He’s recovered grenades, bicycles and guns. Can fame be far behind?

James Kane wasn’t afraid of the grenade. Not even a little bit. But he felt a rush of adrenaline.

After all, finding an antique gun in Sheepshead Bay was a big deal for someone desperate to be noticed. A YouTube video of a grenade being pulled from the water along the Brooklyn shoreline could be viral gold. “Some magnet fishermen go their entire lives without this happening,” Mr. Kane said, pacing excitedly along the boardwalk. ‘I’ve never won a lottery in my life, not even a scratch ticket. This is historic. It’s pure madness. A hundred percent.”

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

He was born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens, and he stared at the coast for a year while he had a job at NYC Ferry. He also worked as a crane operator for a plumbing company, where he learned how much stuff is at the bottom of places like the East River. For the past five months, he has treated magnet fishing as a full-time job.

The grenade was not without precedent. Two months earlier, Mr. Kane managed to pull a gun from a lake near where he lives. It might have been used in a murder, he suggested, and was told there was a chance he would be summoned. He wanted to avoid that complication.

On that unseasonably warm November afternoon, Mr. Kane, who is 39 and looks a bit like the actor Seth Rogen playing the sailor, simply ripped the thing off its magnet. It took quite a bit of effort, as the magnet (from Kratos Magnetics, for $140) was advertised as having a “pulling force” of 3,800 pounds. The gunpowder had been extracted from the bottom, so he figured the corroded explosive was something that would put him on the map, rather than blow him off. Still, he put it on the ground and covered it with a plastic bucket – just in case.

As he called 911, he wondered: Would the operator remember him? Was he now a household name? Just a week earlier, he had found a top-loading Smith & Wesson in Prospect Park Lake. And he had also found a very different grenade about a month ago, which he said prompted police to evacuate a restaurant near the United Nations. But to his disappointment, the day’s coordinator did not respond.

‘You’ll know Let’s get magnetic” Mr. Kane said to the operator, referring to the name of his YouTube channel. “I’m going to be famous.”

His partner, Barbie Agostini, continued filming when police arrived. Two police officers who showed up took some pictures of the grenade with their phones. Meanwhile, a woman pushed a stroller inches away from her. Eventually, more officers arrived to cordon off the area, but the content creation didn’t stop there. Another officer crouched on the ground to take more close-ups. Wanting a broader view of the commotion he had caused, Mr. Kane walked down the sidewalk and continued fishing.

It wasn’t long before a well-built young woman with a pinned up hat stopped and stared as Mr. Kane pulled a piece of junk out of the water with his magnet.

“What are you fishing for?” she asked.

“All metal,” he told her. “This is a bed frame,” he said, “from the 20th century.”

The woman looked surprised at this questionable piece of history.

“God bless you,” she said.

A few weekends after the grenade, Mr. Kane was celebrating. Let’s Get Magnetic had just reached a thousand subscribers on YouTube. It’s a small audience, but it meant he could finally monetize his channel. He, Ms. Agostini, and her 15-year-old son, Jose, were at a pizzeria in the Jamaica Hills neighborhood of Queens. They ordered a large cake and discussed how far they had come and what the next step could be.

Before turning to magnet fishing, Mr. Kane streamed himself playing video games. Not only did he fail to earn a living in this way, but his efforts were detrimental to his health. If he died in a game like ‘Doom’, his blood pressure would rise. “Your body thinks it’s dying in real life,” he explained. “A hundred percent.”

“It took us long enough to get into a relationship,” Ms. Agostini said as she dipped her slice in oregano flakes. “I don’t need you dying for me.”

Mr. Kane and Ms. Agostini have known each other practically since birth. The way they tell the story: their mothers met on the subway, became drinking buddies, and both decided to adopt children around the same time. They were inseparable when they were young, but then they lost touch when Mr. Kane lived on the streets for a while. A job program got him back on his feet, after which he reconnected with Barbie on Facebook.

They became more than friends in 2016 and eventually moved in together. Barbie brought along her son Jose and her daughter Rebecca. Things were going well – great, actually – until Covid hit. The schools closed and Ms. Agostini had to undergo back surgery. Mr. Kane was forced to resign from the crane operator he had grown to love because someone needed to take care of the children. “The pandemic has absolutely destroyed us,” he said.

As the sole breadwinner for his new family, Mr. Kane tried to figure out a way to work from home. So he tried streaming until the blood pressure issues arose. Not to mention all the sitting. His new profession is much more flexible and active, which does not mean that it is without risk.

“I got cut with bicycle spokes through my gloves,” Mr. Kane recalled. “I was pricked by acupuncture needles that someone dumped in Corona Park. There is green slime. I just kept fighting and got my tetanus shot, and I haven’t gotten sick yet.

While Mr. Kane still dreams of finding a treasure chest full of coins, what he finds mostly is junk. One-off pieces of silverware are still considered a decent score; apparently they are fine to use after cooking for an hour. But sometimes the family is lucky.

He once found a bag with $200 in waterlogged bills in it. Another time he found an iPhone 13. The owner let him keep it. It’s now what Ms. Agostini, who worked with developmentally disabled adults before her back surgery, uses to film her family’s exploits on the water. She loves her new career as a videographer and Internet researcher. “It’s the poor man’s archaeology,” she explained.

Mr. Kane claims this iPhone will launch him to YouTube stardom. He speaks reverently of other magnet fishermen with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, most of whom are based in Europe. For his work, he recognizes that being in New York is a handicap: nothing is that old here, and American coins are not magnetic.

He’s also not sure he’s willing to immerse himself in the highly polluted East River to find any truly good stuff. But his biggest problem is that everything in the city is so regulated. He has been threatened with arrest several times, even though he insists that what he is doing is completely legal. Yet he keeps a stash of guns in his apartment – ​​or at least parts of guns.

After lunch, Mr. Kane, Ms. Agostini and Jose returned to their duplex. Mr. Kane brought out a Styrofoam box full of his favorite finds. These included the magazines of four cannons, the barrel of a sniper rifle and two small cannonballs that may have been older than the city itself, which he plans to donate to the American Museum of Natural History.

Evidence of a collector’s lifestyle is everywhere in the apartment: unopened retro video games and hand-painted Japanese anime figures covered almost every spare inch of wall space. Mr. Kane pulled out a few small pieces of metal from the cooler, one shaped like a bow and arrow, and another that looked like a ball peen hammer.

“This is black magic,” he said. “A hundred percent.” Then came a key fob for an Audi that still lit up when he pressed a button. “This unlocks a car,” he said. “We just don’t know where the car is.” Then came his collection of iPhones, which he proudly displayed on his purple couch. They all worked. Well, all but one. “It smokes when you turn it on,” he said. “But that’s the only problem.”

Mr. Kane has cast his magnet at dozens of locations so far and has a lead at a spot near Kennedy Airport. And he has a laundry list of ideas on how to make money from it. He wants his family to be famous. And a popular channel could find a way to launch their own line of personal protective equipment specific to magnet fishing – or to sell a slingshot-like device that allows someone to throw a magnet super far.

But Mr. Kane could just as easily work for the city and help clean up ponds and playgrounds. Or he could be hired to teach children about magnet fishing, and thus the history of New York. Although he claimed that magnet fishing in public made him anxious, it was clear that he had the personality for such a performance.

You could see that in the way he worked the boardwalk in Sheepshead Bay.

A crowd also began to form from a nearby park and the dialysis center across the street, including some metal detectorists and people who had collected coins in their youth. Even though he had not yet become famous, Mr. Kane clearly enjoyed putting on a show. He was messing around when he pulled a Marshall’s shopping cart out of the water. People gasped and jumped on park benches as he pulled up a giant pipe, sending the occupant sliding out and shooting in all directions. A live eel in Brooklyn!

While waiting for someone to tackle the grenade, Mr. Kane also managed to pull three bicycles, a vintage municipal trash can and a kitchen sink onto Emmons Avenue. He dragged in a trunk, which presumably cannot be removed from an illegally parked car without destroying the wheel to which it is clamped. 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. As he picked him up and took him back to the van he had arrived in, Mr Kane shouted from down the street, as if he were trying to stop a famous celebrity for a selfie. He mainly wanted to know if he could keep his find as a souvenir, although the officer had to tell him that the charge in this World War II training grenade was still active. So the answer was a clear no.

Mr Kane was disappointed, but believed he had had a conversation with someone from the bomb squad – a huge victory for his career as a magnet fisherman. After all, who could forget the man who found a real, live grenade in Brooklyn?

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