Karen Song: Surf, Eat, Repeat

"It’s the typical immigrant story. They came and they just hustled.” says Karen Song, recounting her early childhood years growing up in Flushing, New York. Both Korean immigrants, her mother was a nurse and dad worked in the NY taxi scene, whilst picking up extra work wherever he could. “They worked so hard, the few moments that I remember us all being together were meals. I remember having dinner at nine. Most kids were in bed by eight!”  

Those formative years filled with Korean oxtail soup and rice dumplings made food a central part of Karen’s life – carrying memories of family and culture, creating a deep personal connection with her father. “His memory of childhood was starvation,” she explains, recounting how he had survived the famines of the Korean war, even though the region he came from was famed for its food. “I can't even imagine the despair of starvation, of never knowing when you might eat,” she says, “So I think the seafood connection is really through my dad, and anything that has to do with the ocean.”

After moving to Queens a few years later, Sundays became family days, her dad taking Karen to the ocean to play in the waves, unknowingly creating a connection that would endure for life. “I’ll always remember those days he took me to the beach. Just being in his arms and the water felt so crazy, but I felt safe and everything was beautiful and sparkling,” she reminisces, with just a hint of a lump in the throat. “It was his way of getting away from the concrete jungle. And for me, it brought an understanding that we have beaches in New York! I think a lot of people don’t even know, but the Atlantic Ocean is right there!”

Initially picking up surfing after her brother started going with friends, Karen struggled to progress with the usual cocktail of bad advice and bad equipment that was commonly given to beginners in the ‘90s. “I was like, I don’t like surfing. This sucks!” she laughs, explaining that it wasn’t until later in life, at the age of 38, that she truly got bitten by the bug and, as highlighted throughout her film, it was the community of women she connected with that proved the catalyst.

“My friend had turned 40, and she always wanted to learn to surf,” Karen explains, remembering how this friend had returned from a trip to Costa Rica absolutely frothing and in need of someone to share the stoke with. “I had no expectations” she says, “I borrowed someone’s longboard thinking I would just ride the whitewater, basically killing time... and then I got hooked! Before long, I discovered I had other friends who surfed and all of a sudden, I had a whole network of people that I would go surfing with! I just couldn't get enough.”

Those friends become a surfing network and over time, the network grew. When it came to casting for her film project, Karen was spoilt for choice. “Pachi, the Brazilian one, is the one that I've known the longest,” she says, recounting how whenever she would pluck up the courage to surf in bigger waves, Pachi would be the only other woman out. “But when I put the casting call out it was so hard, because everyone had such amazing stories!”  

Amazing stories, amazing ways of approaching surfing, amazing food backgrounds – Karen collected an incredible group of women who represent just a little cross section of New York’s diverse surfing population. And herein lies the beauty of SURF, EAT, REPEAT – looking past the often-homogenous culture of ‘surfing’ to the stories that lie behind the black wetsuit and white board. “I think in America there is a kind of assimilation,” Karen believes. “Especially with surfers, right? We're all wearing the same ‘surf uniforms’, and there's this idea that we're in that culture, so we're not flaunting the ‘other stuff’.

“I'm here for all these incredible cultures that people bring with them, their family histories – you're in the lineup and everyone has incredible stories. They don't even come from a single place. I'm here for that.”