2024 Happenings at the Surfing Florida Museum

The Board of Trustees of the Surfing Florida Museum is happy to post this update about our 2024 news and events. Surfing history is made every day, and our mission for the past 14 years has been to preserve and present a history of surfing in Florida.

The site of an exhibition we have curated is the newly-remodeled Lantana Public Library at 206 West Ocean Avenue in Lantana. The entire library has the surfing history theme and it now includes 35 local storyboard panels presenting the history, culture and champions of Lantana surfing. Thanks to Evan Orellana for the graphics! Stop by for a look, and be sure to check our Lantana section in the Community Room. The exhibit is open all year. The photo above is the Lantana shorebreak shot taken by local surfer Riley Conklin. Riley donated use of the image to the museum, and it is now available to purchase as an enlargement for your home or business, with every dollar benefiting the museum. Call Tom at 561-236-0155 if you would like to order.

October 25th is the Surfing Florida Museum’s Third Annual Benefit Golf Tournament, and we are already registering foursomes, twosomes and single entries, along with generous sponsorships.  More information is on the website.

Ryan Heavyside is shown holding the perpetual trophy for the Surf Shop Challenge part of the golf tournament. The Nomad Team won the trophy last year and is displaying their hardware at the shop until this October 25th. Any surf shop can enter to challenge for the 2024 championship. Peter Mendia, Joey Mendia, Don Brown and Ryan Heavyside made up the winning foursome.

Susan French and Debi Thomas are the go-to persons for entering and/or sponsoring the tournament, and it has become the museum’s most important fund raiser of the year. The tournament is held at the beautiful Lake Worth Beach course on the Lake Worth Lagoon. Shotgun start, best ball, buffet breakfast and lunch, raffle and auction, all for the cause. That’s Friday, October 25th.

Our new membership portal is live on the website! Levels start at $2.00 per month with autopay or click one-time billing, so get stoked about being part of surfing history!

This year’s East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame at Surf Expo held it’s bi-annual inductions and of the eleven east coast inductees, three were from Palm Beach County: Baron Knowlton in the Surfers category, Tom Warnke in the Culture category and Bill “Holmesy” Holmes in the Industry category. More than 300 people attended and the event is now on YouTube. Just search East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame on YouTube and scroll to each inductee.

During June and July the Elliott Museum in Stuart, Florida, is hosting our complete exhibit! The opening is Thursday, June 13th. Hours are 10am until 5pm, seven days a week.

For the Elliott Museum exhibit we are producing new text and photo panels to show a more-detailed history of surfing culture on the Treasure Coast (without naming spots). The exhibit will only be there for two months, so be sure to visit the Elliott Museum in June or July. If you missed our exhibit at the Cornell Museum in Delray Beach last year, you can see our newly-curated Whitman Surfing Photo Scrapbook exhibit at the Elliott, with 80 photos of surfing taken in the 1930s in Miami Beach, including Tom Blake. This is just a small part of our Surfing Florida exhibition, which will be in the main gallery on the ground floor.

Hours are 10 til 5, seven days a week and admission is $18.00 for the entire museum, including the Surfing Florida exhibition.