Eclectic New Coffee Table Book Documents Montauk Surfing in the 1980s

Do you keep a surf journal? A record of each day you surfed, jotting down what the waves were doing, noting wind, effect of the tide, the swell direction, maybe gauging your performance? Doing that daily ain’t easy. Extend that over decades and you have an impressive commitment. Fill those journals with not just notes about the surf, but with sketches, paintings and collage art and you have the makings of a gorgeous coffee table book.

That’s Tony Caramanico: Montauk Surf Journals. The name Tony Caramanico might not ring a bell if you didn’t grow up surfing the New York area. But you’ll remember him after seeing his incredible journals. Caramanico was inducted into the East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame in 2020 based on his work as a surf artist.

Caramanico moved into a Montauk house with legendary wildlife and culture photographer Peter Beard in 1978. Beard asked the young surfer to keep a journal, a request that set Caramanico’s life in a wild new direction (Caramanico’s first journal was a gift from Beard’s girlfriend, the supermodel Cheryl Tieg.) Since 1978, Caramanico has yet to miss a day of journaling. He’s produced more than 16,000 of them, stuffed with his notes about the surf, but, more interesting, pop culture ephemera that chronicles four decades of rapid social change.

These aren’t just little Field Notes pocket journals either. They’re big three-ring binders designed for collage art. Beard and Caramanico collaborated on the journals by applying various chemicals to the pages to achieve different visual designs. Then Caramanico would write, draw, paint, or cut out snippets of magazine ads and newspaper headlines and let them all play together on the page.

The result is one part surf-stoked kid’s poster-filled bedroom wall, one part careful pondering of a surf scribe, and one part Andy Warhol-influenced commentary on the art of pop culture. It’s also a look into Montauk life in the 1980s, when it was far sleepier and grungier than it is now. In the best possible way. “Partied till 3:30 with Rita,” or “had coffee and rested in the front yard with neighbors,” or “Jeep stuck on a rock in the sand,” reads some of the notes. Feels a little like the 70s and 80s on the North Shore of Oahu.

There are plenty of photographs of things besides journal pages too. Caramanico is a surfboard nut, and you’ll see the hundreds of boards he’s owned over the years, plus shots of a bygone Montauk when you didn’t need much money to live a great beachside lifestyle. Interviews from editor Zack Raffin are sprinkled throughout the book, adding more context to an incredible life. One Caramanico is still journaling.

Buy your copy here ($55).