Neighborhood News: The Brooklyn Boat Breakers

A new Parks Department unit has hundreds of abandoned vessels to crush.

- Clio Chang

THE GRASSY LOT at the corner of the Kingsborough Community College marina in Manhattan Beach looks like an exploded shipyard. It's littered with masts, engines, and fishing lines. Abandoned boats have been stored here since Hurricane Sandy, but now that's all over: The city has just created the Office of Marine Debris Disposal and Vessel Surrendering, a Parks Department unit that will break up and remove the boats. (Then the lot will become a basketball court.) The office is partly the brainchild of Parks chief of waterfront and marine operations Nate Grove, whom I've joined for an early smashup. "There's nothi