Sewer Pipe - The Blog

Unlike most things in our complicated, overly-slick, processed, pasteurized, and carefully marketed world, surf breaks tend to be both simply and aptly named. This is not because surfers are simple, or apt, but because like other underground cultures, a shorthand that is difficult for outsiders to decipher is always preferred.

Sewer Pipe, as a Cleveland surf break, is as simple and descriptive as it gets. It's defining physical feature - besides the sometimes sweet shoulder-high barrels it can deliver in 30 mph or up south west winds, as the turgid, cold, shit-brown waters of Lake Erie pass over the underwater rock shelf that acts like a Midwestern reef - is the 10' diameter sanitary sewer relief outlet, that without warning can dump untold thousands of gallons of toilet water directly into the break.

It's the Cleveland "Pipeline." And that comparison is more accurate than a non-lake surfer might appreciate. Like the real thing, Sewer Pipe is usually a left. And in the scale of Lake Erie waves, which is not at all impressive in ocean terms, Sewer Pipe is also Cleveland's biggest wave. It is also Cleveland's most dangerous wave. Though nobody has ever died there, the combination of a big, fast moving wave, with a short period, the rock shelf, assorted underwater concrete debris leftover from the 1800's bathhouse that used to occupy the site, as well as the occasional sunken refrigerator or stove, has added up to injuries not usually associated with Lake Erie surfing.

And, like The Pipeline, for us unfortunate souls condemned to the hell that is Cleveland surfing, from October till the lake freezes over for the winter sometime in the early months of the year, in spite of the poop, and the dangers, Sewer Pipe is The Place to be.

Sewer Pipe, as surf break, represents both the best, and the worst of Lake Erie surfing. It is my intention that Sewer Pipe, the blog, will do the same.

Of course, "Sewer Pipe" is just a name. And I have no intention of restricting this blog only to it. If it has to do with Lake Erie surfing or culture, from the surfing to skating, to music, to movies, and of course the people, art and social events, Sewer Pipe, the blog will do it's best to take at least a poorly-aimed , drunken jab at it.

Think of it as a small, half-ass, on-line, Surfer Magazine for the rest of us.

So sit back, and enjoy The Sewer Pipe. Where everything that has to do with lake surfing will eventually flush out.

Photo: The Lake Chewbacca, being different, and taking an unusual Sewer Pipe right.