A Californian Takes on New York City's Beaches

Of course there are beaches in New York City, people tell me. Why, there's Jones Beach. That's very nice, and not too far away. And then there are the beach clubs in Brooklyn where you rent a place in the sun, a locker, even a cabana if you like. And Coney Island is accessible to subway.

Reality check: Jones and Brooklyn are really, really far away to those with no car and limited time. It took me 14 years of Manhattan living to make it over to Jones Beach (more on that later). Getting to the Brooklyn beach clubs involved a harrowing ride through a scary urban area with an Arab-speaking driver who subscribed one of the more extreme forms of religious contempt for women. And Coney Island, whatever its past glories, is, let's be frank, in a ghetto.

But I miss the beach. I spent most of my life in California in places where I could walk to the beach. The beach provided fresh air, exercise, tranquility, a place to chat with the neighbors, a safe haven for even the youngest kids. Why do kids love throwing sand? Because it's so nice to feel it go through your fingers, and it's so much fun to watch it fly.

The beach was a place for watching clouds, making sandcastles, swimming, surfing, having picnics with the family, experiencing the thrill of a nighttime swim, feeling the deep contentment of letting the sun warm your back, gazing at sunsets and stars, rolling your feet in the sand, running along the shore, learning to see the beauty of the natural world in the way light reflects in and on the water. It was a place to observe currents and tides and tidepools and the animals that live there. It was a place to smell smells and listen to the waves and gulls, and watch the endless subtleties of light, and observe the passing of the day, and dig for sandcrabs and see how sand collapses if you make a pyramid of it.

I hear the Hawaiians have 52 words for wave. I can think of thousands of applications of the idea of waves in science, music, art, life, markets. And what better way to learn about waves than by touching them, feeling them move, letting them propel you, watching them come and go, being tossed around by them?

To summarize, the beach is scientific laboratory, mathematical classroom, natural philosophy instructor, a soother of the spirit, a gatherer of friends, a creator of community, a sanctuary from the electronic world.

Yeah, the beach means a lot to me. Always will.

"New York" magazine ran an article on nearby beaches this summer, so, I decided to give the beach thing another chance.

The likeliest prospect was a little island off Greenwich in Connecticut, recently opened to the public. All that was needed was a $5 ferry pass from one of two civic centers. A phone call revealed a little catch in the democratization process: The civic center open on weekends happened to be quite a good distance from both train and ferry. A Saturday on the beach would involve either a lot of taxi time or a preliminary visit to Greenwich.

This was sounding like an Arctic expedition.

Choice No. 2 was Manhattan Beach, a small public beach described as quiet, clean and kid-friendly by "New York." It was supposedly accessible by subway (ha ha, let's try that walk down the subway stairs with a sleeping 3-year-old, a stroller and two bags loaded with changes of clothing, diapers, sand toys, drinks and snacks.)

The ride over to Manhattan Beach was fine -- just about 35 minutes. We picked a spot. I picked up some trash around it and put it in the can. We settled in, played in the sand. and I souched over to the water to test the temperature. How very interesting. The water was glistening with thousands of mica-like particles that caught the sun. Could that be heavy metal? I noticed an Asian teen digging a deep hole near the shore. The sand she was scooping up was dark and sludgy.

Well, I grew up wiping beach tar off my feet with turpentine. I could survive a little Brooklyn sludge.

Then I noticed a surprising amount of trash along the shore. Plastic bags. Yecchhh, a latex glove. As I stepped out into the shallow water, I saw more plastic bags floating.

I returned to the sand and watched a lady wade into the water. She picked up some of the plastic bags and brought them to the trash.

I backed into the water again, keeping an eagle eye on my 3-year-old, and emulated her fine example by picking up more bags to take back to shore. My father got up at six every morning to take the dogs for a walk on the beach. He would pick up trash as he went along. Part of a philosophy he had of leaving things better than he found them.

After awhile, time the good citizen lady and I had pretty well cleaned up the water. I noticed that most of the trash was by the rock jetty. The water was shallow and calm, perfect for a child, so I figured I'd take my little guy in a ways down.

When my boy realized that he could play in this particularly ocean water without getting in over his head or being pounded by a wave, he began to sing and wave his arms and generally explode with joy. What a beach is all about.

The next day, I gave Jones Beach a try. It was the last weekend of summer, and I had sorely missed the water.

The drive took an hour and a half, not the estimated 45 minutes. Again, there's a nice shallow area for kids to play in. an attendant keeps the restrooms clean . But Jones Beach looks like the big state beach it is. Next to the California beauties of Corona del Mar, Laguna, Hermosa, Carmel, it's just deadly grim.

What I need is for the old days to come back, when the guy sent his family to the seashore for the summer and stayed in the city to work. Hey, we'll miss ya, honey.