On Saturday Jason, Aoife, Janice, Emily and I motored out to Rockaway Beach for some grub at David Selig's new solar-powered taco shack, one block off the sand at Beach 96 Street.
First things first:
The food is simple and superb. They make their own chips, the guacamole is chunky and delicious, and the tacos themselves are exactly what you want in a taco by the beach—very few ingredients, combined beautifully and cooked to perfection.We had the fish and the chorizo:
I'm willing to firmly state that Rockaway Taco is the new Red Hook ball fields, which are now completely blown (all the ladies cooking on card tables are gone and it's just trucks now; tastes great but there are lines and lines of hipsters waiting for authentic Brooklyn experience in taco form). As Emily mentioned, this won't be an issue for us soon, because there's tons of good Mexican food around the Northwest—but in New York it's hard to come by.
Rockaway is really far away but definitely worth the trip. A good taco can make your whole weekend.
We ate ours at the beach, maxing and relaxing in the beautiful sunny breeze.
Defying all convention, Jason refused to wait one hour before taking a dip.
Bells Beach is named for Stephen "Bells" Belson, a lifeguard here for many years. He was also a firefighter (Ladder 24) and died in 9/11. Each summer the FDNY has a Steve Belson memorial swim at Bells Beach.
Airplanes from JFK are constantly overhead in the Rockaways.
And it ain't Coney Island, but there's a steady stream of characters on the boardwalk. The people watching is pretty great.
There's also a skatepark, full of little dudes shredding it up by the beach.
When the clock struck 4 everyone was thirsty, so we headed out. On the way back we noted a few outdoor bars and the Jacob Riis Gateway National Recreation Area, which we'll try to get back to before we head west next month. (The "before we go" list only seems to be growing at this point. More about that later.)
We ended up at Commonwealth in Park Slope.
A Columbian church was having a parade down 5th Avenue for some saints or something when we got there.
Later on we had some dinner at Blue Ribbon, and called it a night.
Tacos, the great outdoors, the company of some good buddies, and a tequila-marinated steak for dinner. As the great warrior poet Ice Cube once said, It was a good day.