By Brian Boone

If the letters from our BRI stalwart readers are any indication (please, write to us!), one of the most popular recurring features in the annual Bathroom Reader are weird and wacky news stories. Our next book won’t be out for a while, so hopefully these very timely and seasonably summer-appropriate stories about strange things happening on beaches will tide over everyone.

THE NEWS, IN REEF

In 2024, organizers of the Neptune Memorial Reef announced that phase one of the project had been completed, and that another build would soon be underway. What is the Neptune Memorial Reef? It’s being touted as the world’s first underwater cemetery, and it’s also an artificial coral reef that’s leading to the natural development of a real coral reef. Community resource director Michael Tabers cryptically told reporters that a few years ago, some Miami Beach area businessmen wanted to create an artificial reef there, and then hired an artist to design what a project resembling the lost continent of Atlantis might look like. All of the columns, archways, and statues of fish, shells, and turtles that make up the Neptune Memorial Reef are made with the cremated remains of 1,500 willing participants. All that stuff has encouraged the growth of real coral in the area, where leaders say is the first cemetery where people can see up close their loved ones’ remains — but shaped into architectural framework.

WHO WANTS TO BUILD SYRINGE CASTLES?

In late summer 2024, multiple Atlantic Ocean beaches across the whole of the Delmarva Peninsula, comprising sections of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, were closed off to swimming. The reason: Medical waste, alarming in both volume and contents, began washing up on the sand. Syringes, feminine hygiene products, and, oddly, plastic cigar tips, were among the most spotted items. Even weirder: Authorities can’t figure out where the junk originated. “We recommend wearing shoes on the beach and avoiding the ocean entirely,” the Emergency Services office in Ocean City, Maryland, told reporters.

WHO GUARDS THE LIFEGUARDS?

At their core, beach umbrellas are safety equipment, designed to block harmful sunlight from causing sunburn, or preventing windblown sand from getting into eyes. It was of great ironic concern then in June 2025 when a lifeguard at the Asbury Park, New Jersey, beach, found herself impaled by an errant, airborne beach umbrella. The object somehow got enough oomph to stab the woman in the upper left shoulder and go all the way through her appendage, and out her back. The lifeguard never lost consciousness or calm, and paramedics attempted to remove the umbrella first had to cut the six-foo-long projectile into smaller pieces in order to get it out. 

SAND GETS EVERYWHERE

While its lined with fancy mansions, Broad Beach is a public-use section of coastline in the otherwise exclusive Malibu, California. Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio was building a beachside estate nearby, and, allegedly not liking the sand naturally occurring on his property, took to swiping sand from Broad Beach for his own use. He was caught in the act and temporarily stopped by his neighbor, James Kohlberg. “This case is about a private property owner using a public beach as their own personal sandbox.”