Passing the Surf Shop Torch - The Murphys Open Broad Street Surf Shop

Ry Murphy, racing down a dreamy left hander at Cisco Beach. The very same spot where he scattered his fathers ashes. Photo: Dan LeMaitre

“This was my first job,” says Ry Murphy with a smile, standing at the counter of Broad Street Surf Shop, the legendary home of the former Indian Summer Sports. “I grew up in this place.” 

Ry Murphy, with friends, during their Nantucket grom era.

But as the new owners, Ry Murphy and Shantaw Bloise-Murphy expect responsibilities to differ from those summers when Ry was 13 and 14 years old and occasionally ordered to scrub the stairs with a toothbrush, or sent by then-owner David Iverson to look for t-shirts in the attic while wearing a wetsuit. No, this time will be different, albeit somewhat, for this unstoppable husband-wife duo seem to understand the profound, full-circle impact of this weighty moment finally coming to fruition, and the responsibilities of taking the reins of such an institution.

For years, Ry would lament to his wife about how cool it would be if Iverson would put up for sale his long-standing surf shop that’s beckoned tourists fresh off the Steamship from the second floor of 6 Broad Street since 1982. “It's every surfer's dream to own a surf shop,” Ry says. “Well, every 13 year old surfer’s dream.”

Ry’s late father, Ben Murphy, on the judges panel for one of Indian Summer’s many Ozone Surf Classics.

But taking over Iverson’s shop (or even starting his own, for that matter) wasn’t such an outlandish pipe dream - afterall, years ago, Ry’s uncle Otis, along with his late dad, Ben Murphy ran Otis’ Surf Shop, randomly located just after the bend of Hummock Pond Road, earning its credibility as the second surf shop on Nantucket and the first to bring shortboards to the island, something Ben freshly sourced from the late 60's west coast scene while living in northern California.

In the years following the shop's eventual closure, Ry’s dad maintained involvement in the surf scene, personally checking out every new board that came through the door at Iverson’s Indian Summer Sports, and even scored Ry his first job there as a young teen. But all that aside, Ry still wasn’t picking up the phone to call Iverson and ask. That is, until his wife told him to.

“I'm not a ‘what-if’ kind of person,” says Shantaw, who, by day, serves as the director of Culture and Tourism for the town of Nantucket, and, on the side from that, has a successful bath and body product line called Supple Sirens. “You know Dave!” she said to her husband, and she was right, he has for his entire life. “Just call him and ask!” … So Ry did. 

“And he said ‘okay.’” Ry laughs. “And then probably about a year later it was official.”

Broad Street Surf Shop’s 70’s, Indian Summer inspired logo.

And official it became in January of 2024, but not without Iverson first introducing the couple to vendors, contacts, customers and all important relationships, and selling to them all of his existing inventory, to boot. Since January, Ry and Shantaw have been at the shop a minimum of four nights a week “spickle-spackling” as they say, re-doing the floors, reorganizing the displays, sorting and re-entering inventory, and have opened their doors just this past Easter weekend to an unexpectedly large number of people, mostly locals excited to show their support for the couple and to check out the new space. “We wanted to preserve the history, make it our own and make it something new,” Ry says. “New shop, new feeling, same culture, same history.” 

And it’s that very history they want to preserve, with plans to utilize the stairwell to create a history walk of Nantucket surfing. “There is a really cool seafaring history here,” Ry says, “and a lot of them were surfers and most people don't know that.”

Chris Emery, founder of Indian Summer Surf Shop, in front of the Madaket garage he started it all in. 1980.

Notable dates will be the opening of Noble Surfer, the island’s first surf shop, followed by Otis’ Surf Shop, to when Chris Emery first opened his doors to Indian Summer in 1980 out of a garage in Madaket, the current home of Millie’s Market, to when it moved to its in-town location in ‘82, to present day, with the Murphys at the top, ready for the next generation to unfold. As Ry points out, it’s the first time, to his knowledge, that four generations of surfers have existed in this skill capacity on Nantucket, and it’s worth celebrating. “It’s so cool to have a younger generation who is starting to push their limits, and then our generation pushing the young guys,” Ry says, “and then Gary Kohner and his generation still pushing us all, and then Chris Emery, Rick Kotalac and the rest of my dad's generation still surfing all the best swells. There’s four of us across the board for the first time.” 

Nobadeer, 1985. Photo by Eve Fraser

For Ry and Shantaw, it's literally because of Kohner that these two came together, after a year of Shantaw refusing Ry’s affections (likely because she couldn’t remember his name) until that fateful summer that she took a job as manager of Kohner’s Nantucket Surf School - and as Ry’s boss when he returned to the surf school in 2016, no less - the two connected. Now married and as parents to their six year old son, Mason, the family accredits surfing and its culture to being something way more than a pastime or hobby, but instead a community, a way of life. More aptly, Ry says, “The surf shop is kind of like the church of surf for every community that they're in. The core local shop is like the community gathering place and hub of culture, so it's cool to be the shepherd of that, and to carry the torch for all the guys that did that before us.”

Jetties skatepark, Nantucket. Late 90’s.

With the surfing community in mind, the Murphy’s have plans to showcase surf films, and offer space on the “Upper Deck," the small deck that connects the shop and stock room to local artists and artisans who don’t have their own shop. Board inventory is being ramped up too, with more from Stewart, Takayama, Stretch, and performance boards like Lost, Channel Islands and more, while also bringing in some new hand shapes from Ventura shapers like Christian Beamish and John Simon, to complement and balance what inventory Iverson already had.

As for the somewhat controversial name change to Broad Street Surf Shop, the Murphy’s took a lot of time to come to the decision, explaining that although Indian Summer was an iconic island brand, the new logo preserves the brand’s origin, borrowing the font (the actual handwriting of one time partial-owner Robert Young) to the new sign. “We wanted to make it our own while holding on to the history of the shop,” Ry says. 

Chris Emery and Tom Kennelly, 1982

Dave Iverson, 2001

Ry Murphy, tube hound. Photo: Gary Kohner

Above the threshold as you walk into the shop, pinned casually to the original downtown sign are two polaroids, sepia with age. The first is of a man in sunglasses outside a garage in front of a quiver of boards - it’s Emery infront of his newly opened Indian Summer in Madaket. Beneath that, another photo shows Emery and Tom Kennelly standing under the downtown location’s new sign after just hanging it, proudly waving to the camera. And to the right hangs a picture of Iverson hanging his first sign on Broad Street. Today, a new generation looks toward the future. “It’s all about the community,” Ry says, looking at the pictures. “And it’s really all about surfing.”