In March of 1976, a restless, wildly funny watercolor painter named Glenn Higgins set up a little watersports stand by the entrance to Magens Bay. For the next four decades he was as much a part of this beach as the palms — the guy who knew everyone, spun tall tales that grew taller with every retelling, and made whoever he was talking to feel like the only person on the sand.

Magens Bay raised a lot of kids over those years, and Glenn did more than his share of the raising. Parents dropped their children at the beach for the summer, and plenty of them ended up working the stand — he treated them like grown-ups, let them keep a real cut of the take, and bragged for the rest of his life about his "beach kids." Mention his name at a dinner table a thousand miles from here and there's a decent chance somebody grins and tells you they were one.

Every morning before opening, he walked the length of the beach picking up whatever the tide had left behind — and if you were walking with him, you were tasked with picking up trash as well.

Glenn passed away in 2018. In 2025, Robert Messick — his best friend, who first followed him down to St. Thomas all those years ago and HL Freyn— one of his beach kids — brought the stand back to life as WOW Water Sports: an all-new fleet, the same spot on the sand, and the same simple idea. The best way to see the most beautiful bay in the Virgin Islands is gliding over the top of the water.