1973 Plum Beach Photo: Even Then, Garbage In Abundance


by on Jul 5th, 2012

Source: DailyDOCUMERICA

This photo is from DailyDOCUMENTERICA, a Tumblr that aggregates vintage 70′s photos from the Environmental Protection Agency. It was taken May of 1973 by Arthur Tress.

I think this car may still be there.

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  • Andy

    There was a lot of garbage all over NYC in the 70s. The beach was no exception. Too bad Arthur’s photo is badly faded. I’ve seen a lot of good shots of his from this era. I took the liberty of bringing this one into Photoshop for the purpose of color correction. It’s on my web server:
    http://www.andy-baum.com/plum.jpg

    • nolastname

      Wow, that’s great color correction. 
      Not too bad a garbage problem at all. I guess DEP was proud the cars were removed.
      If that’s the angle I think it is, Holy crap that’s a lot of erosion. 
      It almost looks like one of the northern shores on an inlet.
      Those were the days when a person could walk quite a bit and then swim to Rockaway. I don’t know of anyone that tried it in reverse.

  • http://kibblesbits.wordpress.com/ Ann

    Looks like they ran it through instagram, esp. with the color correction job done above.

  • Kool4Coney

    I seem to remember going to PLUM BEACH with camp, as a kid… what I remember is wading in the water and having lunch at picnic tables…   am I nuts or am I remembering an actual event?   my day camp days were well before this photo was taken.  I think there was a food concession there at the time also

    • nolastname

      You are not nuts. I was there also……ooops maybe we are both nuts.

  • Barkingspider07

    Plum Beach was always a dump – my mother used to take my sister, brother and I there when we were kids, and I remember that far back (early 60′s) rats running amongst the rocks, garbage, mostly litter from the slobs who would eat on the beach and throw their trash on the sand instead of taking it home to throw away, bottles, etc.  I hated going to the beach and still do. 

    • http://www.brucebrodinsky.com Bruce B

      I took Marine biology in Dewey,70-71. Silverstein took us out there. Lord knows what kind of mutation we were supposed to find out there!

  • jpzenger

    When no one wants to admit that they own it, what do you expect? The car is not still there, I am a Plumb Beach regular. 

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