Snow on the Beach

There is something extremely lonely about snow on a beach. The beach is like a magnet. Attracting masses in the summer, and ridding itself of everyone except for a stark few in the winter. I feel like Holden Caulfield walking around on the empty beach, in this empty town, and this empty building.

And here is the building where I am working and staying in the background. Its hard to see, but the oceanfront balconies are removed in that picture.

Here is a picture of a balcony column being removed.

And one of the balconies coming off.

The balconies had steel weldments embeded in them that were welded to the steel beams. When they got close to cutting through each of the welds, it would pop like a gunshot and release so much pressure and shower the worker in rust. The rust from the beam was expanding and pushing the balcony away from the building. It was only a matter of a few years (or less) before one of these balconies cracked a weld and all of them tumbled onto the boardwalk.

Here are close ups of one of the balcony beams after the removal. Nice.