Quicksilver Pro Tour Kicks Off in Long Beach - NBC New York

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The Quicksilver Pro New York Surf Competition kicks off today in Long Beach, as the city by the sea continues clean up from Hurricane Irene.

This is the first professional surf competition held in New York, and the final wild card for the competition will be determined Sunday.The main competition gets underway Monday.

Surfers are judged on degree of difficulty, innovative and progressive maneuvers, combination and variety of maneuvers, speed, power and flow. The winner receives a top prize of $300,000; second

 prize is $100,000.

The event is the sixth of 11 stops on the 2011 Association of Surfing Professionals World Tour. Other upcoming events will be held on the southwest coast of France, Peniche, Portugal, San

 Francisco, and ending in Hawaii in December.

The event originally planned a music and arts festival to coincide with the surfing competition, with free concerts from artists such as Q-Tip and The Flaming Lips. Damage to the staging area from Irene, however, forced the cancellation of many of the non-surfing activities. 

Copyright Associated Press / NBC New York