Looking to get out of the city for a couple of hours on one of the days you plan on visiting New York City? Two words for you: Rockaway Beach.
You may have flown over it as you landed at JFK airport. You may have heard about it post-Hurricane Sandy. You may have even heard about it in the Ramone’s 1977 two-minute punk rock ode with the same name (which, by the way, peaked at number 66 on the Billboard Top 100, the highest charting single put up by the born and bred NYC band). Or maybe you just heard it was the one place to surf in NYC that you could easily reach by train.
Getting there is a cinch. It is a simple ride out from anywhere in the city where you may find a station with an A train bound for Far Rockaway. The Far Rockaway-bound A train passes down from Inwood at the northern tip of Manhattan along the east side of the island. Having crossed below the East River, the underground route begins a diagonal journey across Brooklyn into the farther reaches of Queens, where it starts to go above ground and passes the station, 67th St Averne By the Sea, the closest and most accessible stop to reach the coast. From there, it is a quick walk down to the sand, as the beach is no more than five minutes away on foot. The other alternative you have is to transfer at Broad Channel, the first stop directly after Howard Beach JFK Airport on your way out to the beach on the A train. From there, you may catch a shuttle train marked “S” headed to Rockaway Park, where it stops at the last station at 116th street. Along 116th street, which leads to the sand, are shops and places to buy snacks and food or drink or anything beach related you might have forgotten on your way out there.
On a clear day, from the beach you can see the headlands of the Jersey Shore to the south, etched in the distance as a darkened bluff amidst the blue sky. On a day with low coastal clouds and less visibility, you’ll have to settle with a more tempered and velvety grey sky, but you can hear planes, less than a thousand feet above roar through the sky making their approaches to JFK or flying away from the land, off to some unknown place. If you are lucky and the conditions happen to be right with offshore wind and an incoming swell, you may end up seeing some serious city surfers enjoying long rides between the jetties. Or you may encounter Rockaway Beach on one of its drearier, rainy and cold-wind swept days, which is also great too. You will see at once that Rockaway Beach is a place where you can peacefully admire the interplay of modern civilization and its essential counterpart, Mother Nature.
In the summer, when the city heat is sometimes unbearable, Rockaway Beach can get jammed for most of the day. However, because New York City is close to freezing for more than half the year, it is safe to say that unless you visit here in June, July or August, you will probably have to bundle up on a short trip to the beach. Either way, in whatever time of the year you visit the city, I’d recommend you reserve an hour or two of stillness for yourself and take the train out to relax with a short walk along the sand.
