Above the Hook

Above the Hook Above the Hook is a lifestyle brand rooted in Highlands and Sandy Hook, NJ.
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Above the Hook is more than apparel—it’s a creative movement born on the Hook and in Highlands. Our mission is to capture the raw spirit of the coast through timeless gear, film, and storytelling that embody adventure, resilience, and community. We celebrate the culture of life on the water, while building a brand that connects local roots to a global audience. From surf checks to sunsets, Above the Hook is where creativity and coastal living converge.

05/29/2026

One week out.

Plum Island at golden hour, with people that love this shoreline.

Space is nearly gone — link in bio to RSVP for the World Oceans Day cleanup with , the National Park Service, and Monmouth County.

Sunday, June 7. 6:30PM.

Link in bio!

05/28/2026

Solstice is getting closer.

The sun rises further up the shore now, and from the deck you can feel it, that extra degree of angle, that extra minute of gold before the day takes over.

The sun, the Atlantic, doing what it always does.

05/27/2026

left for a minute and this is how New Jersey looks now?

05/26/2026

Lot B at first light.

The sailboats drift.

The osprey works.

The fishermen wait.

Sandy Hook doesn’t ask for much in return.

05/12/2026

Sandy Hook in spring.

Horseshoe crabs emerging, herons standing watch, ducks doing their thing… and Mary, absolutely losing her mind over an oyster shell.

The bay has a way of bringing out the best in people.
🦀🦪

And honestly? This place deserves to be taken care of and needs a little spring cleaning.

Something’s coming later this week… follow if you want to be the first to know.
👀🌊

05/09/2026

Sandy Hook Bay. The harbor. The skyline beyond.

For centuries, this stretch of water has been the threshold between ocean and island, between open sea and the greatest land on earth. The first sight of home our ancestors saw on the horizon. We call it the gateway to the world because thats exactly what it’s always been.

charts it daily is paying a visit this summer and .everyday calls it home.

This land was made for you and me.

🎥 Footage: Matt

04/29/2026

The Seastreak crosses the busiest stretch of working water on the East Coast. It has been the busiest stretch of working water on the East Coast for almost four hundred years.

In 1609, Henry Hudson dropped anchor in the Lower Bay before he ever sailed up the river that now bears his name. By the 1690s, colonial captains were paying local pilots to guide them across the sandbar at the mouth of the harbor — that pilotage tradition is still alive, run out of a station on Staten Island and a fleet you can watch from the deck of the ferry. By the Revolution, the British had occupied Sandy Hook to control the approach to New York, and the lighthouse had to be defended in the country’s first amphibious raid by American forces. The ferry passes the spot.

You pass Fort Hancock — a coastal artillery post that guarded New York from the 1890s through the Cold War, with mortar batteries still standing in the trees. You pass the Ambrose Channel, the dredged 45-foot-deep highway cut into the harbor floor in 1907 so larger ships could finally reach the city. You pass the same Narrows where George Washington watched the British fleet arrive in the summer of 1776 — the largest expeditionary force the world had ever seen at that point, all of it funneling through the gap the Verrazzano now spans.

Forty-five minutes. Highlands to Midtown.

You’re crossing the front door of America.

—

Full short film on YouTube. Link in bio.

If you like our stories you’ll love our quarterly magazine.

04/28/2026

There’s a ferry that leaves Atlantic Highlands every morning and nobody who rides it ever takes it for granted.

Forty-five minutes from the dock to 34th Street. That’s the whole trip. Coffee to skyline. No traffic. No tunnel. No train.

But the ride itself is the thing.

You pass the oldest working lighthouse in America — Sandy Hook Light, lit in 1764, older than the country. You pass Romer Shoal, an iron sparkplug standing in the middle of the bay, named for a colonel who charted these waters in 1700. You pass two small islands off Staten Island most New Yorkers have never heard of — Hoffman and Swinburne — built by the federal government out of dredged harbor sand in the 1870s as quarantine stations for immigrants arriving with cholera, smallpox, yellow fever. Their ruins are still there. The ferry slides right past.

You pass the Sandy Hook Pilots, the working fleet that’s boarded every ship entering this harbor for more than three hundred years. You pass tankers half a city block long. You pass under the Verrazzano — the same gap every vessel has squeezed through for four hundred years.

And then the skyline shows up.

Most people who live near the water think of it as a border. A line that keeps them from somewhere. But once you’ve crossed this water at speed, with coffee in your hand and the city rising up, you understand what it actually is.

It’s not the thing between the Highlands and New York.

It’s the thing that connects them.

—

Full short film on YouTube. Link in bio.

Address

1 Woodland Street
Highlands, NJ
07732

Telephone

+19082274915

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