“I’m Jared Lachner. I grew up in Rockaway Beach. I’ve been living here my whole life, born and raised…I went to New Paltz, so I stayed in New York for another four years. Graduated from there, and then I came back home, and I’ve been here ever since…I got my own place now right here on 125th, and that’s chill, right on the water.” I met Jared on the boardwalk one recent afternoon.
“I work for a production company…I do like books, HR, all the invoicing, payroll–all the works…I’ve been there for eight years. I do not love it, but you know, it pays the bills,” Lachner said. A handful of similar jobs led him here, but his heart has never been in it. “I do not like accounting. It’s so boring,” were his exact words.
Ideally, Lachner “would just be drawing on stuff. I guess designing stuff.” Jared himself was a walking exhibit. Small, hand-drawn, intricate, geometric designs, carefully colored in with bright colors, covered his baseball cap, t-shirt, and sneakers. He got into art as a kid, after a tragic event that many locals remember.
“So the flight that crashed on 131st. I live–I grew up on 131st. I was literally at the red light on 116th facing the bay, like when the diner used to be there on the left. My mom was going to the gym that was in the parking lot where the urgent care is now…And we saw the…I don’t remember which [airline], but like the tail of that plane falling into the water, which was nuts. And like, I was like a little kid. My brother was a little kid, and we were like, freaking–well, he didn’t know what was going on–but I was like freaking out, my mom’s freaking out. And then we looked to the left, and there was like a mushroom cloud…People were running out of the diner, dude, it was crazy. So, it started out, and there’s like shimmery pixels falling out of the sky. It looked like the matrix was breaking…it was just like shimmery–like parts of the plane…and then you see the tail just like floating down, it was like, what the f***.
“And then…my mom just started like driving towards it…it was towards the direction of our house. So, I guess that’s why my dad was working over there at the time. So, she’s just like heading towards that way, and she’s freaking out the whole time, like, naturally. And then, we’re getting closer and closer to our house, and it’s like holy sh*t this actually happened on our block.” For readers who may be unfamiliar, on November 12, 2001, American Airlines Flight 587, bound for Santo Domingo, crashed here shortly after taking off from JFK, killing all 251 passengers, nine crew members, and five people on the ground.
Following the crash, young Jared struggled. Art helped. “I was like a shook little kid. I was like freaking out, and I couldn’t sit still in school, and I kept diving under my desk when I would hear sirens and stuff. So, my guidance counselor recommended me to go to like art therapy, and then that’s like literally–I’ve been doing it ever since…Yeah so, so if it wasn’t for that, who knows? I mean, I probably would have found art eventually, but that got me going young…I never took it seriously, though. I did it like in school all the time, like in the margins of my notebooks and stuff…and like this girl I sat next to in college…she was like, ‘Yo, I notice you do that all the time.’ and I was like ‘Yeah,’ and she was like, ‘It’s really good. Do you do it on anything else?’ and I was like, ‘No.’ and she’s like, ‘You should.’ And that was the first time I ever thought about it–actually trying to do it,” Lachner said.
He places high value in kind moments like that. “Um, kindness. Yeah. I think that, like, growing up here, I didn’t see it all the time, and then you know, like with the plane crash and Sandy, we saw it a lot more. So, you really got to see like this neighborhood come together and show that: their kindness. But like you don’t see it every day. At all. And it’s easy to do. It really sucks that it’s these great equalizers, horrific moments…well,” he hesitated, “I mean, I guess it’s born out of tragedy, too–the Timmy Klein Tournament’s coming up, and that’s gonna be a blast, everybody’s gonna be together, like vibes will be high like it always is. But that was born out of tragedy, too. It just sucks, because he was a really cool dude as well–he showed kindness. I didn’t really know him that well, but anytime I interacted with him, he was kind…if you can be remembered for that in the end, like you did a good job.”
Lachner commented on the changing nature of Rockaway, what he calls, more “openness” now as opposed to what he felt growing up. “I put a lot of myself away growing up. Like, I’m not, you know, I’m not like the whole neighborhood, I’m not 100% Irish, I’m only a quarter. Like my nana, she’s super Irish Catholic, she went to church every day at St. Francis, but like my other grandma’s Jewish, and growing up like that, like. Everyone knows. Like, if you’re not in CCD, they ask you why. When I was like 12, I asked my mom to throw me like a bar-nation or a comfir-mitzah for my 13th birthday and she said if I went to CCD and Hebrew school she would, but I was like, ‘Two more schools? Are you kidding me? No way.’…And I wasn’t like–I’m like a decent athlete. These kids grow up here, though. I don’t know what it is, man, this neighborhood raises unbelievable athletes, and you know, Bud Lite strips them of all their powers, but like growing up here, you see things that like–I don’t know,” he trailed off.
Between developing his artistic style, meeting his girlfriend, and becoming involved with the Rockaway Fisheads Rugby Club, it’s safe to say Jared has found his niche here. “I’m the head coach of the Fisheads. So, I got into that in college. I didn’t know about it at all, rugby here…my parents did not, my sibling did not, my dad still doesn’t even know how long a game is. I’ve been playing for a decade…Yeah, I got the bug, and I finally figured it out and took myself up the ranks. Captain, my junior and senior year, and then I came home, and I was like, f***, I gotta keep playing. I like retired, and then I was like ‘I don’t know like what my life is without this,’ so I needed to figure that out and couldn’t, and then I was like ‘I need it back.’…Honestly, it was like, ‘these guys are gonna be bullies,’ like classic Rockaway kids, like I don’t want to be part of this, but I just was like in my head about it. I didn’t want them to ruin that part of my life, I didn’t want them to take that away from me, but I was like, f*** it, you know, whatever, if I hate it, I’ll quit, And then I loved it and like,” he rolled up his shorts, revealing the familiar icon, “I got a f***ing Fishead tattoo now, I’m the head coach of the Fishheads, so like yeah, eight years later from that moment.”
