Tag Archives: photography

Picture Postcard Thursday- Staten Island Boat Graveyard

17 Mar

March 17, 2011- midday

You may have heard of this. On Staten Island there is a place where old boats go to die. The inlet is littered with rusty wrecks so thick that at some places you can walk on them.

Google it for more info. It isn’t too easy to get to. On this particular day a friend and I decided to see some S.I. urban decay and of course, as is becoming usual with these stories, we picked the worst possible day. A storm hit that was so severe that parts of Staten Island lost power. Other parts were flooded. During the worst of the storm we were walking around- OK, trespassing in an abandoned insane asylum. I did not make that up. (And for some reason I actually miss her.)

To take the first of these pics we walked into a gravel company yard and after asking for permission, and being told in no uncertain terms to get the Hell out of there, we took a few pictures anyway. Not smart. There were some angry (and wet, it was raining) and very burly men heading our way so I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and valiantly got out of Dodge. The others were taken from an overgrown lot next door.

We never did find the entrance to the graveyard but we made up for it in sheer wet. I was drenched by the end of the day.

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Picture Postcard Wednesday- Decaying Atlantic City Pier

16 Mar

March 16, 2011- midday

If you walk to the end of the Atlantic City Pier, past the casinos and the Steel Pier, you find the rotting remains of this pier, overgrown with weeds and lurching out into the surf like an accusing, boney finger. I took this in 2009, on a day when an Atlantic hurricane was churning the waves.

Despite the waves I walked below the pier on the dry sand below. It was still not high tide (I can only imagine the surf then)  and there was enough dry sand to keep my feet from getting wet. As I walked underneath the experience of the surf crashing in and causing great echoes all around was very surreal.

I walked out on the pier as far as I could. There was a visitor center at the head of the pier. It was closed and the gates were shut but not locked so I slipped in and walked out until I found a fountain, pictured below. Beyond the fountain were some ancient rusted gates that were securely locked. That was as far as I could go. When I walked back I found that the gates I entered through were now chained, but the chain was loose enough to let me slip out.

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