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)

Intoxicating Variety: Anatomy of a DrunkWalk

Big Sky Brooklyn is less an attempt to document or “capture” the elusive richness of real-life than an effort to communicate the intoxicating variety endemic to Brooklyn. And “intoxicating variety,” as I have found, is best appreciated when one is intoxicated. This is only fitting since the blog grew out of a series of “DrunkWalks,” which started as random wanderings and steadily became more rigorous, through the use of maps, satellite imagery, and other research.


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The well-planned, dutifully executed DrunkWalk™ succeeds as a narrative and fulfills a personal quest to create a poetic map of the terrain. Last year, for example, at the height of Indian summer (an 85-degree day in early October), I set out early to walk the entire length of Stillwell Ave. and a large chunk of Bath Beach. The day was gorgeous, the route was scenic, and more than once I found just what I was looking for: communion with the sublime. It turned out to be an epic DrunkWalk. Following are some images and impressions from that memorable day.


Weekdays in obscure Brooklyn parks and playgrounds, among children, mothers, and retirees: another layer of reality, outside the realm of the working world.



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Calvert Vaux Park






Calvert Vaux Park, on the other side of Shore Parkway (pedestrians have to cross a footbridge to get there), was a strange experience all around. The 73-acre park, also known as Dreier-Offerman Park, is in the early stages of a $40 million renovation. It’s still open to the public, though it’s all but empty, save for workmen (not many, though), some baseball players (practicing in uniform—in October), and some fishermen scattered along the bank facing Coney Island. A thick, sloping underbrush shields the pathway from the water’s edge, so you can’t see the fishermen unless you climb through the bushes, and then it feels like you’re spying on them. Odd.


Crossing back to civilization: end of the footbridge, looking east.


The exceedingly comfortable van seat where I sat at Cropsey Ave. & Bay 46th. When you're planted in a spot like this, the cheapest beer tastes like elixer.


The view looking west.


The view looking east.

School’s out: Late afternoon, the streets and delis are pulsating with juvenile energy.



Shaba grocery, beneath the tracks, at Ave. X and Stillwell (right next to a section of the sprawling, heavily fortified Gravesend trainyard)—an unwittingly iconic juncture. Notice the play of clouds and sky in the interstices between train and tracks. Appreciation of such a tableau is what DrunkWalks were made for.


Deep in the heart of Brooklyn.



Concrete factory/high rise at Stillwell & Z.


Stillwell Avenue Terminus. I couldn’t go this far without hitting the beach—it was October but it felt like a summer day at Coney Island (without all the people).


Every DrunkWalk is an indolence excursion and a true glimpse of the contemplative life. The epic DrunkWalk is one of new vistas and new terrain, and ultimately new ways of seeing the familiar. Discovery is the watchword and pleasure is the spur; the exhilaration of feeling that I’m part of something bigger, immersed in a microcosm of an intricate world, is what gives me wings when I’ve had more than a few. My Brooklyn DrunkWalks have led to a mytho-cosmic wellspring, an endless source of inspiration—in a realm beyond the local.

SLIDESHOW – Coney Island/Coney Island Creek (Flickr)