lords of long island L.I.E.S. honcho Ron Morelli on his years of surfing hurricanes and tackling waves in the dead of winter. Photography matthieu Lemaire courapied
I
grew up in Long Island, a gigantic suburb 40 minutes east of New York City. I was a product of what was around me at the time, directly influenced by the back pages of Thrasher magazine and the other contents within. During ST—052
the early-to-mid ’80s—when I was coming up in the ranks as a teenager—pop music was at a peak in certain ways, with hip-hop becoming a musical/cultural movement and Public Enemy and N.W.A. scaring the shit out of white-bread America while crashing head-on with what was left of punk rock. Dirtbags, guidos, metal-heads, goths, punks, burnouts, skaters and even jocks were all clued in on what was going on; you couldn’t avoid it. Suburban revolution and teen angst was at its peak, with constant boredom always looming and healthy doses of LSD, weed, Rush and