Where the Sidewalk Ends.(Brief Article)

Breezy Point is a place where you can pull off a neat, necessary trick of urban living: escaping the city while remaining within the city limits. A slender peninsula of dune grass and stunted trees that separates Jamaica Bay from the Atlantic Ocean, Breezy (as it's nicknamed) is one of the few spots in New York City with beaches that would look right on a postcard. There are pieces of driftwood, clamshells, and dried-out seaweed. Seagulls and terns stand around in groups. The dunes are high, the water is green-blue, and there's a rock jetty at the tip, complete with a marine light tower.

Technically, you're still in Queens. The striped bass, fluke, and weakfish that feed along the shores probably don't know the difference, nor do the horseshoe crabs that mate in the shallows. The city asserts itself at night, when the lights of Coney Island appear just across the water, along with the skyline of Manhattan.

Like most things in New York, getting to Breezy Point is all about access. The so-called "fisherman's lot" holds about twenty cars and requires a parking permit. To purchase one, take Exit 11 off the Belt Parkway, cross the Marine Park Bridge, hang a right, and then pull into Fort Tilden on the left. (If you are on a bike, you can hop the A train to Rockaway Park/Beach 116th Street and start pedalling.) The fort has been defending the harbor since the First World War. Now, with its plant-covered lookouts and abandoned missile silos, it's more of a Cold War relic.

Inside the small, peaceful ranger station there are carefully labelled cases of dead specimens and a tank with a very alive thirteen-year-old snapping ...