A Long Ride To Long Beach

I've discovered a way to gauge how fast the summer is going. And it is going isn't it? There are potted flowers hanging round our house and we've observed, in springtime from time to time, that praying mantises (is that the plural of "mantis?") like to make their home in some of our flowerpots. What a wonderful sight. There's something exciting about being able to follow this beautiful and delicate insect from infancy in spring through the long days of the summer and into September and summer's end that brings their demise. As newborns they are so tiny it's a wonder we've ever managed to see them. Their size aside, their coloring blends perfectly with the surrounding flora, making them even more difficult to spot. But once we discovered them we have always thereafter sought them out and have usually been succesful in finding them.

By mid-summer, just about now, they have grown from, perhaps, a half an inch long to a good two or three inches in length and as thick as pencil.  Come September they are even longer and thicker and even more evident, clinging to our screen door or a stucco wall with their amazing barbed legs that allows them climb straight up on any vertical surface. There aren't many of them; one here, one there but we never fail to see them and by now, facinated as we are, we seek them out.

They're given their spiritual appellation because they seem to be praying as they fold their two front legs back to their body. I spotted one last night and he was very probably the little baby I saw back in May. 

And thus, as grows the Mantis, so goes the summer.


This little bugger perched on our rail outside our front door last night.


He (she?) examined me as carefully as I examined him.

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Stacey and I try to hit our gym three times a week -- Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Today being Monday and being a beautiful day, I suggested a bike ride instead. She wasn't thrilled with the idea but I persisted and we set off at about 11 o'clock out along the Belt Parkway bike path.

I wanted to bike to Long Beach in Nassau County where we could have lunch and then head back to Brooklyn. That would be about 40 miles or so. Could we do that?


Our ride began in Sheephead Bay and we passed Saint Mark Roman Catholic church on Ocean Avenue.


The bike path runs along the Belt Parkway and along Jamaica Bay. The bike path was empty. The Belt was jammed with cars and hardly moving.

They've done a very nice job with the bike path. "They," I guess is the city, state or federal governments (or all of them). The shore area out toward Queens is now party of Gateway National Park. The bike path has been redone in recent years: repaved, re-marked and replanted and it's a great ride with beautiful vistas of water and shore.

We took the path only as far as Flatbush Avenue. The path continues east as far as Cross  Bay Boulevard but we headed south at Flatbush and over the Gil Hodges bridge (named for the Brooklyn Dodger hero and Brooklyn resident; he lived on Bedford Avenue) which crosses Jamaica Bay from Brooklyn to Rockaway (which is part of Queens). From there we biked the length of Rockaway through lovely and not-so-lovely neighborhoods. It's a real mix of  beautiful houses and down-and-out slums and long-decrepit bungalows from yesteryear when Rockaway was a beach resort. That was another era before the car took city dwellers to more distant resorts like the Jersey shore and the Hamptons.


Heading south on Flatbush Avenue, the bike path hugs long-abandoned Floyd Bennett field.

We wondered, as we passed Floyd Bennett field why such vast tracts are allowed to decay. Beautiful old buildings are boarded up or falling down. Can't they be used for something useful? Schools, affordable housing, an environmental center?

Over the bridge we went and we stopped at the top to admire the views. You could see the Rockaways and much beyond that, Jersey's Atlantic Highlands. There was Brooklyn spread out before us and across Brooklyn you can see the Verrazano Bridge connecting to Staten Island. And way in the distance, the skyscrapers of Manhattan. Fabulous!


Looking out across Brooklyn. Can you make out the towers of the Verrazano Bridge on the horizon? Click on the picture to see a larger version. 


Me on top of the world on the Gil Hodges Bridge. Brooklyn behind me
and Manhattan on the horizon.


The Gil Hodges Bridge looks like a giant Erector Set.

Rockaway is a place of great contrasts. My dad's brother used to summer there back in the 60's. He and his wife rented an apartment on an ocean block and, even though they lived in Brooklyn and not far from the beach, they would spend their summer in Rockaway. In fact from 1850 to 1950, the Rockaway peninsula, like its Coney Island cousin, offered a respite from the oppressive heat of New York city summers and people flocked to its ocean beaches to swim, walk the boarwalk, summer in its bungalows and enjoy the local restaurants and amusement park. And like Coney Island today, it's a shadow of its former self.

Parts of it are quite exclusive: Neponsit and Belle Harbor have very expensive homes and are an enclave apart from the rest of the city. But other neighborhoods are depressed, poor and very run down. For years, the bungalows of its former glory years stood, unused and uninhabited. Finally cleared, vast tracts are now being developed with new homes. Is it coming up again? Will it be gentrified and the poor pushed, once again, to even more remote locations? Time will tell. Underneath the poverty and the decrepitude is an achingly beautiful strip along the Atlantic Ocean with fabulous beaches and surf.


The beach is not heavily used far out along the Rockaways.


A last ditch attempt to save the bungalows of Rockaway's heyday? The sign reads "Beachside Bungalow Preservation Assn."


There used to be acres of streets like this. Now just a couple remain and they are in very poor condition: either abandoned or occupied by very poor people.


At the very end of the Rockaways, a small bridge takes one to the barrier islands and the towns of Atlantic Beach and Long Beach.

Crossing a small channel over the Atlantic Beach Bridge and you find yourself out of the city and into Nassau County. It's like another planet though: clean, manicured and well-taken care of. Pretty houses, neat streets and a beautiful boardwalk in good condition. To me it's a stunning indictment of city government. But even more so of the way our country is run nowadays - a disdain of poor people and the cities. It's the Bush/Republican philosophy of robbing from the poor, giving to the rich and crapping on the rest of us.


Welcome to Long Beach - a world apart from the Rockaways.

Long Beach is very cute - modest, but sweet, houses. Cute shops and restaurants. Very much different than the depressed neighborhoods we just pedaled through in Rockaway. We found a place for lunch. It's quite late already. We've biked 22 miles and it's been two and a half hours since we started. Stacey has a date with her girlfriends and she won't be able to keep it if we bike back. I suggest we try the LIRR. The Long Beach station is only a mile or so away and although we don't have the required bike permit we decide to try it. We'll take it to Atlantic Avenue and from there the subway back home. The conductor asks for the permit and we stall. He doesn't pursue the matter. "Make sure you have it next time," he tells us. We sink back into the plush seats of train as it carries us, tuckered out, back to Brooklyn. Not a bad day for a bike ride to Long Beach.


We had to swtich at Jamaica to get the train to Flatbush and Atlantic Avenue.


The Long Island Railroad took us back home.