Saturday Afternoon in Rockaway Beach: Poseidon's Parade on the Boardwalk at Becach 94th Street

(Video courtesy Oswald Montano)

Friday Morning at Rockaway Beach: The Boardwalk at Beach 90th Street

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

Sunday Afternoon in Rockaway Beach: On the Beach

(Video courtesy Bob Jeannetti)

Late Saturday Afternoon in Rockaway Beach: Bikes in the Kitchen presents Friender Blender with Ninjasonik, The Death Set, The So So Glos, The Moon Dudes, Las Rosas, New Cross, and Greg Saunier of Deerhoof at Rippers

(Videos courtesy Sixdust | NYC Music)

Sunday Afternoon in Broad Channel: The View West from Broad Channel

 

Driving off the Rockaways peninsula, we stopped off at a car rest and fishing site in Broad Channel for a while, to check out the beach and Jamaica Bay across from Kennedy Airport.  

The A train trestle looked fine from a distance and service to Far Rockaway is promised to start again this Thursday for the first time since Superstorm Sandy. Floodwaters from Sandy washed out 1,500 feet of track, destroyed miles of signal, power and communication wires, and completely flooded subway stations.  Debris removal from the track beds alone, which included removal of a boat that washed onto the beds, took four weeks, so it's been a long recovery, but hopefully Rockaway residents and beachgoers can soon take the A train to the ocean again.

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 Night in Tribeca: At the Chambers Street Station, A Sign Announces the H Train Returns to Rockaway

After meeting with our wonderful Wednesday evening English 101 class at the Borough of Manhattan Community College's Murray Street building, we went down to wait for the A train at Chambers Street and found this sign, nostalgic to all those of us who remember the HH train in the Rockaways (and the CC to Rockaway Park before that).

To replace some of the service, since the Jamaica Bay tracks were destroyed by Superstorm Sandy, a free H train shuttle will run from Far Rockaway (the last stop, now served by a bus shuttle from Howard Beach/JFK) to Beach 90th Street along the rarely used Hammels Wye.

(Photo by the great Nathan Kensinger, whose amazing work we first came across in 2009 with "Abandoned Brooklyn.")

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.