New York, Day 2, The Other Yellow Submarine

Day 2

Monday, January 9, 2023

     With overcast skies in the forecast from the night before, I decided not to make the mile walk out to the beach for sunrise.  You can imagine my surprise when I saw this from the motel window...

    

      After a decent breakfast as the Best Western, it was time to face the cold and go off exploring.  But first, the wardrobe malfunction.  You'd be amazed how hard it is to find replacement laces for hiking boots.  Thoughout the day I walked into numerous shoes stores and sporting good stores.  In the end, I would eventually find a pair in a Walgreens.  

     For reference...

       The neighborhood where I was staying was certainly interesting.  To get to Stillwell Avenue, I passed an auto repair shop and a cement making facility. 

   Once around the corner, it was one collision shop after another, with plenty of cars parked outside with front end damage.  

     There was also this curious place.  

    Frank Viola opened the club in the 1990's.  For most of his life, he raised racing pigeons.  He even sponsored the Frank Viola Invitational, a four hundred mile pigeon race from Ohio to New York. With as much as $200K in prize money, it became a main event for the sport.  

     Viola was a WWII veteran.  When war was declared, not only did he volunteer, he also donated his homing pigeons to the army.  They were used to carry messages back and forth throughout the war.  You can read more about his life here:

    

      After turning west on Neptune Avenue, it was an easy walk to my first stop of the day, Kaiser Park.  It's your typical city park along he shore of Coney Island Creek with a nice view of the Verazanno Narrows Bridge.  Note the black posts in the distance.  

    It's also where you'll see this curious yellow object sticking out of the water...

     It's actually a privately built submarine.  In 1963, Jerry Bianco was working in the Brooklyn Navy Yards.  He had this idea to build the sub and use it for salvage off the coast.  It would take three years for Bianco to get the finanacial backing to start building his sub.  

    Questor 1 was set for launch in October, 1971.  A miscommunication between Bianco and the crane operator led to the sub flipping onto its side.  While the sub still worked, his financial backers pulled out.  It was going nowhere.  Four years later, it slipped its mooring in a storm and drifed to it's current resting place in Coney Island Creek.  

    Dylan Thuras of Atlas Obscura paddled out to the submarine and made this video of his experience: 

      Further west along the waterfront. you'll find the abandoned Coney Island Ferry terminal.

     It does look pretty new, and it is.  The new ferry service was only proposed in 2017.  After the terminal site was chosen and built, dredging began in the channel.  One article refered to the problem as "significant sand shift."  Due to the nature of Coney Island Creek, sediment flows right back in, replacing what had been dredged.  Since they couldn't keep the channel deep enough, the terminal was abandoned.  

     Further west is Coney Island Creek Park, a public beach.

     Suddenly, you're in a maze of cyclone and privacy fences with no visable way out, other than to walk back down the beach.

   On the western tip of the island sits the Coney Island Lighthouse.  I tried numerous ways to get there, but was thwarted by fences and security gates.  Everything on that end is private access only.  

    With no access to the lighthouse, I just kept walking, eventually winding up at the western end of the Riegelmann Boardwalk.  

     The boardwalk first opened in 1923 and runs 2.7 miles to it's eastern terminus in Brighton Beach.  It's named after former borough president Edward Riegelmann, the driving force behind it's creation and funding.

      With the cold and steady wind, there weren't many people out walking.  I was thinking lunch by the time I arrived back at the parachute jump.  For some reason, I felt compelled to stop into a very quiet Nathan's for a bite.

      After heading back out to the boardwalk, I checked out some of the rides through the chain link fence.  I'm not sure I'd be interested in a ride called "The Tickler."

     My quest for replacement shoelaces took me off the boardwalk and into the more commercial areas.  The first sporting good place I stopped only sold high end workout clothes.  The second was a really small place that seemed to specialize in soccer balls and cricket bats.  The third place had sneaker laces is a wide variety of colors.   

     After some eventual luck at a Walgreens, it was back out to the boardwalk.

      With the sun heading towards the horizon, I simply found a quiet spot out of the wind to wait.

     After hotdogs for lunch, I was looking for something a little different.  I wound up at a place called Hook and Reel.  They claim to have cajun seafood and do offer differing levels of spice.  I only mention it because my steamed shrimp and vegetables arrived in an enclosed, clear plastic bag.  It seemd a little strange opening a plastic bag and dumping the contents out on a plate.  Decent meal though.