To Live and Travel in NYC
By: Guac Magazine Editors
Tags: Beach, Travel, New York, City Living, Adventure

by: Elijah Fox

We New Yorkers are lucky to call the nation’s largest city home. But “home” is a tricky word for a city you could that would take hours to transverse. With multiple ChinaTowns, a bustling downtown and numerous beaches, the singular city is comprised of countless worlds. Thanks to the world’s most extensive subway system, $2.75 is the ticket price to race beneath rivers and skyscrapers, and emerge into a neighborhood unrecognizable from the last. My house is in Brooklyn. To live here is to have the privilege of declaring on a whim, “today this city is not my home, but an adventure waiting to happen.” Armed with a metrocard in hand and a day to spend, there is no limit to what you can explore.

Take a trip to the beach, for instance. While Coney Island, with its extensive boardwalk, aquarium, and amusement park, is the best-known escape for a hot summer day, the much cleaner Rockaway, also accessible by subway, deserves your time. Take the A, from Sugar Hill up in Harlem, down through Brooklyn into this oceanside gem in Queens. Every time I make this trip, I revel at the sight, as my 340-ton metal chariot rises from the ground to cross over Jamaica Bay. The train tracks below turn to water, glittering in the sun. Somehow the musty scent of the train, as it retires from its shaky dash through the city, is left behind with the cityscape as you enter this new world. Okay, maybe the train smells the same wherever you go, but the natural light pouring into the car is a pleasant distraction. Though you step off onto the familiar yellow paint and bland concrete, a gust of wind reminds you that, just a few blocks away, sandy beaches await.

Rockaway beach

Whether you follow the ocean breeze or your GPS, you will follow the worn streets between the standalone houses, faded in color, for a few minutes before arriving at the beach. Since the boardwalk was washed away by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, it has been replaced with concrete. Walk it down the length of Rockaway and experience, not the greasy food and open-air bars of a conventional boardwalk, but a pleasant walk down the beach without the guarantee of sand in your shoes.

Hungry? Stop by Rippers, an upbeat bar and restaurant with good prices, live music, and spacious outdoor seating. While they don’t serve funnel cakes there, that deep-fried-craving can be quenched by a crispy dose of curly fries or a burger.

Rockaway is also the only beach in the area where surfing is even a plausibility. While beginners’ surfing lessons can be a bit pricey when you factor in the rental cost, to ride a wave (however amateur you may be) in the same city as One World Trade Center is an experience worth every penny.

Rockaway bridge

Dry off, relax on the beach, and take a walk through the neighborhood.

Only a few years ago, it was devastated by the hurricane. Its rebuilding is a story of both resilience and gentrification. The investment in the damaged neighborhood attracted a new crowd who bought property, opened restaurants, and reshaped this southernmost tip of Queens. The new facade of Rockaway beach stands as a stark reminder of the uneven outcomes of neighborhood change, and the tale of two cities that is New York.

As you walk further from the last subway stop where the street numbers get higher, your surroundings transform into a beachside suburbia. The older population can be recognized by their SUVs. Got wheels? Bike across the Marine Parkway Bridge to Floyd Bennett Field just over the water, an old airfield that now hosts Aviator sports center, which offers plenty of activities and facilities to fill a day, including “New York City’s only twin NHL-sized ice rinks.”

The sun can take a lot out of you. When it finally sets, the choice arises of whether to continue the night and grab a drink at a seaside bar and watch the sky change into an inspiring medley of warm colors, or to ride the iron horse back to your turf in your city. If you choose the latter, don’t worry about the day being cut short. You call this glittering and grimey, sprawling and cozy metropolis home; tomorrow can be another adventure.