DESCRIPTION:
Surfing Florida Lake Worth Pier Music From Live Smash Mouth
Lake Worth is the most viciously localized break in Florida, which is probably why it's barely known beyond state lines. During the '70s and '80s, visiting surfers would encounter nightmarish ultra-violence of the "harass your girlfriend," "break your board" and "smash your windshield" variety. Once, after being dropped in on, a local followed his provocateur to the beach and proceeded to smash the surfer's board on a parking meter. The upset visitor took a swing at the local, but quickly found himself hog-tied around the very parking meter that took out his surfboard and was later found and untied by the police. Things have mellowed a bit since then.

Clearly, Lake Worth must house a good wave to justify such extreme measures; in fact, it offers several. First, just before the guarded area on the south side of the pier, a sandbar runs farther south in front of an old seawall called Blackwall. When north or northeast swells are running and the sand is settled, fast, hollow waves reel along this bar, earning it the hyperbolic name, Banzai. Local Pro Baron Knowlton first learned to tuberide on this perfect little wave before moving on to places like Pipe and Honolua Bay. These days, he's traveling less and is frequently heard at his old stomping grounds.

The Pier's south side maintains an outside sandbar as well. Overhead swells will break off the end of the pier, mush out and then reform down by Blackwall. On the biggest swells, it gets steep and fast and occasionally connects all the way through to the inside. The south side is one of the better spots during nor'easter conditions -- if there isn't too much underlying groundswell -- as the waves are shielded somewhat from the wind.

While north swells will often bypass Palm Beach and be bigger in Lake Worth, the pier gets juiciest during east/southeast windswells. Sandbars off Blackwall will throw good rights under these conditions. However, if Northside is working, it's arguably the best peak on either side of the pilings, throwing hollow, high-speed, top-to-bottom rights. Some of the waves break left through the pier, and if you like to tempt fate and arouse the ire of authorities, shooting the pier is a good way to do both. Confrontations with the lifeguards have led them to blackball Northside between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., seven days a week. Local surfers would like to petition against this rather arbitrary decision, but so far, have been unable to rally the necessary support. Clearly, it's the only occasion when the locals have not had their way.