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The Brighton-Coney Island Beach (1997)

Beaches have been since childhood my favorite places in all the world. While some may prefer the woods and others a lawn of green, the most sympathetic Nature to me is an expanse of sand running down to waves of water. To my mind, one good reason to live in New York is that for several months of the year it ranks among the great beach cities of the world--two others being Rio de Janeiro and Berlin--and my favorite beach runs for over two miles from Sea Gate on the west to Brighton on the east. Another name for it is Coney Island.

For some twenty-five summers now I've patronized it regularly, initially for its convenience, since I don't own a car. NYC subways marked D, F, Q, and N all stop at one or another of four stations only a block or two away from the beach--the Q terminating at Brighton Beach, the N at Stillwell Avenue, which is on the edge of the Coney Island the amusement park. The F stops at West 8th Street-New York Aquarium, which has a connecting bridge going over the street directly to the boardwalk, before halting at Stillwell Avenue, while the D train stops first at Brighton Beach, then Ocean Parkway and the Aquarium before halting at Stillwell Avenue.

From where I live in SoHo, all of these trains offer a direct line. Especially when it suddenly starts to storm, as it often does in the summertime, I particularly appreciate the short distance between the beach to the subway; for, unlike beachgoers at Jones Beach or Fire Island, I need not wait for a return bus or whatever that arrives, say, only once every half hour. Since the trip from my seat at home to my seat in the sand takes about an hour, I customarily leave home in the early afternoon, scan newspapers on the subway, work on my tan while reading a book or taking a nap, swim a mile along the shore, make a local call to my answering machine, return urgent replies, pick up some fruit and vegetables, and make it home for dinner. Both forward and back, I'm going against the rush hour crowds. One reason to take a jacket, sweater, or wool hat is that at the beginning of the return run from the beach the NYC subway car often feels overly air-conditioned.

A spacious beach is one of those subtle marvels of unsupervised urban life. Some sections are crowded while others are thinly populated. Some kinds of people favor one area, while others pursue different sections. The Coney Island beach has bays running from # 1 in Brighton to higher numbers toward the west. Walk along the unusually wide boardwalk from end to end and you can see how the clientele changes from bay to bay. Those beaches directly opposite the Coney Island amusement park are so predominantly Hispanic that hawkers there will address even me in Spanish; those down by Sea Gate (toward West 37th Street) are patronized by older English-speakers. Those down by Brighton have Russians, younger Caucasians, and some West Indians. The beach between Coney Island proper and Sea Gate is always comparatively empty, even on the hottest weekend days, even through they offer essentially the same sand, the same water, and same sun. They are empty simply because nobody goes there.

You can find the bays' numbers on small, unnecessarily inconspicuous signs on railings along the boardwalk. Some of the low-number bays are separated from those besides them by rows of rocks jutting perpendicularly out into the sea, roughly every two hundred yards. That means if you swim, as I do, parallel to the shore in head-high water nine times between any set of rocks, you've probably done a mile. The temperature of the water is in the low 60s around Memorial Day, when the lifeguards come to work. Look carefully at the television report of the “opening” of the beaches, and you’ll notice that the only people actually in the water are children. The water temperature rises to the mid-70s by Labor Day. Unless there's a heat wave in June, I generally don't begin swimming until July. Those intimidated by appearing in public in bathing suits have less to fear at Coney Island, because models and others with photogenic bodies don't patronize these unexclusive sands.

My own favorite is Bay 8, which lies between the Coney Island and Brighton, just west of the Ocean Parkway subway station. As far as I can tell, it is empty because, with an Hispanic crowd on one side and Russians on the other, it has no natural clientele. Roughly twice as many people will be sitting in Bay 9 than on Bay 8 on any given day, and three times as many in Bay 11, only a few hundred yards away. It's been that way for twenty years and will probably remain that way even after this article appears. The regular lifeguards in Bay 8 attribute its under-population to the facts that its boardwalk side has neither food nor a pathway to the street. The nearest public bathroom fronts Bay 9; but since this building is often closed, bathers with children prefer the bays, both higher and lower, with more reliable lavatories. Boom box fanatics prefer to terrorize more crowded turfs.

Though you're officially disallowed from changing clothes in the public bathrooms, people do, and should be permitted to do so, if only because the options of changing on the beach or under the boardwalk are less seemly. (You rightly wonder if the well-paid authorities forbidding bathers to change clothes have actually patronized this beach.) The stalls in the bathrooms have no doors, I've always assumed to discourage junkies from shooting up there and perhaps loonies from locking themselves in. The smell of a powerful disinfectant is more reassuring than oppressive. You can shower outdoors at a certain facility across from the amusement park, though if you close your day with a swim and then wipe the sand off your feet on the boardwalk, as I do, you may not feel the need to shower. After all, this is ocean water.

The real problem with the beach comfort stations is that they close too early at 5:30 p.m. or sometimes six, well before the beach is clear, especially on a very hot day, and that some are for some false economy often closed all day. For this negligence alone I've more than once dubbed Henry Stern the PPPPC--the Pro-Public-Pee Parks Commissioner. You could persuade me that private entrepreneurs could run these comfort stations better--initially keep them open as long as there were customers around--even if they charged the fair rate of a dime every time anyone entered them. I similarly suspect that, given the opportunity, small entrepreneurs would gladly built bath houses with lockers watched by security people on the empty lands on the lea side of much of the boardwalk and could profit if they charged the price of a subway token. Though signs forbid the consumption of alcoholic beverages on the beach, people bring their own, while unlicensed vendors thankfully trek up and down the beach offering sodas typically for a dollar and beer for two bucks.

One change at the beach in the past few years is that some federal beneficence provided enough new sand to raise the beach's level to that of the boardwalk. That meant that the area under the boardwalk, several feet high, once visible from the beach, is now completely hidden, which makes it safe for vagrants and less accessible for bathers wondering what to do when they find the bathrooms closed. (What confirms my image of the current PPPPC is the fact that available lavatories are even scarcer at the Rockaway public beaches.)

How safe are this beach's waters? Very, because it's really a bay, protected on the east from the ocean by Breezy Point, the westernmost tip of the sand bar-island that includes Riis Park and the Rockaways. On the east, further in the distance, you can see Sandy Hook or the northernmost tip of New Jersey. Waves strong enough to knock you over come only in the wake of a hurricane. In all my years I've never seen anyone drown at Coney Island and remember the lifeguards making only one real rescue. "He was drunk," the slight woman guard complained after she personally delivered a buoy attached to a rope. What the lifeguards really do from their highchairs is blow their whistles at swimmers who wander too far out or too close to the rocks. Lifeguards are more likely to move their butts when they get a signal that one of their colleagues down the beach needs quick help, usually to deal with someone on land.

How clean is this beach? It could be better. Veteran lifeguards tell me it used to be better. I'm told that the city sends huge trucks down the beach in the middle of the night, running the top sand through grates that keep garbage, but as a regular I sense that these trucks don't work as often as they used to. (The public beach at 67th Street in the Rockaways was far junkier, even if less populated, the last time I visited it.) Police patrol on the Coney Island boardwalk on feet; EMS has a man in a three-wheeler. The real danger comes from the sun, which accounts for why some clients bring their own umbrellas and even pitch small tents.

When I go into the water, I customarily put my housekeys and a subway token into a zippered pocket in my bathing suit; others wear security capsules around their necks. I ask some honest-looking person nearby to keep an eye on my stuff--well-worn clothes, plastic sandals, a book, a water bottle, and sometimes a sand chair, as I would at any public beach, whether in Florida or Puerto Rico, where I also swim. Getting strangers to look after your stuff is standard beach etiquette around the world; and I haven't been let down yet. Then I don't have much to lose.

When I return from my hour swim, I sometimes find someone else telling me he'd been watching my stuff after the initial guardian had gone home. Having patronized a certain area regularly, I've also learned to identify familiar faces, beginning with lifeguards, though I don't know their names. If the beach around me is really empty, I've been known to ask the lifeguard if I can leave my stuff next to his or hers, at the base of his highchair. Though guarding my stuff is not officially part of his job, there is no reason to refuse. He doesn't have much else to do if no one is swimming.

One truth I've learned in writing about public art is that nobody trashes something that everybody loves. That's why Richard Serra's notorious public sculpture was defaced while the glass walls of George Rhoads's 42nd Street Ballroom in the north lobby of the Port Authority Bus Terminal (scarcely as amicable as the beach) are always clean. Likewise, few people make mischief at the Coney Island beach, at least in the sections I know, perhaps because mischief-makers know not only that most people don't take anything valuable onto the sand but that other patrons might vehemently disapprove. I've gone to Coney Island in September, after the beach is officially "closed" and the lifeguards, the garbage trucks, the lavatory attendants, and other personnel have retired for the season, even though the water is still warm, and have found it no less civilized than in August.

Having visited Rio de Janeiro, where the black-and-white mosaic pedestrian path between the road and the beach is patronized by well-dressed men who look like they are doing business as they walk, I've always wondered why the Brighton-Coney Island boardwalk didn't serve a similar function here. It is certainly wide enough and long enough to allow everyone his or her space, and especially in the age of portable telephones and the like. I would sooner call my editor, stockbroker, or whomever from the beach than from a hot office. I remember a warm weekday in September when the beach had perhaps five hundred bathers while at least a thousand well-dressed people were respecting Yom Kippur on the boardwalk.

Most of the Coney Island beach is at least fifty yards deep, which means that if you want to put distance between yourself and others (even on the hottest weekends), you can usually find an empty area back near the boardwalk. I regularly speak of my "summer place" as several square feet demarked by sticks I put into the sand at the beginning of the season, toward the boardwalk side of Bay 8; and while the sticks might not survive the summer, I've never found anyone else occupying on my turf.

Another reason for favoring these beaches over those further out on the Island is that, when the sun goes down or in, you can always find fine fast food within a block or two of the beach--Nathan's in Coney Island, Mrs. Stahl's knishes and the Primorski in Brighton, for a few examples. Under the elevated train on Brighton Beach Avenue is a remarkable variety of greengrocers--Russian, Korean, Mexican, Chinese--with fresh produce of strikingly various quality and equally various prices.

When friends invite me to take the train to the Hamptons, Fire Island, or even Jones Beach, where the beaches are purportedly "nicer," I always decline, not only because I would need to get out earlier in the morning but because, I tell them, passing through Penn Station and then changing to other transportation "always tests the limits of my masochistic tolerance."