03-06-2025
- General
- Wall Street Journal
How Surfing Brought Me and My Joe Rogan-Loving Brother-in-Law Together
IN PARTS OF Central Jersey, people signal their wealth with columns. Homeowners accumulate decorative pillars the way rich men in biblical times hoarded camels. Deal has more columns than all the surrounding towns put together. Some of its homes are the size of airplane hangars. Every second car is a Porsche, every third a Tesla.
By some accident of history or oversight in class warfare, one of the best public surf breaks in New Jersey lies just east of these megamansions. The waves at Hathaway Avenue Beach are consistently good. Access is free to surfers year-round, and it is, crucially, a short drive from the middle-class neighborhood where my brother-in-law Matt was living with his parents when he learned to surf. Whenever a really big swell hit he returned to Hathaway the way a sea turtle returns to the beach where it hatched.
