

There's the Wharf, a patio bar with amazing views situated behind the oil-change shop, and the Bungalow Bar & Restaurant, a patio bar with amazing views situated behind the McDonald's.
#Last stop rockaway driver
The pedicab driver charges "whatever you feel like paying," local fashion dictates towels on the head and the community garden features a clam-shell patch, innumerable American flags and a faded Bud Light canopy shading a filing cabinet.įor entertainment, there's a vast expanse of shell-strewn public beach, which on a hot day draws every teenager in Queens along with fantastic displays of belly-button jewelry.
#Last stop rockaway free
Once settled in, feel free to improvise: Rockaway life tends toward the makeshift.
#Last stop rockaway professional
Duffy says his typical guest is a middle-age professional who lives on the Q53 bus line, but he once hosted a group of Park Slope vegans: "They gave me a cupcake and jeez, it was disgusting!"

The rate, he says, is $125 a night or $650 a week-"Absolutely no hourly under any circumstances!" This price includes breakfast, use of a communal shower and a spin on one of the fat-wheeled bicycles parked out back with the rusty bathtub. On a recent evening, shirtless proprietor Peter Duffy sat on the porch with his guests, puffing his way through a pack of Newports. Locals say the best and only option for a shorter stay is The D Piper Inn, a 12-unit B&B less than a block from the beach. These tiny abodes allow you to experience beach-town life in your very own shingle-clad cubicle. A few more dollars buys an entire Rockaway bungalow. Clarke showed me a clean, solid, 400-square-foot studio for $129,000, and an airy junior one-bedroom with fancy moldings and ocean views for $185k. But since we're talking Rockaway prices, why not treat yourself to a new vacation home? Ms. Rockaway's architecture is an awkward jumble of Provincetown-meets-Bushwick, but the area's boardwalk apartment buildings are your standard-issue '60s-era co-ops, and it's easy to find a decent two-bedroom for less than $2,000 a month. (Among her best marketing lines: "I'm not going to lie to you, there's no good food here," and her dry observation that with a cellphone, "You can get your drugs and pizza delivered right to the beach.") Instead, check out the deals on Craigslist (room-shares run about $700 a month) or call an agent like West End Realty'sĪ retired photographer who left TriBeCa to sell listings in her hometown 'hood. Here one still finds friendship, laughter and even love.Ramsay de Give for the Wall Street Journalĭon't bother with the likes of Corcoran to scout properties at this last stop on the A train-it doesn't list in the Rockaways. The people in my images, many of whom I have come to know and feel great affection for, have revealed to me something about the perseverance of the human spirit amid isolation and decay. There is a deep sense of loneliness here. They inhabit a hazy twilight world of ramshackle bars, boarding houses, single room occupancies and frayed social services that teeter just beyond the last stop on the New York subway system’s A line. Marginalized and dysfunctional, many have severe disabilities, and are besieged by chronic illness and addiction. Unlike most accounts on the urban poverty of minorities, this is also a story about white poverty in NYC. My photographs reveal a society of the disregarded.

This famed Irishtown is the last remnant of hope for many elderly and low income families living in fear of homelessness. It is a place that many financially-strapped mental hospitals and nursing homes have for years used as a dumping ground for some of their indigent patients. While it is less than twenty miles from Manhattan, Rockaway Park is another country. During that time I have developed close personal ties within the community. I visit the Rockaway Park community, the site of my project, on a regularly basis and have been doing so for the past four years. On an isolated peninsula at the far edge of New York City there lives a close-knit community of impoverished social outcasts who, bearing the stigma of mental illness and the perception of moral turpitude, have found themselves exiled to a forgotten corner of Queens known as THE LAST STOP – ROCKAWAY PARK.
