Shop Name: Original Water Brothers Surf and Skate
Location: 23 Memorial Boulevard, Newport, RI, USA
Founded: 1971

Walking into the Original Water Brothers’ Surf and Skate shop, you’ll likely find owner Sid Abruzzi and longtime shop partner, Logan Hill to help you out. You may not know it at first, but if you get a chance to ask Sid, also known as the “Godfather” of the surf/skate scene in Newport, R.I., a few questions he just might tell you the great history behind the founding of OWB as well as his creation of Skater Island that is in the Tony Hawk Pro Skater video game. Here you’ll listen to short stories of the above as well as how their shop is surviving out in Newport.

Sid Abruzzi
Hometown: Newport, Rhode Island
“We had the small shack on the beach. We opened up in ’71 and at the time we sold surfboards. Skateboards really didn’t start happening till about ’73, ’74. We sold skateboards from clay wheels up.”

Logan Hill
Hometown: Scotland
“We didn’t know anybody in the country and we just had skateboards and bottles of Scottish whisky and Scottish cookies like the shortbread stuff and these were just presents to give to people that we met and who took us in.”

Shop Sticker

(Photographs and sound piece produced by Patricia Fung 2011)