Sunday Morning in Rockaway Beach: The Boardwalk and the Beach on Shore Front Parkway at Beach 90th Street

Friday Night in Coney Island: Fireworks over the Boardwalk and Beach

(Photo courtesy Meredith Zeitlin)

(Video courtesy David Rodriguez) (Video courtesy dutchmazz) (Video courtesy Katie Robinson)

Sunday Afternoon in Rockaway Park: The Boardwalk and Beach Are Not Quite Ready Yet at Beach 106th Street

Despite Superstorm Sandy's devastation to the Rockaways in general and to the destroyed boardwalk in particular, the city said the beaches here, as in other parts of New York, would be open this Memorial Day weekend.

On the first nice day of the unseasonably cool weekend, we were in Rockaway Park, putting the car right in front of our Grandpa Nat's and Grandma Sylvia's apartment building at One Beach 105th Street, facing where Grandpa Nat had the front parking lot space closest to Shore Front Parkway and  the beach (he paid extra for it, but the corrosion of the seawater just ate away at the right side of his Buick Century; by 1980, we were driving around North Miami Beach with more rust than paint on one side) -- and just across from Dayton Towers West,

where we lived in our Grandpa Herb's and Grandma Ethel's apartment, both when they were still alive and living there, and in 1991 by ourselves after Grandma Ethel had gone into a Woodmere adult health-related facility.

We took this weird curved (temporary?) concrete ramp past a lot of construction up to a short concrete (temporary?) boardwalk by the Beach 106th Street concession building, still not open for business but painted a wonderfully bright yellow-green.

The "steps" going down to the beach -- which was wide and clean and as beautiful as ever -- also seemed to serve as places to sit, like benches on the bleachers.

The parks department people taking a break on the steps told us this was all technically off-limits but they kindly allowed us to stay to take some pics.

 

We're grateful we got to see that the beach and boardwalk in Rockaway Park will be ready soon: not quite the way we remember it from our childhood going back sixty years, but a newer, more interesting, and hopefully sturdier kind of beachfront and boardwalk experience for generations of New Yorkers to come.

Saturday Afternoon in Rockaway Beach: The Seventh Annual Earth Day Rockaway at MoMA PS1's VW Dome 2

This afternoon we were lucky enough to be in Rockaway Beach to attend the seventh annual Earth Day Rockaway event at MoMA PS1's VW Dome 2.

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Wednesday Morning in Rockaway Park: Breakfast at the Beach

This morning, before 8 a.m., we got on the J train at Marcy Avenue and took it to Broadway Junction, transferred to a Far Rockaway-bound A train at Broadway Junction, and at Broad Channel, we got the S shuttle.

The subway ride over Jamaica Bay is always beautiful, and we got off at Beach 105th Street/Seaside, where both sets of our grandparents lived, starting in the mid-1960s after they tore down our summer bungalows in Arverne.

Our grandparents Herbert and Ethel Sarrett lived at 103-00 Shore Front Parkway, apartment 10N, at the Dayton Towers West Mitchell-Lama (subsidized) co-op; their terrace faced the beach.

We lived here a lot (alone, our last summer there, in 1991, which we've chronicled in our book Last Summer in Rockaway.

Our grandparents Nathan and Sylvia Ginsberg lived at 1 Beach 105th Street, apartment 11F, which was a luxury rental. Their terrace looked out at the ocean, too, but from an angle. Grandpa Nat had the first parking space facing the ocean, which seemed a perk but really meant the right side of the car would get corroded by the salt air.

Our great-aunt and great-uncle, Tillie and Morris Metz, lived in 102-00 Shore Front Parkway, apartment 2P, facing Beach 102nd Street. Aunt Tillie lived there until she died around 1995, and then we lost our family connection to Rockaway Park, but we still feel connected to this place.

And we're glad that hipsters have discovered how great it is.

The cool places to eat by Beach 106th weren't open when we got there, but we'd brought our breakfast with us from Brooklyn and enjoyed it on a bench overlooking the sand and the Atlantic and the sky.

There were no lifeguards at this early hour, nor many people on the beach.

As we walked to Beach 116th Street to get the Q35 back to Brooklyn

(we'd take the bus to its last stop at the Junction/Brooklyn College,

get on the 5 train to the Atlantic/"Barclays Center" terminal,

walk around to the G train stop at Fulton and Lafayette Streets, take it to Broadway and walk the four blocks home),

we noticed some beautiful plants and wildflowers on the bay side of the boardwalk.

Wow, look at those flowers. We're grateful to be able to look at, if not smell, these flowers be on the beach in Rockaway in the 62nd summer of our lives.

Sunday Afternoon in Rockaway Beach: Glockabelle at Rippers

(Video courtesy Samer Ghadry)

Saturday Morning in Rockaway Beach: The Sixth Annual Rockstock and Barrels Surf Festival

Although Saturday was a busy day for us, we managed to get to Beach 90th Street early today and catch the start of the fabulous Sixth Annual Rockstock and Barrels Surf Festival.
We got to see some of the Third Annual Rockstock and Barrels in 2009, and after a long winter in landlocked Arizona -- we stupidly turned up a chance to go to the beach at Malibu during April, when we were staying for weeks in L.A. -- we were glad to be here, because the last time we saw surfers was last September in Long Beach at the Quiksilver Pro New York. More coming . . . Of course, since we had to get to Brooklyn for work, we missed the best part of Rockstock and Barrels, practically everything that went on for hours afterwards: the surfing competition, the skate contest, the ten live bands. But we're glad we at least got to see the start of what must have been a really terrific day for all the people who showed up.