Ice Cream Headaches: Surf Culture in New York & New Jersey

East Coast surf culture from Montauk to Rockaway Beach and Cape May

Unbeknownst to many who live there and to the throngs of tourists who stop by each year, the beaches of New York and New Jersey are home to a diverse and vibrant coldwater surfing community. Ice Cream Headaches captures a snapshot of this often-overlooked facet of life and leisure in America’s most dense metropolis.

Over a span of four years, writer Ed Thompson and photographer Julien Roubinet―who met surfing at Rockaway Beach―have logged more than 4,000 miles from Eastern Long Island to Cape May, interviewing and photographing the surfers, surfboard shapers, artists and documentarians who make up the scene. From local legend and Montauk fisherman Charlie Weimar to Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Finnegan to professional surfers with global followings such as Quincy Davis, Mikey De Temple and Balaram Stack, the New York surf community is a colorful one. Ice Cream Headaches highlights the surfers who experiment with new forms, materials, ideas and surfing styles in the often-frigid Atlantic waves.

Across 192 pages, the book features four essays rich with quotes and anecdotes, more than 110 extraordinary photographs and a foreword by iconic portrait and surf photographer Michael Halsband. Ice Cream Headaches takes the reader inside the surf breaks and stomping grounds of the surfers who call New York and New Jersey home, surfers who are willing to pull on a 5mm wetsuit, wade through a foot of snow on the beach and battle 30-mile-per-hour winds for a few fleeting moments inside a yawning barrel.