dead horse bay.

i'd heard about dead horse bay only in casual conversation previously but never gave it much thought until last week when seeing it on yossy's blog.  it sparked a massive research effort on my part and immediately following, it was decided that a trip to dead horse bay was in very short order.  consequently, chris and i got up extra early last sunday and rented our first zipcar and drove down to the southern tip of brooklyn on a particularly foggy morning, a pretty apt atmosphere given where we were heading.

not a misnomer, dead horse bay is fairly named for the horse rendering plants that used to exist there in the 19th and 20th century.  old bottles cover "bottle beach", mostly broken and some intact, and you can literally outline history underneath your feet.  it's a beautiful place, but in a completely unexpected way.  with every incoming wave the broken bits of bottle would clink together and chime like an ocean windchime, and with every step more bits of bottle would crunch underneath your feet.  and while the saying might be trite (though true), at no time at all did i feel like i was in new york.  it was truly exhilarating.

our treasure hunting was a success - we came home with an entire collection of tiny and miniature bottles in the two short hours we were there.  it's crazy to me, as much as the rest of new york has had its history torn down to be rewritten by a new one, there's a place like dead horse bay that still exists almost frozen in time.

the entire collection we came home with, save two bottles that broke on the trip home.  also, excuse the eyedropper - that one's for my paints, don't know how that got in there.