When we last reported on Rockaway Beach—a well-established “Hipster Hamptons” of sorts for the last few years—we saw the writing on the wall:
There was The Taco Stand.
Soon, The Hoteliers.
Eventually, the Page Six Sightings.
Now, those for whom this was once a special, low-profile place—one unmolested by the terrors of popularity with moneyed Manhattanites—ruination is upon them and their beach. Because if a New York Times trendspotting fashion piece in the Thursday Styles isn’t a sign of The End, one would shudder to think what is.
It is a pleasure, then, to note that — along a length of the Rockaway Boardwalk, particularly that stretch east of the Rockaway Taco stand near Beach 96th Street informally known as Bushwick on the Beach — New Yorkers show signs that a trip to the shore is at once an occasion for getting semi-naked in public and for preening one’s fashion sense. Take the group of women riding out to the beach on the A train, a subway caravan right out of Lena Dunham’s “Girls.”
Of note:
1. We don’t know who informally calls it “Bushwick on the Beach,” or where it’s informally known as such (as a Google search turned up nothing for the term), but kudos to the Times for excavating lexicon previously unwritten for the rest of humanity to (informally) utilize prior to this.
2. And thus, the trope of referring to Girls to characterize any group of young women traveling in a pack of four to anywhere other young, mostly Caucasian people travel in New York City was less crystallized than it was calloused.
Also of note:
And it is only here that a sunny beauty like Sabine McCalla, the woman behind the guacamole takeout counter at Rockaway Taco, shows up for work in a T-shirt celebrating Hurray for the Riff Raff, whose lead singer, Alynda Lee Segarra, is to a certain group of Brooklyn women what Sarah Jessica Parker is to readers of Vogue.
1. Fact-check: Is it only at Rockaway Beach that beautiful young women show up to work wearing T-Shirts celebrating a band?
2. And furthermore, is the lead singer of a New Orleans band with a very niche following—or “certain group of Brooklyn women”—that most people haven’t heard of legitimately comparable to Sarah Jessica Parker for these women (an assertion that makes the music writers who practically discovered them scoff)?
3. Is this week’s Thursday Styles dedicated to simply trolling anyone at a computer with a palm to apply to their face and a link to give them in exchange for the distinct pleasure of being prompted to do so?
You be the judge, unless you have been in Rockaway Beach for a while, in which case, we suggest you either batten down the hatches, or take refuge somewhere still too remote for the Times‘ intrepid Styles Section. That place was once Fort Tilden, but it, too, shall be ruined in good time.
We live in an era in which Three Mile Island may now seem the most viable option.
Boardwalk? Try Catwalk [NYT/Styles]
fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek
