Where a Beach Town Once Was: Phragmites, a Lonesome Pier, and Entering the Managed Retreat Era
Staten Island, New York
January 20, 2020
“So, can you tell us what the story is here?” Sonja asks.
I’ve been thinking about how to introduce this quest. It’s Monday, Martin Luther King Day. Since Friday, among other New Yorky outings we’ve toured Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Central Park, and the New Museum. Today is different. We’re cruising the backwaters of New York City’s least sexy borough, angling toward the southeastern shore. Still, this part of the trip is highest on my priority list: I want to see for myself what Elizabeth Rush saw in the reporting for her 2019 Pulitzer Prize–nominated book Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore.
“This is where the future has already happened,” I say, slowing the car down to look at the stretch of bare lawn between Tarlton Street and Fox Beach Avenue. We’re in Oakwood Beach. Or what’s left of it. “This is one of the first places in America that people have left the coast to move to higher ground.”