He Has Fished Out Grenades, Bikes and Guns. Can Fame Be Far Behind?

By Allie Conti Dec. 21, 2023

James Kane was not afraid of the grenade. Not even a little bit. But he was feeling a rush of adrenaline.

Mr. Kane is a magnet fisher, which is exactly what it sounds like: He regularly tosses a magnet into the water to see what comes out. This became an oddly popular hobby during the pandemic, though Mr. Kane claims to be the only person who does it in New York City. This may or may not be true, but he definitely has an insider’s perspective on the city’s waterways.

He’s also not sure he’s willing to submerge himself in the hyperpolluted East River to find the really good stuff. But his biggest issue is that everything in the city is so regulated — he’s been threatened with arrest several times, even though he insists that what he does is completely legal. Still, he is storing a cache of weapons at his apartment — or at least parts of weapons.

As he was waiting for someone to deal with the grenade, Mr. Kane also managed to pull three bicycles, a vintage municipal trash can and a kitchen sink onto Emmons Avenue. He hauled in a car boot, which supposedly can’t be removed from an illegally parked car without destroying the wheel it is clamped to. It was unclear how it ended up in Sheepshead Bay.

Finally, the bomb squad arrived. A man in a white zip-up sweater stepped over the yellow tape and peered at the grenade. He mostly wanted to know if he could keep his find as a souvenir, though the officer had to inform him that the charge in this World War II-era training grenade was still active. So the answer was a definite no. Mr. Kane was disappointed, but he considered that he’d had any dialogue with someone from the bomb squad a huge win for his career as a magnet fisher. After all, who could forget the guy who found a real, live grenade in Brooklyn?

“I almost killed everyone in the area,” he said. “But that definitely would have been on the news.”