WELCOME TO SHEEPSHEAD BAY!

My Brooklyn map-building continues to crawl forward, slowly.  The latest three runs put Sheepshead Bay on the map, so to speak.

To round out the coastal towns, next I will have to do Brighton Beach, which is immediately to the east of Coney Island, and Manhattan Beach, right below Sheepshead.   Both are tiny towns compared to Sheepshead Bay, with insufficient room to spell out the whole words.  I'll have to compromise somehow.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: BYE BYE BAY ACADEMY

Today is the last day of school for my son at the Bay Academy, a Middle School, which covers grades six through eight.  When I was in grades six through eight, the school type was Junior High School.  I first learned about the term "Middle School" when I read some Junie B Jones books while volunteering for Everybody Wins!  Power Lunch.  It seems like yesterday that Son started Middle School, but it's been three years.  I am sure Son has many memories of his own of the Bay Academy experience, but here are some my aging brain can recall.

Starting with Middle School, my son for the first time had to take school bus to get to school.  Before that, I mostly walked him to school and dropped him off at the school door.  Near the beginning, through some bad calculation, he was directed to go to a bus stop further away.  It was the first stop of the bus route.  Luckily, I found out the same week and found the second stop, mere blocks from our home.  The bus was mostly reliable but a few times it never showed up, or came really late.  I had to rush home and come back with the minivan and fill up the car with whichever kids wanted to come along.

The bus route used to be serpentine, turning here and there to pick up kids in different areas.  Once or twice I "raced" the bus and won.  It was an unfair race since I took the most direct route whereas the bus had to go all over to all the dispersed stops.  In later years, the school had enough funding for more buses and my son's bus went straight to school from his stop, so no more racing.

I really wanted my son to know the subway system better and embrace it.  I love public transportation, warts and all.  The perfect chance came along when there was a strike of school bus drivers.  In the beginning, I rode the subway with son then ran back home.  Next step was to ride in a different subway car from his.  Lastly, he rode by himself altogether and just called home after he got to school.  He still hated the subway, for all the waiting and standing etc but at least he knew how to get to school and back.

With the school not within walking distance, I only attended a few PTA meetings and such.  I don't remember what the occasion but one time I parked on the street parallel to Emmons Avenue by the Belt Parkway and got a freaking ticket!  Emmons Avenue is the commercial strip in the area so the next street over had parking meters that stay in effect until 10 PM or whatever.  What a robbery!

Maybe thanks to my period of unemployment, I was able to help chaperone two trips, first one to the Discovery Center in Times Square for the Bodies exhibit and one more recently to the New York Stock Exchange.  I also helped the PTA with its monthly bake sale.  The kids bought snacks as if there was no tomorrow!

I do run to the area of Bay Academy every now and then.  The foot-bridge over Sheepshead Bay is one of my favorites.  I probably continue to visit the area every now and then and let my son know about any changes.

SCENES FROM A RUN: SHEEPSHEAD BAY

Some thirty-three years ago when I first arrived in the U.S., I stayed at an uncle's home in the Brighton Beach area.  It was one subway stop away from the Sheepshead Bay station of whatever train it was at the time, maybe the D.  I was in the area for a very short time as my family soon got our own apartment in the Kingsbridge area of the Bronx.  Somehow the Chinese transliteration of Sheepshead Bay, "羊头湾", which to me really means "Goat's Head Bay", got stuck in my head.  It annoys me much that the Chinese has the same character for goat, the animal with pointy horns and a goatee (duh!), raised mostly for milk, and sheep, the animal with raised mostly for wool, but I digress.

After the Bronx, I moved around a few times but only with the most recent move that I was close to Sheepshead Bay, namely, Bath Beach, which is not to be confused with Bensonhurst.  Still, I did not visit Sheepshead Bay area that often, if at all.  Only last year when my son started to attend school at Bay Academy, right off the Bay itself, that I realized that there was an actual body of water called Sheepshead Bay.  I guess I am too aware of land-fill and such, so that place names sometimes make no sense.  Like how Bath Beach used to have a beach -- it is where the Belt Parkway now exists.  Not so with Sheepshead Bay.  There is still a bay there.  And a lovely foot-bridge traversing it, too.

I recently came across an article at Sheepshead Bites, http://www.sheepsheadbites.com/2012/11/in-aftermath-of-sandy-footbridge-gets-much-needed-repairs, and was saddened to see photos of the damage Hurricane Sandy did to the foot-bridge.  I haven't been to the area since the hurricane's visit and made the trip this morning.  I don't know if any repairs have been made but the bridge was still closed.  There were at least two large gaps in the railing.  I was short on time so I only took photos from the Bay Academy side and not from the Manhattan Beach side.

There is a large gap on the western rail.

The bridge is not open to the public.  Orange cones and yellow tape block off the ramp and there is a wooden wall, with a door for officials to go through.

A view of the foot-bridge from the eastern side, more missing railing.  I may be wrong, but I think those horizontal beams close to the water was added after the hurricane.

It's interesting that I just read a blog post by TOTA about feral burros in Oatman, Arizona hanging around tourist hotspots to beg for food.  We don't have such exotic animals in Brooklyn, but these swans did the same thing.  As I approached the fence at the waterfront, they swam over half expecting some food.  I was so jealous of them fowls, just gracefully gliding over the cold water without a care in the world, or at least it appeared so.

This photo has little to do with the bay itself, other than name of the subway station, but it has much to do with a goal which, as a slow long-distance runner, I most likely will never achieve.