BayFest

Sunday, May 15 . . . It rained all morning and there was a 60 percent chance of rain throughout the day. I would not be deterred—this had been on my calendar for months, plus I needed a respite of the kind only BayFest could deliver. So I made the trip (and it stayed dry).


En route to BayFest 2011 . . .


Someone threw out a record collection (under the overpass)


Emmons Ave., Sheepshead Bay




"J-Pop sensation Reni Mimura came to the U.S. to Share LOVE and JOY!”



“The Xylopholks play novelty ragtime music of the ‘20s dressed in fuzzy animal costumes.”


“The Shots & Friends: Rock ‘n’ roll bagpipe band”


“3:15 pm: FDNY Marine Unit Fireboat Demonstration”



The band played the Marine Corps theme as the hoses gushed



A taste of nature, at nearby Plumb Beach






Grassy knoll beside the highway, past the crab house parking lot





SLIDESHOW – Brooklyn by the Sea (Flickr)

Plumb Beach & Vicinity (Brooklyn by the Sea: Part 2)

Official Plumb Beach: A shuttered rest stop (click for Plumb Beach history)


Sewage treatment plant on Knapp St.


“Ever Vigilant in Protecting Nature’s Precious Resource. Through Applied Technology We are Purifying our Water.”


Marina on Plumb Beach Channel, Gerritsen Beach





Gerritsen Beach


Houses on Plumb Beach Channel


Condos on Emmons Ave., Sheepshead Bay




Gulls trail a pleasure craft motoring through Sheepshead Bay



Neighbors: Derelict backyard of motel next to beach




Unofficial entrance to the beach (Kingsborough College lighthouse in background)




Sunset: Assisted Living Facilities surround the wasteland where Plumb Beach meets Sheepshead Bay

SLIDESHOW – Brooklyn by the Sea (Flickr)

Sheepshead Bay/Manhattan Beach (Brooklyn by the Sea: Part 1)

Cross the slatted wooden footbridge that spans Sheepshead Bay and enter Brooklyn’s most picturesque quarter. (Some call it the Brooklyn Riviera.) The bay is a concrete rectangle, a man-made concoction, but there’s a storybook aura here, with swans and ducks and gulls and pigeons galore (and more bird shit—some of it in mounds, mixed with pieces of mollusk shells—than you’ve ever seen in one place, spread like a patina over the concrete piers and bulkheads.)





Stroll through Holocaust Memorial Park in Manhattan Beach, then down Oriental Boulevard to the beach, where on hot days the adjacent park is dense with picnickers and you can almost float out to sea on clouds of fragrant smoke wafting up from the assemblage of grills. Then head over to scenic Kingsborough Community College, where another, more private beach reminds you of some place far from Brooklyn, maybe down south or across the country. Walk the campus perimeter, hugging the shore, passing shoals and seaweed, even a lighthouse (which doubles as an academic building).



Walk up Shore Boulevard, a long stretch of nouveau riche temples, and back across the footbridge. Then walk down Emmons Avenue, where the fishing boat touts beckon with blunt offers of ocean excursions: “All night blues, porgies, bass . . . Half-a-day or all the way.” No poetry from them (that last one’s mine), or nautical lore. And the Randazzo’s waitresses are hardbitten too: What’ll it be hon, please eat and run . . . to the train back to elsewhere, someplace more accommodating, but certainly less picturesque.





SLIDESHOW – Brooklyn by the Sea (Flickr)