Summer 2021 is shaping up to be a good one! Rockaway Bazaar, the new concession contract owners, have released their lineup of vendors for their first summer on the boardwalk, and some favorites, like Caracas and Rippers are set to return!

Late last week, Aaron Broudo and Belvy Klein, owners of Rockaway Bazaar announced their vendors for the summer with some good news. “Having been awarded the downtown Rockaway concession RFP through NYC Parks, Rockaway Bazaar is psyched to report that

It’s been a long road for construction work along Beach Channel Drive in Rockaway Park. The city says it’s coming to an end. The NYC Department of Design and Construction says the work is expected to be complete ahead of Memorial Day weekend, by May 23.

It’s hard to remember the last time Beach Channel Drive between Beach 116th and Beach 124th wasn’t being worked on. Contracts for the SANDHW11 project to repair the water mains, sewers and road in this area, started being sought in 2016. Work

Where would we be without them? Without Mom, we wouldn’t exist. It’s a shame Mother’s Day is one day because it should truly be every day.

In honor of Mom’s everywhere, we asked our readers to submit photos of the moms in their life and we received plenty! Thank you to all who contributed. You can find photos of mom here, on the cover, and on pages 36 and 37 this week.

 Happy Mother’s Day!

*****

Happy Mother’s Day!

*****

Pun alert: You want to stump your friends? Ask them to guess how many trees there are in the world. Even our resident factologist, Sean McVeigh, might find it amazing that the world has, get ready, 3.04 trillion. We sent out a team to double check this but we have not heard back so we’re just going with the Google.

*****

John Edwards, lord of the Rockapulco Running Series, says the weather looks great for this Saturday’s, Mother's Day race. And it’s not just

MAY 6

Kitty Kelly was born.

Coleen Mimnagh was born.

Linda Santoro was born.

1941 - Dictator Joseph Stalin became the premier of Russia.

1954 - British athlete Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes (3:59:4).

1994 - The Chunnel between England and France officially opened.

MAY 7

Megan Prendergast-Millard was born.

Rosemary Munro was born.

Doug Owens was born.

1915 - The British ocean liner Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine in World

Mayoral candidate Eric Adams got a double dose of Rockaway support on Friday, April 30, as State Senator Joe Addabbo Jr. and Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato met Adams at Beach 116th Street to offer their endorsements for him and his campaign. Addabbo and Adams were colleagues in the State Senate and Addabbo relayed how working with Adams showed he is a bridge builder and effective negotiator.

Although he is currently the Brooklyn Borough President, Adams was raised mostly in South Jamaica

*****

Happy Mother’s Day!

*****

Pun alert: You want to stump your friends? Ask them to guess how many trees there are in the world. Even our resident factologist, Sean McVeigh, might find it amazing that the world has, get ready, 3.04 trillion. We sent out a team to double check this but we have not heard back so we’re just going with the Google.

*****

John Edwards, lord of the Rockapulco Running Series, says the weather looks great for this Saturday’s, Mother's Day race. And it’s not just

*****

Want to put a nice pic of mom in the newspaper? Send your photo to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and we’ll do our best to put it in next week for Mother’s Day.

*****

Speaking of photos, the Top 30 have been selected in the annual Rockaway Times Photo Contest. It was especially challenging this year and choosing one great shot over another was not fun! Thanks to all who submitted: you make the contest great!

*****

A big thanks to all who did their part in the peninsula-wide cleanup. From one

*****

Mount Sinai South Nassau has a mobile unit, a bus that travels to sites throughout Nassau offering vaccine shots. We think St. John’s, with the help of our elected officials, should do the same. And we’re offering The Rockaway Times parking lot as a site (and we’re sure other places would love to join such an effort). We sent a tweet to all peninsula electeds and so far…nothing.

*****

Reminder: the peninsula-wide cleanup is this Saturday, April 24 from 10 a.m.-1 p.m.  You can join a

*****

Bummer. We saw a listing that the old Sand Bar property on Beach 116th and the Boardwalk was ready to be leased and we ready for a beachfront happy hour. But alas, the listing broker had the wrong photo and it's the vacant lot across from the new condos that can be leased on a temp or short-term basis.

*****

For the seventh year in a row, The Rockaway Times won multiple awards at the New York Press Association Better Newspaper Contest, a statewide competition among New York newspapers

*****

Almost last call. The Rockaway Times Photo Contest is accepting photos until next Friday, April 16. Please see Page 26 for details. We haven’t looked at any of the entries yet but we know Rockaway’s Got Talent and we can’t wait to see photos that best say: Rockaway!

*****

Full steam ahead on the vaccine front. On Tuesday of this week, people 16 years of age and older are now eligible to get the vaccine. It can be a challenge making a reservation online but refresh the page and keep on

*****

Happy Easter.

*****

As of April 6, any New Yorker over 16 years of age will be able to get the vaccine. This news followed the Biden directive that all states make the COVID-19 vaccine eligible to all residents by no later than May 1 of this year. According to some projections, almost the entire U.S. population will be fully vaccinated by late July.

*****

The Rockaway Times Photo Contest is open for a couple more weeks. You are allowed to submit up to four photos. You might have a

Dear Editor:

 As of today May 6, the day this letter is published, we have 22 full days until the start of the Memorial Day weekend and just 16 full working days. And Beach Channel Drive from Beach 116th Street to Beach 125th Street is a disaster. This road is the major east / west route through the Rockaways. Since it is down to one lane in each direction it has created a bottleneck, backing up traffic on it and other east west roads. It is also dangerous. Several times I have been driving

 Dear Editor:

I would like to thank the Rockaway Times for publishing three letters from two doctors and another well informed person to refute the previous weeks article. I, for one, could not express how biased and misleading Dr. Galvin’s opinion was but these contributions last week put it very well. We have enough misinformation out there to deal with. We are now entering a phase in the pandemic where we have to do what we can to encourage people to get vaccinated. We have already seen the

 Dr. Kitty Chen Dean and Dr. Richard Epro wrote objections to the perceived injection of politics into Dr. Galvin’s opinion piece. I would venture to say that they are either being too naïve or excessively modest about their own political leanings. Every doctor witnessing the profound changes in medicine over the past two decades has seen the overt and covert application of national politics to medical policy in everything from tort law reform (and the lack of it) to the insertion of a massive

Dear Editor:

 Dr. Galvin has written several columns where he has allowed religion and politics to determine his medical opinions and judgments. Such unscientific thought misleads his readers. While I have often found his columns informative, I will do further research before believing any of his directives.

 Dr. Kitty Chen Dean

I have appreciated Dr. Galvin's medical column in your paper. But when he expresses his views on topics with a political aspect, his usually clear insights seem to fail him. In his diatribe against Democratic party leaders and their early reluctance to endorse the Covid-19 vaccine, he forgets that at the time those statements were made, nobody knew much about the safety of any of the vaccines. I think he would agree that the safety of a drug is of paramount importance in the decision of whether

 Dear Editor:

I am writing about two letters in the 4/22 issue.

Dr. Peter Galvin's letter recounting the history of the covid vaccines. The only correct part of his letter appears at the end, urging people to get vaccinated. The rest of his history is pure nonsense. His statistics on the blood clot rate are completely wrong. If we assume that women make up 50% of those vaccinated, then there were eight cases among a population of four million (50% of 8 million doses). This is still a low

Mother’s Day has a long history. According of History.com, the Greeks and Romans had festivals honoring mothers and England had celebrations during Lent to honor mothers. The American holiday can be traced back to Anna Jarvis from West Virginia, who around the time of the Civil War, started “Mother’s Day Work Clubs,” which helped mothers learn skills to raise their children. Ms. Jarvis then changed the focus of the club to “Mother’s Friendship Day,” where mothers of former Confederate and Union

During the last year, many of us have realized that the news media is sensationalized. I think we always knew that it was, but the events of the last year have really brought it out. I remember as a young elementary school student learning about yellow journalism, and I feel that has truly taken hold in our mainstream news media. Not all news publications have great covers such as “Smells Like Summer” or “April Fools: No Joke Connolly’s to Reopen!”

I have taken to Twitter quite often to see

It is that time of year again where we will all be subjected to the crazy elf pictures when many of our social media friends try to outdo one another with their elaborate poses and shenanigans. Will this year be easier or harder? Tell the children that the elf is quarantined? Or does that make life harder, as now you had to order a mask, and supplies to quarantine the elf?

For those of you like me, who either have older children or no children at all, the Elf on the Shelf is a book that was

As I wrote in last week’s column, I love Thanksgiving. I love the food and the low pressure of no presents and just getting the house ready. My house is all autumnal and we will start the Christmas decorations this weekend. Here are a few things I am thankful for:

My friends: Again, when I speak to my friends at work, not many have friends they can trace back to elementary school. I am very lucky to have a group of both old and new friends who live all around me. From book clubs, to Christmas

The next holiday is Thanksgiving. Why is Thanksgiving so shunned in society? I remember in elementary school coloring wonderful pictures of cornucopias, and close dinner gatherings between the Native Americans and the Pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving. Is it because now the story is out and the origin is that we technically pillaged the Native Americans and caused their destruction?

Why doesn’t Thanksgiving get any recognition in the world of media? The only Thanksgiving tune that comes to

Over the past few years, I have noticed a decline in the delivery of the mail. However, when we were kids on Beach 117th Street, someone could probably address a postcard with just my first name and possibly an incorrect address and it would arrive at 212D Beach 117th Street because Marty the mailman would know it was for me.

Even the Broad Channel mailman understood the humor of his locals when Uncle Joe from California sent a Christmas card to my in-laws with the name addressed as “George