Virginia Beach First Street

Virginia Beach First Street has hosted the East Coast Surfing Championships since 1963, making it the longest-running surf contest in the country and a landmark in American surfing history. The wave itself is nothing special—mushy beach break peaks typical of the mid-Atlantic—but the event and the community it spawned transformed Virginia Beach into an East Coast surf hub. When hurricane swells arrive or nor'easters churn offshore, First Street can produce legitimate waves that remind everyone why they started surfing here in the first place.