Beach 116th Street Documentary Premieres

Located on the seaside outskirts of New York City, Beach 116 is a key commercial street on the Rockaway peninsula, perched between the Atlantic Ocean and Jamaica Bay. / © 2023 Lucky Find Productions

This story was published by The Wave a weekly newspaper in Queens, New York.

“Beach 116, Stories From A Rockaway Street,” a new film about the two-block-long business strip all locals and most visitors know, premiered at the 6th Annual Rockaway Film Festival’s Local Filmmakers Showcase at Fort Tilden last weekend. Presented by Lucky Find Productions in association with Passing Planes Productions, the 45-minute documentary centers Beach 116th Street as the main character with local business owners and neighbors providing commentary on their experiences and memories of the block and its history.

“It was an interesting idea for us to think about how a street tells its story,” said Lee Quinby, the film’s producer, director and writer. “The voices come from the people in the street but the sounds are on the street and the buildings tell their story and so finally, It just came together.”

In addition to Quinby, an awardwinning filmmaker who has resided in Rockaway since 2005, the other creators behind the film include producer Daniel Scarpati, as well as writer and editor Jules David Bartkowski. Among the business owners and employees that appear in the film are Denise Diehm of The Gift is Love; Claudette Flatow of Cuisine By Claudette; Michael McMahon and Renee McKeown of Rogers Pub; Tom Murphy of Curran’s Superior Meats; Sam and Mike Omairat of Pickles & Pies; Kyle Corbett of JAG Physical Therapy; Katherine Varno of The Rose Den; and Rob Pisani, Al Pisani and Joe Gagliardotto of Bagel & Barista Station.

Other familiar faces in the film include New York State Senator Joseph P. Addabbo Jr., John Joe Baxter of Baxter’s Hotel, CUNY Brooklyn College Professor and local Tammy Lewis, Sal Lopizzo of the Veteran-In-Command food pantry, local historian James Supple and The Wave’s John Schilling.

“You’re looking at individual stories on a sort of smaller scale and then you’re widening them up into looking at a larger view of Rockaway,” said Courtney Muller, the executive director and co-founder of the Rockaway Film Festival. “You’re looking at just a street, but then you’re looking at it within the context of all these very different people living in different areas.” In navigating each speaker’s perspective of Beach 116th Street, the film uses time as a structure with visual montages of the block during the summer, fall, winter, spring and back to summer, as well as from morning to night and daytime again. This includes footage of the beach crowds, large amounts of snow in the street and the Rockaway St. Patrick’s Day Parade, among other things.

With perspectives both historical and personal, the film highlights positive memories of Beach 116th Street through the origin stories of individual businesses, including actual footage of the Bagel & Barista ribbon cutting ceremony when the store first opened on the block on Oct. 2, 2021.

The economics of it all, the jobs that it offers…beachgoers see 116th as they get off the A-train,” New York State Senator Joe Addabbo

says in the film. “Beach 116th is really critical to the peninsula.” While acknowledging the positives of Beach 116th Street, the film also dives deeper into the block’s flaws, including its increased homeless population, panhandling, challenges posed by the nearby single room occupancies, gentrification, flooding and the lasting effects of major events like Hurricane Sandy and COVID-19.

In the film, Prof. Tammy Lewis also reflects on Beach 116th Street as representative of the Rockaway’s economic disparities and income inequality, as it brings people together from both the eastern and western sides of the peninsula. “If you look at Beach 116th Street, it kind of bridges the gap between these two communities because it’s a commercial center,” Lewis says in the film. “You have people mixing in this area so it’s a very kind of unique and interesting spot to begin with.”

Even with addressing the block’s negative aspects, the film still maintains an optimistic outlook for the future of Beach 116th

Street, something that interviewee Sal Lopizzo appreciated after watching it for the first time. “You really didn’t try to sugarcoat it, and you really gave us a good idea of who we are: the good, the bad, and the ugly,” Lopizzo told Quinby. “That’s what 116th is,” he

added. “You left us with hope, and that’s very important for our community.”

“Beach 116, Stories From A Rockaway Street” is set to premiere in Florida next week at the CMX Plaza Cinema Café for the Orlando Film Festival from Oct. 26 to Nov. 2, as well as at Burns Court for the Sarasota Film Society on Nov. 4, 11 and 12. Future New York screenings for the film are to be determined, pending admission to upcoming film festivals.