A wide ocean beach with a concrete boardwalk, and the subway a few blocks from the sand.
What Rockaway Beach looks like
The beach runs the whole south side of the neighborhood, a concrete boardwalk behind the sand. Hurricane Sandy destroyed most of the wooden boardwalk in 2012, and its concrete replacement was finished in 2017. The city's only real surf is here. One of the two legal surf zones is between Beach 87th and Beach 92nd Streets.
ran between Beach 97th and Beach 98th Streets from 1902 to 1987. Housing stands on that block. The station sign at Beach 98th Street still said Playland in 2003.
Two resort era buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places. The synagogue on Beach 84th Street, from the early 1920s, now houses a church. The , from 1931, has been out of civic use since 1962. Thirteen story apartment slabs from the late 1960s stand between and and still dominate the skyline.
The A and the Rockaway Park shuttle stop on elevated platforms at and Beach 98th Street. The sign at Beach 90th Street still says Holland. The lands in the middle of the neighborhood. It was the first direct road to the rest of Queens.
Shot in Rockaway Beach
Rockaways' Playland put the neighborhood on screen while the park stood. The Atom Smasher roller coaster appears in the 1952 film This Is Cinerama. The park itself turns up in Sophie's Choice, from 1982. It closed in 1987 and housing stands on its block now.
Freeheld, 2015
Played an Ocean County auto garage and house, Ocean County, New Jersey, mid-2000s
Freeheld shot around Beach 102nd Street, Rockaway Beach Boulevard and Beach Channel Drive in October 2014. The feature film has Julianne Moore as the New Jersey detective Laurel Hester. The crew turned an auto garage into a set with lights out of a dozen trucks and kept going after dark in the rain. They also filmed the front of a house on Beach 102nd Street, down the drive between it and the neighbor's. The film is set in Ocean County, New Jersey. The location scout told the homeowner they had picked Rockaway because of Sandy and wanted to bring work to the neighborhood.
Long Beach, on its own barrier island in Nassau County, rebuilt its 2.2 mile boardwalk in concrete and Brazilian hardwood after Superstorm Sandy wrecked it in 2012. It reopened in October 2013 at a cost of about 40 million dollars, the same storm and the same kind of concrete rebuild Rockaway Beach went through. New oceanfront towers there, among them the Superblock development with 200 condominiums and 238 rental apartments, stand over the beach the way the thirteen storey co-ops do on Rockaway Beach Boulevard. Long Beach's newer towers are glassier and taller than Rockaway's 1960s brick co-ops, so keep a wide establishing shot to a distance where the material difference does not read. Try searching boardwalk oceanfront towers now.
The Wrestler, City by the Sea and Baby, It's You have all filmed on Asbury Park's boardwalk and in its resort era buildings. Deliver Me From Nowhere rebuilt the Carousel House's original merry-go-round for a scene there in 2025. Convention Hall and the Paramount Theatre, both resort era buildings from the boardwalk's early twentieth century years, still stand. Rockaway Beach's own resort era survivors, the Temple of Israel and the Rockaway Courthouse, do the same. Asbury Park has no towers along its boardwalk, so any frame that includes Rockaway's thirteen storey co-ops in the background will give it away. Try searching boardwalk resort era buildings now.
Coney Island has doubled for beach towns and for itself across dozens of productions, The Warriors and The Wiz among them. Anora shot boardwalk scenes there in 2024. Trump Village and other cooperative towers went up along its boardwalk in the 1960s, the same postwar tower housing that lines Rockaway Beach Boulevard. Coney Island's rides and the elevated Stillwell Avenue terminal are unmistakable in a wide shot, so work in close on the boardwalk decking and the towers behind it rather than the skyline. Try searching boardwalk cooperative towers now.
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