NYC BEACHES - visited Sept 2018, 2019

Iconic CONEY ISLAND

New York City is built on 3 islands - MANHATTAN, STATEN and the southern part of LONG ISLAND with only THE BRONX extending north onto the mainland. So it should be no surprise that NYC has beaches. But the STATEN ISLAND beach reviews were not enticing enough to warrant precious time** for a visit. Ditto THE BRONX (update NOV '19 - managed to get to ORCHARD BEACH in the BRONX latest trip - found it unexpectedly good. Will do a report on this page when I find the time). MANHATTAN is river-locked and heavily urbanised so any riverside strips of sand were long ago lost to industry, wharves or residential. That leaves the beaches of south BROOKLYN on the southern tip of LONG ISLAND. 

**here's the thing. I'm a seriously old dude in the twilight of my travelling career. I'm no longer prepared to forego good NON-BEACH places I haven't seen to simply check out ALL the beaches in an area. I sincerely regret all those years of re-visiting THAILAND, INDO, MALAYSIA etc simply to keep my beach reports up to date. Could have used that time to see parts of the world I haven't. So cut me some slack when I say I didn't visit ALL the beaches.


CONEY ISLAND
Everyone who goes to NYC has to visit CONEY ISLAND if he/she is into the coast or iconic places.
I thought it was kinda good, even though the beach itself would not make my top 1000. But then NO north-east USA beach would - as a matter of fact none of the USA beaches I've seen to date would (maybe it's time to visit FLORIDA and its near southern states. Next year?)
So to put CONEY ISLAND into the US perspective, it would not make my list of top 10 US beaches seen to date - or top 3 NORTH-EAST beaches.

The beach was the typical LONG ISLAND strip of silica - long and wide with rock groynes every few hundred meters to arrest beach drifting sand - the sand itself not too bad in that it was not coarse, not closer to gray than yellow and didn't have much weed. 
Relatively uncrowded in this central area on a nice Fall Sunday, but I believe before LABOR DAY you will often have to move up or down the beach further to avoid the crowds. At least on a nice day. The arrow points towards BRIGHTON BEACH (Little Odessa) where the sand had the most people - those Russians sure love the beach.
So I reckon on a crowded day it would be best to head the other way (left to the west) when you hit the beach from the train.
Water was not too bad - not super clean but not excessively dirty, not cold this soon after summer. An onshore sea breeze which wold be the most common wind along here made the small waves a bit messy - this is no surfers' paradise; I didn't spot KELLY SLATER and entourage hanging around.

OK - the beach, although better than expected, didn't exactly excite me, but I enjoyed THE BOARDWALK. Seemed a heap more people there than on the sand. No shortage of merch vendors. places to get some ink or have your fortune read - I was impressed by merch prices - seems all the competition was keeping the prices way down - well under the tourist-trap level you often find at iconic attractions.

Naturally I had to grab a beer or two and check the passing parade. People-watching is a major pass-the-time of solo travellers.
The structure in background is a change shed/wc area.

 As iconic as the boardwalk are the famous PIER and FUN FAIR in the background....
and below.

After walking along the boardwalk and sand to BRIGHTON BEACH, I pushed a block inland to the main drag to see if it is as DIFFERENT as reports claim - my take yep: all those shops with signs in Cyrillic and selling products if not imported from Russia were at least what you would expect to see in downtown DZERZHINSK. Made all the more exotic to me by the subway line being actually an EL - elevated above the main street (don't have this in Oz). Crazy thing was I didn't take any pix on account of flat battery.

So I stole this one from GOOGLE IMAGES - thanks to VOICES OF NY. 

Wow, this modified GOOGLE EARTH image didn't turn out so well - but correcting is a major event so you should maybe click-expand the image to make labels clearer. 
CONEY ISLAND is 15m-24km/60mins by train from central MANHATTAN. 3 lines access - the D,N, F and Q trains arrive at STILLWELL AVE only 2 blocks from the beach in the pier/carnival area. Note the line curves and then runs parallel to the sand with several stops to BRIGHTON BCH where it turns left again for the journey back to NYC - so between the pier/fun fair and BB you are never far from an EL station.
I also read you can catch a ferry from MANHATTAN for little more than the train fare. That would be an interesting trip. 



ROCKAWAY BEACH
This is the big long beach you see when landing or leaving JFK. It looked OK to me so I decided to check it out up close.
Note it isn't very far straight line from CONEY ISLAND - the centers of each longish beach are only 7mi/11km apart - the closest parts abt 2/3.2. But they're a hell of a lot further by transport - by road you are looking at over 12mi - by train 90mins. And ROCKAWAY is not a BROOKLYN beach - it's in the borough of QUEENS.

ROCKAWAY BCH runs over 9mi/15km along the sea-side of ROCKAWAY PENINSULA which is mainly a long sand spit - the continuation of the barrier beach which runs all the way down the eastern side of LONG ISLAND - we are talking around 120mi/195km here - almost continuous save some gaps between barrier islands.
Note CONEY ISLAND bottom left of image - JFK bottom left of center.

Like CONEY ISLAND the beach is typical of LONG ISLAND - long and wide with rock groynes every few hundred meters (mainly in central areas) - the sand not too bad: not coarse, closer to yellow than gray  and not too much weed. 
Relatively uncrowded in this central area on a nice Fall Saturday.

Surfing seemed a bigger deal here than at CONEY ISLAND - makes sense: this place is more exposed to the ATLANTIC swells. I was a bit surprised though - this was the weekend after HURRICANE FLORENCE hit NORTH CAROLINA - you would think swell would be more impressive than this. Winds along here are largely onshore SE sea breezes - hence sloppy conditions. I wouldn't call this a prime surfing spot.

Several LEARN TO SURF outfits like this were scattered along the long beach - seemed to be doing good business for such a quiet day.

The loooong boardwalk (5.5mi/5.9km!) is not all boards - was smashed up pretty badly by SUPERSTORM SANDY in 2012 with substantial parts rebuilt in more durable concrete.
Kinda different from CONEY ISLAND - only scattered food and merch outlets, I didn't see any fun fairs but parks/playgrounds/picnic facilities, community sports area, change-sheds were regularly dispersed.

Surfer dudes on the train heading out. A local told me the surfing culture is so embedded that many enthusiasts from NYC grab a local apartment for the whole summer holiday season.