Dumbo Books of Brooklyn: Rockaway Park

Sunday, May 26, 2013

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.

Friday, November 23, 2012

Wall Street Journal Front Page Features Photo of Occupy Sandy's Thanksgiving Dinner at St. Camillus in Rockaway (with us included)

The front page of The Wall Street Journal today, Friday, November 23, 2012, features an above the fold photo of yesterday's wonderful Occupy Sandy Thanksgiving dinner outside St. Camillus in Rockaway with the headline: "A Sunny Thanksgiving Feast for Storm's Victims."

At least one person pictured was a volunteer taking a break to eat a delicious apple muffin.

We're a little embarrassed (but not that much) to be pictured when so many of our fellow volunteers and the regular crew at Occupy Sandy in Rockaway aren't. But we are proud of being a tiny part of such a good effort. And we also like that at the extreme left of the photo you can just make out the Dayton Towers West building at 102-00 Shore Front Parkway.

For thirty years our beloved Aunt Tillie -- our grandfather's sister -- and Uncle Morris Metz, had an apartment there on the second floor, where we spent several holiday dinners (Thanksgiving, Rosh Hashona) with them and our Grandma Ethel back in the 1980s. That was the last time we were featured on the front page, albeit of the second section, of The Wall Street Journal. A story by Brooks Jackson about our presidential campaign was published on November 28, 1983, just about 29 years ago.

It ran with the headline "This Presidential Candidate Wants Jane Wyman as His Running Mate," It ended:
So what's next for Mr. Grayson?

He's running for President as a Democratic candidate and accepting public financing, sort of.

"When I go down to the unemployment office, I have to prove that I'm looking for work," he says. "I figure that the presidency is a good job."

He would like Jane Wyman to be his running mate. "She has experience dumping Reagan," he says. The president's ex-wife hasn't accepted yet."