“I’m Gina Jurlando. I grew up in Blue Point on Long Island, and I moved to Rockaway about nine years ago. I actually bought a boat from the previous owner of Jupiter Club. So it’s been very full circle, and that’s kind of how we [Gina and her husband] ended up in Rockaway, and you know, we’ve stayed in Rockaway. But yeah, basically I have been a surfer my entire life and did a lot of community work and work for an ocean non-profit, so I’ve really been able to sort of build my life around the ocean and community. And I think there’s no better place than Rockaway to do that.” I met with Gina one evening at the Jupiter Club.
“It was the Almeda Club, which was run by Graham and Joe Falcone, who, like, grew up around here. So it, you know, like it was surf lockers and stuff, and then it was a barbershop for a long time, because Joe’s a barber. And then, what’s it called? They–Joe, like, stopped barbering or whatever, and then Graham had it for a while, but he just opened his own construction company. So because I have grown Yeasty Boys for so many years, and do a lot of surf stuff and surf therapy, he was like, ‘You know, I really wanted it to like stay a community space, and I see all the stuff that you’re doing in the surf community like, do you want a surf club?’ I was like, ‘Oh actually, yeah!’”
Jurlando opened Jupiter Club, a surf club and community space, earlier this year. “Basically, when I took it over, I was very lucky. Everything was kind of built; the lockers were here already. My husband, Tim, he’s a carpenter, so he put that bar together in like two hours. That stupid coffee and tea sign over there?” she points behind the bar. “Took me the same amount of time to make that, that it took him to build an entire bar. But yeah, I got very lucky that I not only had the support of my family but also a lot of my friends do a lot of stuff that I’m not good at. So I am the sole owner of Jupiter Club, but I have a lot of people that helped get it to where it is and continue to help to this day,” she said. “So I think it’s also a nice reminder that it’s a space for everybody, and everyone contributes…I think all of my jobs are my passions. My mom was saying the other day, like, ‘When are you going to work just two jobs or three jobs? But I was like, ‘I don’t want to quit any of my jobs.’”
Other than running Jupiter Club, Jurlando is a certified surf therapy facilitator with Ride the Tide Surf Therapy, a wedding planner, an event and partnership manager for an ocean conservation non-profit, a surf instructor, a local volunteer, a community advocate, and head of Yeasty Boys, “a beginner and femme queer surf club.” She truly has built a life, as she said, “around the ocean and community.”
“I love doing surf therapy, I love working for the ocean conservation non-profit, planning events. And then I think this space [Jupiter Club] is really like an amalgamation of all the work I’ve done in Rockaway for many years with Yeasty Boys and different like volunteer organizations and Rockaway mutual aid, that it’s like, this is finally a brick and mortar space where I can now bring people together, and you know, you don’t have to be a surfer to come here. You can just come and get a sh*tty cup of coffee and use the WiFi. And maybe meet someone new.”
On how her love of the water grew, Jurlando said, “I grew up in a small town on Long Island that was right on the bay. I grew up sailing and surfing and boating. I was just kind of always in the water. I come from a long line of watermen and fishermen, and it’s always been something that’s part of my life. So I had moved away from Long Island and went to college upstate, and I lived in Michigan for less than a year and realized I can’t be that far from the ocean. Didn’t even make it a year. But I moved back to Brooklyn, and I didn’t know Rockaway existed. And when I first got back to Brooklyn, my mom’s like, ‘Oh, your third cousin lives in New York; you guys should hang out.’ And I was like, ‘Mom, you know, New York’s a big place.’ So I reached out to him, and he was like, ‘ Yeah, I live in Rockaway Beach, ‘ and I was like, ‘What’s that?’ Like, I thought the only beach was Coney Island because I’m from Long Island.
“The first time I came out, I was like, ‘Wait, there’s a beach an hour subway ride away?’ and then I was just coming out constantly. Sleeping on their couch all the time. So they were the ones who told me and my now-husband, Tim, you know, that they had a friend that lived on a boat that they were selling, and they were looking for someone weird enough, basically, to buy it and live on it. So we sold everything we owned; we were living in, like, a big loft in Bushwick, and just sold everything we owned in a month and moved onto a 35-foot boat… We actually just sold our last boat. We lived on boats for eight and a half years. We had a big barge at one point.
“At one point, I think we had six boats that we would rent to friends or people that were housing insecure. But yeah, I loved it. But we just moved on to land, and I hate it, and I miss my boat,” she half-joked. “When we first got out here, it’s the first place I’ve lived, I think, every day that there’s like such a sense of community. And I think that’s what, like, inspires a lot of the work that I do because everyone is so creative and cares about each other and their neighbors. So I think, like, living in a place like this where it’s encouraged to, you know, take care of each other, has just made it really easy to do the type of work that I do here. Especially being on the beach, obviously.
“But yes, I think I would say my favorite thing about Rockaway is that sense of community. It’s unlike anything else. And I think you know, people forget Rockaway’s part of New York City, but people also forget that New York City is a coastal town. We have almost 600 miles of coastline and water, and that’s just the five boroughs. I think being able to remind people of that and being able to remind people to take care of not only each other, but the environment is a lot easier when you live in a place like this.”
