Calvert Vaux Park

For more free things to do in Brooklyn, click on the menu on "Brooklyn" for a big list of great stuff like this.

Taking the F train at 4:30 AM is a specific kind of New York experience. You’re in a car filled with people heading to work on the weekend, and it feels like you're part of this quiet, secret world before the rest of the city wakes up. I took that long haul down to deep Brooklyn to see Calvert Vaux Park during low tide.

I decided to try the beach walk to get close to the "Yellow Submarine" of Coney Island Creek, but it was a mistake. The shoreline there is incredibly dangerous and unstable. It’s not really a beach so much as a graveyard of sharp rocks, old unstable broken wood piers, and slick mud that feels like it’s going to swallow your shoes. I was constantly worried about slipping on the rocks or getting stuck in the muck while trying to reach the submarine.

I finally managed to scramble back up to the actual paved pathways. Once I was on solid ground, the whole trip felt a lot better. The park across the water, Coney Island Creek Park shore, was actually active for that time of morning. I saw a bunch of people fishing along the water.

The views from all over the park are honestly astounding. You get these massive, open looks at the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge and the harbor that you just don't see from anywhere else. Even though that beach scramble was sketchy, seeing everything from the safety of the path made the trip one of my favorites. Just don't try to be an explorer in the mud like I did.

Red Hook Day Trip

Frankly one of my favorite trips.

I took the NYC Ferry there, it’s $4.50 now for a ride. The ride looks great, but the actual walk from the Red Hook ferry landing over to the trolley site was beautiful. Just lots of industrial character and quiet streets.

Saw a bunch of antique cars just parked on the street on the way to the Red Hook Trolley. 

The trolley was super cool, and I was the only one there of course since I travel early mornings. I found out about this trolley from Miles in Transit.

Back in the 90s, a guy named Bob Diamond wanted to bring a light rail system to Red Hook to fix how isolated the neighborhood is from the rest of the city. He brought in these vintage 1950s PCC streetcars from Boston, thinking they’d eventually be the start of a whole new transit loop. That didn't happen, of course.

For fun on the way back, I took the free IKEA ferry back to Manhattan. Highly recommend doing it this way if you're there on a weekend. One of the best low-cost days out in the city.

If you're looking for more ideas how to spend no money and enjoy Brooklyn NYC, check out my page. https://www.nyccheapskate.com/p/brooklyn.html

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What this is all about...

Years ago we were trying to find the cheapest things to do living in NYC and so I came up with an idea to create a hashtagged list of things on Workflowy. Any weekday or weekend, depending on the weather or our mood, we could find something cheap to do.

Anyway, the list grew and years later when I remembered that I had it, I decided maybe I should make a website, so here we are.

I have not been to all of these places. This is just a list. There is no guarantee of quality for any of this stuff, it's just things I found while researching and writing it all down for my own later perusal. In other words, proceed with caution.

There are highly subjective reasons for listing things. I'm trying to keep the list relatively cheap but that could mean many different things.