NYC Ferry Restaurant Tour, Part I: The Wharf (Rockaway Line)
The Staten Island Restaurant Tour, my comfort-food tour of New York City’s Forgotten Borough, is nearing completion. I have just published the first book in a two-part series and the second is imminent. What might I do for an encore? I love that every trip begins with a ride on the Staten Island Ferry. And the city is now blessed with a second ferry — one goes to all five boroughs. Need I say more?
I chose the longest trip, to Rockaway at the southern end of Queens — that’s the purple one snaking along the bottom of the map. It had moments both exhilarating and exhausting. But I’m getting ahead of the story. I reported to the NYC Ferry Terminal at Pier 11 on the East River and bought some paper tickets, not yet in the mood to struggle with the dedicated NYC Ferry app. Full fare is $4, or $1.35 for seniors, and a 10-trip pass is $27.50. All tickets expire in 90 days and app tix must be activated before use. I discovered the Rockaway Line was busy on that day.
The weather was great, and the Rockaway Line does go to Rock-Rock-Rockaway Beach, though some of us were just along for the ride. The line was snaking around the corner under the FDR Drive. We knew we were in the right place by the markings on the sidewalk.
We made it. So excited! The NYC Ferry is operated by the city’s Department of Transportation, which runs the streets, bridges, and waterways. It was started in 2017 and eventually expanded to 6 lines serving 25 piers in all 5 boroughs.
While the NYC Ferry is relatively new, ferries did serve boroughs other than Staten Island decades ago. So NYC Ferry is not so much an innovation as a restoration, bringing back a lost part of the transit system, and shortening what would otherwise be long subway commutes. The interior was more spacious than I’d expected from the outside. There were loads of seats. Bathrooms, too!
I’m guessing it’s no accident that so many lines converge one block north of Wall Street, at Pier 11. Power possessors like shorter commutes. Most of the seats were soon filled on this late spring day.
The Rockaway Line makes one stop between Wall Street and Rockaway — at Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Underway again. This is the best of several dirty-window shots of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, which connects Brooklyn to Staten Island. I’ve extolled it in a different travelogue.
My forward seatmate pensively admired the view.
An exciting moment as the boat got tossed a bit. I narrowly missed a dramatic white plume of churning seawater buffeting the little cute little white and blue ferry.
Here’s Luna Park at Coney Island, the legendary amusement park celebrated in so many movies and books. The blocky buildings at left are housing projects on avenues with names like Surf, Mermaid, and Neptune. I’ve walked in the neighborhood, though not recently.
And here is Jacob Riis Park, with Manhattan’s eastern flank peeking shyly through the smog. Riis was a journalist who, as the saying goes, comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable. He urged the city to acquire the land and might have favored its original name, Telawana Park, after Rockaway’s last indigenous tribesman. I’ve cropped the picture to place the faint suggestion of the Empire State Building in the middle.
The Marine Parkway Bridge, built in 1937, connects the south end of Brooklyn with the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens. Its twin towers, with their unusual rolled tops, are considered a symbol of Rockaway in the same way that the Brooklyn Bridge is a symbol of Brooklyn.
Its full name is the Marine Parkway — Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge. It carries traffic coming straight down Brooklyn’s Flatbush Avenue, as well as from the Belt Parkway, across Floyd Bennett Field, where Hodges was a first baseman. He later managed the Mets to victory in the 1969 World Series. We pass beneath.
And here’s a little more of Jacob Riis Park, which includes a long promenade in the form of a boardwalk, which is so much classier than asphalt, as well as a swimming beach, sports facilities, tons of parking, and a noted gay cruising ground. Its storied past includes the launch of the first transatlantic flight.
Exit this way. Don’t forget your bike.
We debark. Or disembark, if you prefer.
That bridge at left is the Cross Bay Veterans Memorial Bridge, which passes through the Jamaica Wildlife Refuge. The bridge first opened in 1925 and has twice been reconstructed, replacing the original drawbridge with a wider fixed bridge.
A backward look at my first NYC Ferry. At least this one made a good first impression. If only the trip back had been as beautiful. More on that later. I’m leading with the good stuff and saving the worst for last.
The Rockaway Line ferry docks in the middle of the island. If you don’t feel like walking to your destination, the Rockaway Shuttle Bus carries folks up and down the skinny peninsula, covering several neighborhoods and the considerable length of Rockaway Beach. The neighborhoods, from east to west, include Far Rockaway, Bayswater, Edgemere, Adverne, Adverne by the Sea, Hammels, Rockaway Beach, Rockaway Park, Belle Harbor, Neposit, Roxbury, and Breezy Point. Several Rockaways there. That’s why the area is called the Rockaways.
Torah among the tires on Beach Channel Drive, where I’m heading west for lunch at The Wharf.
Our destination is The Wharf, one of those places where your life suddenly becomes beautiful because you’ve put yourself in a beautiful spot on a beautiful day. This pretty much rigs the game in favor of beauty.
Here’s the view of, and from, my table.
Fish tacos: good beach grub, I figured. Don’t spare the mayo — this is a special day. The crunchy fries gave my choppers a happy workout.
Sandwich mise en scène. I am too cool to explain what that means and you are too cool to ask.
Outdoor diners get a view of Jamaica Bay.
There was one pleasant surprise and one unpleasant surprise connected with the trip. The pleasant one was Tribute Park, dedicated in 2005 by Mayor Bloomberg. It was so tiny, I’d missed it on the map. I saw it as I walked by and had to go in.
I’ll let the plaque tell the story: “This piece of steel was recovered from what remained of the World Trade Center after the attack of September 11, 2001.”
The paving included the names of some of those to whom tribute was being paid.
Plus a message that never goes out of style.
It was a place for quiet contemplation. You can never get too much of that. And it included a gazebo.
The day was bright and sunny yet the stars were out in the gazebo.
Shooting star, like a human life, soaring through the stained-glass night sky.
In addition to a gazebo, and a fragment of history, Tribute Park contains a view of the Lower Manhattan skyline. Let’s zoom in for a closer look at the that sawtooth grey strip on the horizon…
That’s right. That’s the Freedom Tower, icon of a city rising from the ashes, reminding us that it’s never too late to be our best selves.
After what was almost a perfect day, the trip home was a shitshow. Mechanical failure took our boat out of service. Stuff happens. Staff said another one was coming. Nope. I had allowed a 10-minute wait for the next ferry only to find it would be an hour and 10 minutes. Twenty more minutes passed. Might a 66-year-old sunburned man sit in the shaded area? Nope. Two suggestions for DOT’s NYC Ferry people: (1) Supply your staff with accurate information so that they can help the public make informed decisions about getting home. (2) And try a little harder to help your riders, especially the elderly, avoid sunburn and heatstroke.
So my protesting bladder — it had been counting on using the boat bathroom — followed me to the Beach 105 Street subway station, complaining all the way. The walk beneath the elevated tracks, despite the wide sidewalk pictured, also included a skinny path strewn with ankle-turning concrete fragments the size of golf balls. Major pedestrian non sequitur.
Three trains carried me home: the Rockaway Shuttle to Broad Channel, the A train to Columbus Circle, and the Broadway Local to my home stop in Upper Manhattan. I chatted with another ferry rider, also recreational, also a senior, who was even more deeply sunburned than I was.
I didn’t appreciate the view of Jamaica Bay as much as I might have.
But what is a little sunburn compared to real heartache?
Though a little shaken and more than a little exhausted, I shouldn’t have let peevishness ruin a day filled with natural beauty and meaning. At home, I rehydrated, smeared aloe gel with lidocaine on my red neck and forearms, and realized that, as I say to people from time to time, I’m the lucky one.
Since I didn’t get to see the Rockaway Line view from the other side of the boat on the way home, a second trip was in order. I guess that will officially make this a series.
