I went for a walk on the Cliffwood Beach seawall this evening. Aberdeen Township has added a silver double rail along the entire length of the new walkway. It looks great.
There is no official entry point from the Lakeshore Drive end of the walk, but you can access the seawall by walking down a utility road off Greenwood Avenue about fifty feet from the intersection with Lakeshore Drive. Just walk towards the shore and veer slightly to the right and you'll find the seawall walk. People often park along Greenwood there to go fishing.
The other end of the seawall walkway ends at Beach Drive. If you drive down South Concourse and make a left at Beach Drive, you will find a small parking lot where you can leave your vehicle and take a stroll on the seawall. From there you will have a wonderful view of Keyport, Union Beach, Raritan Bay, Staten Island, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, and Brooklyn.
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| "Sorry bout yo walkway. SLEEZ" |
Someone, presumably a local teenager, has begun to spray paint the seawall walk near the entrance to Woodland Drive. That's the same spot where I have seen markings on the pavement and signs of beer drinking, including broken bottles. So far, two of the sidewalk sections have been scrawled with black paint, but there are plenty more vulnerable to this abuse. Hopefully the police and school officials can sort out who is doing this and/or make an effort to change young people's attitudes about public property. I'd be glad to fund a $50 reward for tips that lead to the capture and punishment of our local graffiti artist(s) if the police are interested in administrating such an effort. The beach is a wonderful feature of our community and it is everyone's duty to protect and preserve it.
UPDATE: There was more painting done since last night, all near the Woodland Drive entrance to the seawall. I took some shots of what I saw yesterday and added it above. And I took some pics of the new graffiti and have added it below. The
Gangsorus might be a good place to start in determining if we have a bigger problem than just paint.
UPDATE: Aberdeen Police took the issue seriously. They mounted cameras near the site and the Township removed the graffiti from the walkway. Kudos to all who responded.
I took some pictures of the graffiti on the seawall. There was more painted sidewalk today, less than 24 hours since I was there. I've updated the blog article to include photographs.
ReplyDeleteYikes! That must have been some high tide. The beach is on the road again. There's an earth mover over there now. The configuration of the beach looks different to me too. Am I crazy or should all our efforts be going into dune restoration, instead of flattening out the beach after every storm?
ReplyDeleteThe beach looks devastated. One of the workers expects the next tide to do as much damage. Maybe dune restoration is a matter of high priority!
ReplyDeleteIf you're talking about the tidal margin you can see in the photographs I posted, it was low tide. That area is usually covered with water and has no beach or dune. The beach was hit hard during a storm last year, when indeed much of the dune blew and washed away, but that area is not in these photographs. Dune restoration would be nice. I'm quite disoriented when I go down to the shore lately because I can see Brooklyn across the Raritan Bay from 100 yards away from the beach.
ReplyDeleteNo, I'm sorry, I was not clear. I'm talking about the actual beach right now in real time. The latest storm took the beach right over the road again, wiped out more of the dune. The workers used an earth mover to move stuff around, they hosed off the road afterwards but if you go down there, you can see we lost more dune. I shudder to imagine a hurricane.
ReplyDeleteThe graffiti is a shame. What a beautiful addition to our community. Typical that someone is so self absorbed they feel that it was their own personal canvas. And for what? Slobs. Just returned from a dog walk and am disgusted.
ReplyDeleteIt would be nice if artists painted down there, gave the wall some colour, but thuggish immature graffitti is just an eye sore... i would like a nice mural
ReplyDeleteThe graffiti is gone from the seawall walkway !!!!!!
ReplyDeleteAwesome the graffiti is removed. It is a ashame some low class resident or visitor to the area would be responsible for this.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see the police have mounted a camera to catch the criminal. CB is a nice place to live.
I think the police did a fine job in dealing with this. I agree that Cliffwood Beach is a nice place to live.
ReplyDelete