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Montauk, New York
First of all, if you want to sound like a local, it’s “Mon tok” and those vowels are pronounced looooong, like the island it’s on. When most outsiders think of New York, and surfing in New York, they don’t think of long, sandy beaches, nature preserves, fresh air, clean water, room to move and rocky points. But that is what is out there, on the wild east end of Long Island – just over 100 miles from New York City, but in a quieter, cleaner universe.
What most people call “Montauk” is a stretch of coast from the hamlet of Montauk (population 3,000+) on the south shore of Long Island, and then a seven mile miracle of beautiful beaches and a couple of tasty reefs and points out to Montauk Lighthouse at the tip.
This part of the world has always been a very exclusive place to live. The North Shore of Long Island is where the Rockefellers and the Woolworths and all the swells built their estates during the Roaring Twenties – the world of The Great Gatsby.
The Montauk area started to become hip in the 1970s, when Andy Warhol bought an estate for $225,00 (the equivalent of $1.1 million now) and then rented it out to Kennedys and Rolling Stones and other glitterati. The Rolling Stones rehearsed their Black and Blue Tour at the Warhol estate in 1975, and Warhol designed the infamous Sticky Fingers album cover for the Stones. Since the 1970s, Montauk has been one of the places to be, and the likes of Edward Albee, Dick Cavett, Ralph Lauren, Robert DeNiro, Richard Avedon, Paul Simon and Julian Schnabel have homes here.
The Warhol Estate is now for sale for $50,000,000.
Montauk is a very chic place to live, but also one of the best places on the East Coast to be a surfer: Warm in the winter, snowy in the summer, Montauk can be surfed year around, and it is.
The surf crowd and the sex/money/power rich and famous sometimes cross paths. For example, while doing a promo tour for Riding Giants, Greg Noll attended a party on the ?? Estate out at Montauk: “”Holy shit it was pretty fancy,” Greg said. “Big tents, catered, the works. For a surf movie!”
During the party (according to Laura) Greg struck up a conversation with a guy who said he liked to fish. Greg likes to fish, too, and they hit it off. Finally Greg introduced himself and the guy said his name was Jimmy Buffett, to which Greg answered, “Oh yeah? What do you do?”
The Good
A beautiful, rural place, where the beautiful people live in beautiful houses overlooking beautiful beaches where the surf can be beautiful. Montauk is in many ways the East Coast version of Malibu or Palos Verdes: A beautiful stretch of coast populated by people with money who have very carefully preserved the small town flavor, and the rural beauty. Montauk is actually a hamlet of the town of East Hampton, and this is the kind of town that doesn’t allow chain businesses: no McDonalds, no Starbucks, and all of the hotels are privately owned.
The ocean is the only thing that is allowed to be out of control out on the east end, because, as Lord Byron said it best: “Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean - roll! / Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; / Man marks the earth with ruin - his control / Stops with the shore.”
And that wildness and lack of control is a huge relief to the huddled masses living in New York City and all the overcrowded cities of the mainland, who drive, are driven, fly or boat out to the wild east end of Montauk, to rinse away the cares of the world and breathe some fresh air.
The Bad
Ticks, parking tickets, summer crowds, winter hypothermia. Great white sharks. As lonely and cold as Montauk is in the middle of winter, in the middle of summer the place is swamped with everyone from the rich and famous Montauk is an insanely popular destination for a good chunk of the several million people living within a couple hours of the spot.
The Strange
The Montauk Lighthouse at the tip was commissioned by George Washington, and built in 1796. The surrounding area is called Camp Hero which was heavily fortified against attack during World War II. During the Cold War, the government built a huge, long-range radar dish which inspired an urban legend that it was used for time travel – or maybe to teletransport busy executives back to Manhattan.
Montauk is where the slaver Amistad was captured by the USS Washington, whose crew found a slave ship that had been taken over by slaves. The mutineers went ashore briefly on Montauk, then were taken to prison and a series of courts all the way to the Supreme Court, where John Quincy Adams ruled in 1841 that the slaves had been illegally kidnapped. The slaves were allowed to return to Africa.
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