kotarides, owner of Dough Boys. “We don’t know how many more times Pete’s going to be able to do something like this.”
Parking is available in a lot behind Dough Boys. Pizza and drink specials will be offered.
“It’s really about the meet-and-greet with Pete,” said Kotarides. “We’re doing it for the community.”
Stacy Parker, 757-222-5125, stacy.parker@pilotonline.com
