‘Beach 116’ Film Now Available on Amazon

 ‘Beach 116’ Film Now Available on Amazon

By Katie McFadden

The cold weather outside makes it a perfect time to sit back inside with a good film. It’s even better when the subject is something familiar. “Beach 116: Stories from a Rockaway Street” is now available to watch from the comfort of home on Amazon.

Back in 2023, producers Lee Quinby and Daniel Scarpati wrapped up and finally released the film project they had been working on since right before Covid shut the world down—“Beach 116: Stories from a Rockaway Street.” For those who live in Rockaway, Beach 116th is a subject many know well, so it made sense that the film made its debut at the Rockaway Film Festival that year. Then those on another shore got to experience it at the Orlando Film Festival and Sarasota Film Festival, and the film even made its way across the sea at the Prague International Film Festival. However, as of November, the film is now available to an even wider audience, to everyone in the U.S. and U.K. who may be interested in one of Rockaway’s most notable commercial strips, streaming through Amazon.

Lee Quinby & Daniel Scarpati

The film features a cast of characters who many know from around town. From beloved Rogers bartender Renee McKeown and other employees on the block to business owners like Tom Murphy of Curran’s, Denise Diehm of The Gift is Love, Claudette Flatow of Claudette’s, Mike McMahon of Rogers, Mike and Sam Omairat of Pickles and Pies, Rob Pisani of Bagel Barista and Katherine Varno of The Rose Den to Sal Lopizzo who lives around the corner and runs nonprofit Veteran-in-Command, historian James Supple, musician Gerald Bair, Rockaway’s former Senator Joseph Addabbo and even the infamous John Baxter, who shares his nickname from around town—“The slumlord of Rockaway,” along with interviews with his former residents who sing his praises.

Interviews with all of them are interwoven with shots of some of the many other characters to frequent the block, views of the beach, the street, the memorials that bookend it, and even the Rockaway St. Patrick’s Day Parade. And the film gives a look at the ever-evolving stages of Beach 116th Street from its past to its ever-changing present, as seen from shots prior to Covid and just four years later in 2023, to a hopeful outlook of its future despite ongoing issues like homelessness and economic disparities, as noted by Brooklyn College Professor Tammy Lewis. Yet the roughly 45-minute film shows how despite their differences, Beach 116th brings them all together, especially under dire circumstances like Hurricane Sandy.

The film is a team effort that comes from director and co-producer Lee Quinby, who calls Rockaway home part-time since 2005, and co-producer Daniel Scarpati. “We love it here,” Quinby, a retired academic, said. She met Scarpati, who was born in Rockaway and still has family in the area, through Macaulay Honors College, where she was a lecturer, and he was a student. The duo has had a working relationship in film for about a decade. “It’s been really interesting learning how to make film from people who are younger in the film program there,” Quinby said. Quinby now has roughly 15 documentary-style films under her belt from shorts to her longest being the film on Beach 116th Street, and even started her own production company, Lucky Find Productions. Scarpati also has his own company, Passing Planes Productions, and Jules David Bartowski helped with editing to bring the Beach 116th film all together.

After several films including some on Mississippi-based blues singers, Quinby decided to start focusing a little more on home. In 2019, she and Scarpati released “The Light Bright Man of Rockaway, a six-minute short about looping musician Billy Arnold, who makes an appearance as a street performer in the Beach 116th film. “I felt, I live in Rockaway, I should do something here,” Quinby said. “Sometimes you’re reluctant to do things close to home, but it’s been very rewarding.” After finishing that short, Quinby realized there was more of a story to be told about Beach 116th Street. “This is close to home and fun to do, and I really wanted to highlight as a community, this street that represents what the larger community is like. Beach 116th Street is such a crucial place within the peninsula, with people from all walks of life, all economic differences, that all come together on the street, and I thought that was an interesting angle to explore,” she said.

As she and Scarpati explored it, starting in 2019, they found that many were willing to speak on camera. Some interviews were done on the spot with customers and residents walking down the street and business owners in their element, while other sit-down interviews were done in Rogers’ party room. “It became a story of the street told by people who live and work and walk up and down the street,” Quinby said. After a hiatus due to Covid, they picked up filming again in 2022 and finished the film in 2023.

After previewing the film in both Rockaway and Florida, Quinby and Scarpati saw a similar thread in feedback. “The Rockaway viewers are very much involved in this life, this is their story, but when you show it in Florida, where there are beaches, people make those links with things like hurricanes and Covid and you realize these folks have similar issues and there’s a shared connection with people outside of Rockaway,” she said.

Quinby hopes that connection can branch even further with the film being available for rent and purchase on Amazon. “It’s exciting to have it there. I can’t say that about my other films. It gives us this opportunity to have people share it across the country and in the UK,” Quinby said.

And there’s more to come. Quinby says she and Scarpati have talked about doing more shorts on Rockaway. “I think there are lots of Rockaway stories that can be told, so we’ll probably do that. We have a few in mind,” she said. They’re also considering doing a follow up film to “Beach 116: Stories from a Rockaway Street,” since the block is continuously changing, as they saw from when they started filming pre-Covid in 2019, to when they finished in 2023. “I think Beach 116th Street will change a lot, so I’m watching that to see what might come from it. There will be more stories to tell.”

For now, “Beach 116: Stories from a Rockaway Street” can be found on Amazon. For more information on Quinby’s films, see: leequinbyfilms.com. For more on Scarpati’s films, see: www.passingplanes.com

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