Between June 29 and September 10, I haul a Citi bike over the East River, a body of water as beautiful sparkling as it is staid, and careen down the other side of the bridge to Hamilton Fish Park. My relationship with the park is seasonal. Just one season! Summer.
The traffic of the Lower East Side is plentiful, relentless, and something residents of New York City are more or less inured to. Secure in the promise of my destination, I enjoy a layer of insulation against the urban squall. I wind my way to Hamilton Fish and join the hopeful others assembled silently at its locked gates. Ideally, it is not yet seven o’clock in the morning.
Necessity breeds invention, and for city dwellers who crave the opposite of that environment, there exists a mixed set of “hacks”.
We flock to farmer’s markets, satisfied with chicken shit on eggs and dirt on carrots. We schlep to Grand Central Station on weekend mornings to board trains that will deliver us to lakes, mountain ridges, and grassy fields. Spotify offers “relaxing outdoor soundscapes”. An 80lb pig named Franklin is occasionally resident at my local hardware store. “FRANKLIN IS ____” reads a hand-painted sign by the door, saving you a journey to the rear of the store to find out.
The effect of these ridiculous measures pale in significance to the sanity that Hamilton Fish Park restores in me. According to NYC Parks, Hamilton Fish Park opened in 1900. It owes an “exuberant Beaux-Arts” structure to the architects of the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue and 42nd Street.
Running tracks and tennis courts followed and suddenly, in 1936, a pool. Not just any pool; a dazzling Olympic-length jewel constructed during the Great Depression, first used by immigrant children, later by US swim teams.
A New York Times report from 1992 details the efforts of 77-year-old Sammy Fleischer, a retired subway conductor, to secure the renovation and reopening of the park that year. “His persistence in getting politicians to pay attention gives this aquatic park a special meaning,” the report read. “With enough love and energy, you can squeeze water from a stone.” It continues: “It is not an elixir for every urban ill. But it's a powerful tonic against despair.”
And it is. Like most people in New York City, I’m from somewhere else. Previously I have plunged, kicked, and floated in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Galway, Ireland. In Dublin, I would make it to the Irish Sea to push off a slimy rock and sail out across the water. When I lived for a summer in Spain, I would float face-down and refine handstands in swimming pools, always hungover, progressively buoyant from fat acquired by a diet of cocktails and kebab meat.
In the soothing glade of Fish Park before work, I pad barefoot along the warm brick paving to the water’s edge. Wind rustles through the branches of the trees. I step on a used bandage, upturned.
I kid. The water is more or less clean, the deck is more or less clean, and the bottom of the pool is more or less clean (a friend spotted a cartoon penis etched out on its base, part of the way up the "medium" lane – just another asset). Even some of the longer, more suspect ponytails (hat-free), or the occasional sight of feet capable of activating the gag reflex, or strands of floating hair sometimes felt between the fingertips, fail to bring about in me the violent desire to cry out or take leave that I might feel on land.
There are militant Americans who seek out confrontation in the lanes. There was a stocky Australian man, this past summer, who insisted upon flippers until he was asked by lifeguards to stop. The same swimmer took visible delight in barking at elderly people who veered even fractionally off course: "UP THE ROYT, DANN THE LIFT! UP THE ROYT, DANN THE LIFT!". Where phonetic spelling fails, you will have to speak these words aloud.
There are a couple of spitters, probably. Few rinse before getting in. In August, the ex-college-swim-team bros congregate in their droves, flexing, wearing branded hats, and talking amongst themselves in 3.5 feet of water for far too long. There is tedious small-talk in the women's changing shack. The showers are cold and they are faint. The mist rests on my goosebumps as it would a plastic tablecloth. I smell like chlorine for the rest of the day.
But sunlight pours into my eye sockets. For 45 minutes, through goggles, everything seems a deep shade of aquamarine. The pool absolves me of my concerns, absorbs my anxieties, forces me to breathe, eliminates breaking news from my brain, increases my propensity to laugh at everything, and, eventually, improves the taste of a bagel. Once after leaving I cried over a croissant.
An artificial sense of weightlessness might not be as important to somebody living in a rural village, but it is to be treasured in a large city. The pool stints redeem the most banal and hopeless of mornings, functioning as the departure equivalent of a soft landing. The hot, hot, heat pales into complete insignificance. For the rest of the day, I feel powerfully sorry for those who cannot rely on the same smug peace of mind. The months without it are a sentence.