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It is a week before Thanksgiving, and a winter wind is crashing hard onto the shores of Rockaway, Queens, dropping temperatures into the 30s. Yet the water at Rockaway Beach is still alive with surfers.

Clad in head-to-toe black neoprene, five sleek bodies appear like silhouettes, bobbing in the glare of the late-afternoon sun. As the swells roll in, each takes his turn to paddle and stand, perching atop the waves for a few brief, exhilarating seconds before plunging back down into the frothy 50-degree surf.

“Some people think it’s crazy for us to go out when it’s 35 degrees outside or snowing or whatever,” said Joel Banslaben, a 30-year-old Long Island native who has been surfing the waters around New York City since the age of 12. “But to those of us who grew up surfing here, it’s just normal.”

The willingness to brave frigid northeastern winters is not the only attribute that sets New York City surfers apart. Fiercely protective of Rockaway and other nearby beaches, the average city surfer is anything but a bum. Spanning the generations from teenagers to professionals in their mid-50s, Big Apple surfers form a diverse, yet tight-knit subculture that follows environmental issues as closely as it does surf forecasts and wears suits as well as suntans.

“That’s one of the biggest challenges – overcoming that image. The Spicoli image, you might call it,” said Banslaben, referencing the blonde-haired stoner character played by Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. “Especially in New York, you get a very intelligent cross-section of people who surf.”

Banslaben has both personal and political reasons to want to discard the Spicoli stereotype. With a mop of chestnut curls that threatens to overrun his head and a well-used skateboard under foot, Banslaben, at first glance, could easily pass for a cliché. But on land, his crisp button-down shirts and sharp commentary on protecting the earth’s water systems betray ambitions that have little to do with the surfer-dude stereotype. Banslaben has a master’s degree in environmental policy from Columbia University, and heads the Coastal Marine Resource Center of New York, a non-profit group that lobbies on issues affecting New York’s beaches and watersheds.

In his spare time, Banslaben volunteers to help more surfers and water-sports enthusiasts in the New York City area get involved in environmentalism. He serves as the chairman of the New York City chapter of Surfrider, a national organization dedicated to cleaning up and protecting U.S. coastlines. Founded in 2000 with the slogan “Aloha, Yo!,” Surfrider NYC has quickly accrued more than 700 members, about three dozen of whom meet once a month at the Patagonia store on Wooster Street in SoHo. There, they launch into the issues affecting local beaches with the same vigor that helps them tackle breakers on a windy day.

At the Nov. 9 meeting, guest speaker Beau Ranheim of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection got a first-hand dose of this zeal as he attempted to answer questions about the water quality in the New York harbor and its tributaries.

Penned in by eight rows of wooden benches and scores of penetrating eyes, Ranheim gave an elaborate history of city water treatment, stressing how much better things have gotten since the bad old days when chamber pots were dumped directly into the ocean. He estimated that the harbor now meets New York State standards for bacterial content 80 to 90 percent of the time. As the questions came flying, though, Ranheim began to backpedal.

When pressed, Ranheim disclosed that waters like Jamaica Bay are judged by less stringent standards because people are not expected to swim in them. While holding to the belief that New York’s waters have improved steadily since treatment plants were fully modernized in 1988, he conceded that heavy rainstorms and polluted tributaries like the Gowanus Canal continue to affect the system. If it rains hard enough, Ranheim said, the city’s sewers overflow, dumping diluted raw sewage into the harbor.

“Water quality is not something that you can snap your fingers at and fix,” Ranheim concluded. “So just keep doing what you’re doing. Keep complaining so the city will keep listening.”

Water quality is one of the latest education campaigns to be launched by Surfrider, which also fights for eco-friendly beach replenishment on Long Beach and organizes beach cleanups on both Long Beach and Rockaway.

Although New York City surfers are willing to travel great distances for their sport, following the swells to New Jersey, Long Island and beyond, many look on Rockaway as the home turf of city surfing. The peninsula, which is technically part of Queens, is known in geological terms as a barrier beach. Stretching 11 miles from western Long Island out to the edge of Coney Island, Rockaway is nature’s gift to New York City. It protects the metropolis from the perpetual, surging onslaught of Atlantic waves – waves that are just an A-train ride away.

Because of its accessibility and the availability of cheap housing in some of its less desirable neighborhoods, Rockaway has seen dozens of surfers move to its shores in recent years. Known in the surfing community as “bungalocals” because they inhabit the beach bungalows leftover from Rockaway’s bygone summer resort era, these riders often wake up at dawn to catch waves before heading into Manhattan for work.

Living steps from the beach heightens an already strong connection between these surfers and the environment that they surf in. Even surfers who are not Surfrider members say that caring about clean water and picking up trash off the beach go hand in hand with enjoying the waves.

“You don’t have to be a tree-hugger to care about the world around you,” said Tim Hill, who works for the National Audubon Society, lives in Rockaway Beach and fixes surfboards for fun in his backyard. “Surfers care more about their environment than the average, everyday urbanite because surfers don’t want to surf in a toilet bowl. All that garbage on the beach will eventually end up in our beautiful water.”

Hill, like many city surfers, spends a few minutes picking up trash after each surfing session. Though he no longer actively participates in Surfrider, Hill was a leader in the organization back when it began its most heralded political battle to date – the fight to officially legalize surfing on Rockaway.

Although surfers had been riding the waves on Rockaway’s beaches for decades, it was technically illegal under a series of New York State health code statutes dating back to the 1850s. In 2003, following personnel changes at the New York Police Department’s 100th precinct, local officers began enforcing the statutes, issuing tickets to surfers.

Alarmed, Rockaway residents and Surfrider members began to fight back, working with local officials to have the codes changed. In July of 2004, the statutes were officially amended and in April of 2005, the city went a step farther, opening a surfing-only beach between 88 th and 92 nd Streets.

In the minds of some New York surfers, however, Surfrider’s successes have come at a cost. With more publicity, the popularity of surfing among city dwellers has risen exponentially, driving more people into the waters by day and filling the bungalows with surfboards like never before. Fearing the loss of their unique culture and previously wide-open surfing space, the riders who frequent the popular Internet message boards on newyorksurf.com and nynjsurf.com often treat information-seeking newcomers to a reception that is as icy as the harbor waters in January.

Going by online identities like Sandshark, boyeee and Looseness, these surfers form a vocal cyberspace sub-clique of the surfing community at large.

“No one wants some Kook (new surfer) coming to their break and floundering around in the waves they are trying to surf,” reads a Nov. 15 post by skSURF on nynjsurf.com. “Also it’s not discussed because if you don't know you don't belong.”

Alex Karinsky, an Australian transplant who moved to Rockaway Beach three years ago, recalls that back in 2002 he could walk out of his house just after dawn and be the only person in the water. These days, he says, as many as a dozen surfers will be out catching waves before 6:30 a.m., even in the winter.

This influx has made veteran city surfers – even those who steer clear of the message boards – nervous that the newbies will not only crowd their beaches but create dangerous situations by violating surf etiquette in waters that are largely unprotected by lifeguards. Nearly every city surfer can rattle off stories about how inexperienced or uninformed surfers have “dropped in” on them – the surfing equivalent of cutting someone off in traffic.

Banslaben says Surfrider is considering posting signs on the surfing beach next summer, reminding users to be clean, safe and courteous. Though far less polite, the social barriers of the message board scene also work to ensure that new surfers are serious and ready to play by the rules. If a newcomer passes muster, he or she can be admitted into a circle that offers friendship as well as advice, equipment and detailed analyses of coming weather patterns and their possible effect on the surfing conditions.

“To be frank, it’s a lot more hardcore here because of what you have to deal with with the elements,” said Karinsky, comparing the New York surf culture to the larger and more mainstream community in his native Australia. “Every one here is so focused on [surfing]. They call each other to say where the surf is good. They are always following it, chasing it, jonesing for it more than they do elsewhere.”

For surfers who have grown up in the space-starved New York metro area, the sport is especially meaningful. Banslaben, who recalls giving up summer camp as an adolescent so that he could afford a new surfboard, has used his coastal activism as a vehicle to surf beaches around the world.

Eighteen-year-old Jimmy Nellen, who has lived his entire life on Beach 74 th Street in the Arverne section of Rockaway, credits surfing with keeping him and his older brother, Andrew, on track despite the prevalence of drugs and violence in their neighborhood.

“Our mother bought us boards. She always said it would keep us off the streets and it did,” said Jimmy Nellen, who is now studying education at Kingsborough College. “We would surf all day and come home and go right to sleep.”

Because of his experiences in Arverne, Nellen diverges from many of his colleagues in his views about the growing popularity of Rockaway. Although he, too, believes that new surfers need to understand the rules of etiquette, he feels that there is enough ocean to go around. Eventually, he hopes, more crowds on the beaches might help spur the revival of Rockaway’s long-stagnant economy.

“Rockaway has lots of miles of beach,” Nellen said. “If they could just develop it, put up stores along the boardwalk, it would give people jobs.”

The Thursday before Thanksgiving was a busy day for Nellen. After surfing all morning, he headed off to his job in Manhattan, where he teaches youngsters how to swim. Then, around 8 p.m., he traveled to the Lower East Side to join his brother at a bistro/bar called Manahatta.

There, the New York City surfing community stood bathed in the flickering light of a wall-sized projection screen. It was the premiere of “Always Right,” a new video showcasing the best rides and wipeouts from the right – that is, east – coast surfing scene.

Teenagers in backward caps and Vans sneakers perched atop the low, polished tables while grown men in dress shirts mingled, sipping $6 beers. They were all there – the activists from Surfrider with their stacks of literature, the Rockaway locals, the transplants, the insular message-board crowd. And they were all rapt as the video portrayed surfers in full-body wetsuits cruising past high-rise buildings on waves the color of wet cement. They sighed and cheered in recognition. This was Atlantic surfing on display, northeastern surfing … New York City surfing.

Some younger surfers, like 20-year-old Andrew Nellen (who always goes by his message-board moniker “Jake”) still channel a touch of Jeff Spicoli when speaking about their community.

“If you are going to join a subculture, this is the one to join,” Jake said with a smirk as he surveyed the crowd at Manahatta. “Because we throw the best parties.”

But those who have been around the block, like Banslaben and Karinsky, have only reverence for the passion shared by New York’s unique guild of surfers.

“Surfing is one of those rare experiences where you are literally immersed in the medium,” Banslaben said. “Most surfers are inspired by the power of the ocean.”