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Dreier Offerman/Calvert Vaux park is, like many NYC parks, essentially landfill that has been grassed over and turned into recreation space. I first visited the location in the company of Larry Major, the regional Park & Recreation Manager who oversees not only this park, but the entire Coney Island Beach property as well. Larry and I walked out to the edge of the park so that I could show him where I was proposing to place the beacons. Along the way we passed well used baseball and soccer fields and a piece of pavement well used by model helicopter fans. Through the grassy area we passed some pretty big sink holes, in which you could see the strata of layers of waste. A lot of the South Brooklyn shorefront is made up of the construction waste from the building of the Belt Parkway (which so effectively cuts off area residents from the recreation space), but there is plenty of other trash in there as well. There was clearly visible piping and other metal objects as well as what looked like home construction waste - bricks and concrete. (Building construction waste is the largest waste producer in NYC).

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From this park you can see the Verrazano Narrows - one of the proposed locations for floodgates to protect the NYC bay. It would effectively protect Manhattan, Queens, The Bronx, and a large portion of Brooklyn and Staten Island. But not southern Brooklyn, and not this area. In the perfect storm scenario, this area would be hit hard. The nearby waterway has already been drastically altered by sediment deposits which have practically shut down the waterway. And this occurred over the last decade and is a direct result of the barriers installed along Coney Island by the Army Corps of Engineers. This was related to me by Larry Major, the regional park manager who has literally watched the sand fill up and change the land mass that is the northern end of Coney Island.

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There were a few people walking through the park from the surrounding neighborhood, including an interesting and politically informed native New Yorker with strong opinions about our local government. Most of the people that we saw were headed down to the waterfront to do some fishing. Families, individuals living off the land as best they can. They were all friendly and knowledgeable about the waterways and what they had to offer. If only we all shared that connection.
I filled the beacons with water straight from the beach - thats why a couple of the beacons contain some sea life.

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This day was *really* hot. I computed that I walked 14 miles just to lay down two miles of chalk. With all the back and forth to refill. Whew.
No matter how many times I walked back and forth though, I was constantly and consistently appalled at the separation of residence and recreation space created by the Belt Parkway. There were a number of users out on the gorgeous Shore Park, but how many more would there be if they didn't have to go so far out of their way just to get to this slice of green waterfront.

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Decided to draw through the grass - because I could :)

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They might have been connected before the Belt Parkway came through on the North. And they might have been connected before the Home Depot was built on the South. Now they are an amputated neighborhood of about a dozen little houses.

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One of many locations where the HWL chalkline encountered a unique and individual statement in the form of home ownership and decoration.

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I definitely visited some interesting areas that I would never have otherwise visited in drawing this line. This little dead end street where they repair school buses is one.

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This neighborhood of high rises was strangely quiet. Sure I was there on a Friday, but save for a few older people sitting out on lawn chairs (which seemed anachronistic given the proximity to the Belt Parkway*) it was just me and the cars - with their impersonal activities, or non activities.
*Anachronistic for both the proximity of the freeway and the strange sense of not being able to get to the waterfront which is relatively nearby.

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For being a public space, there are limited ways to access it.

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Hopping back and forth across Leif Ericson to draw this line was quite a challenge. The motorists in their steel tonnage, were undeterred by the presence of either me, or the heavy hitter. In their quest to get from one point to another they were not anxious to stop and see the sights, smell the roses or pay too much attention to a quickly obliterated blue chalk line that ran back and forth across the road.