Surfing in Interesting Climes: Urban
J amaica Bay Portraits
Photos 1999-2000
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Smitty's boat house catching some rays.
Jamaica Bay and Broad Channel
Part of the experience of surfing in the Rockaways is the subway trip out there. It's the part of the whole subway line where the train comes closest to the water. As soon as the train passes the airport, you leave urban New York and enter the strange world of Jamaica Bay and the barrier sandbar of the Rockaways.
It's a wonderful feeling when the subway becomes an elevated train that travels through the outskirts of Queens. The sunlight comes into the train windows and I look for branches or flags to check the wind speed and direction. When the wind blows from the north or northwest, the wind at the beach will be offshore.
Soon the train reaches the wetlands of Jamaica Bay. A seacoast culture in New York City, Jamaica Bay features boathouses, harbors, and waterside houses on stilts. Upon reaching the island of Broad Channel we pass a heavily overgrown wetland right by the train that looks like New York's own everglades. Birds abound, along with some interesting driftwood consisting of abandoned boats and train track parts.
This pictorial will show you in sequence the train trip over Jamaica Bay to the Rockaways.
The train crosses a causeway over Jamaica Bay.
Crowded Manhattan lurks in the hazy distance. Look closely and you can see the twin towers of the World Trade Center in the background. They were always a distant horizon feature on the Bay.
Broad Channel platform. The shuttle arrives.
This is one of those scenes where you can hardly believe you're within the city limits of New York. I took a train trip across Washington State one summer. Remote Pasco, Washington had tracks that looked like this.
Smitty's boat rental house.
This makes me laugh every time I pass it. Smitty is the nickname of the fine surfer Richard Schmidt from my hometown Santa Cruz.
The bay through scratchitti.
Views of the aging pier and distant skyline towers through the train window. Note the scratchitti, scratched grafitti.
Stilt houses on north side of the Rockaway barrier sandbar.
Is it Key Largo or Jamaica Bay?
Jamaica Stilt House Row
Four seasons of train rides over the bay
When you come over the bay on the final leg of the trip to the Rockaway surf break, there's a funny little row of houses that stick out a ways into the water. The houses are on stilts, and there must be a reason they run out into the bay. Perhaps they are the remnants of an old cannery. I think of the houses as Rockaway's version of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row. They take on a different character at different times of the year.
Early summer. Pilings show where more houses must have been
June 1999
Summer sunset over the houses
June 1999
Train window frames the houses and bay
July 1999
An autumn sunset on the row of houses
October, 1999
Ice on Jamaica Bay
January, 2000
Rockaway's ghost town cannery row, in winter
January, 2000
