A few months back, I asked a friend whose partner had taken up fitness in a big way whether he talked about it all the time. "All the time," he whispered dramatically. I related, because Adam got the same way after getting into yoga, and after I began swimming, I was just as bad. But what are blogs for if not for writing about crap that no one else will give a hoot about? (Oh, yeah: Silly photos of cats.)
I swam as a kid and liked it well enough, but I fell in love with it as a young adult. I joined a New York City community center for a year or two before swimming in a very nice pool in San Francisco while on a business trip and vowing to upgrade when I got back home. I swam at Chelsea Piers for years, leaving my apartment around 6 a.m. and walking 20 minutes each way five or six days of the week, even in winter. To be young....
The Chelsea Piers pool is stunning: 25 meters and six lanes located at the end of a Hudson River pier, with windows on three sides. (During thunderstorms we had to leave the pool because we were somehow at risk of being electrocuted.) The bottom was tiled with a Polo Sport logo, if I remember correctly. The locker rooms were plush, with Origins shampoo and moisturizer. I loved it! But when I moved to Tribeca, Chelsea Piers hardly made sense. Eventually I joined at the local community college, but bailed when the disorganization became too much. I used to show up at 7 a.m., when the pool was supposed to open, put on my suit, and wait impatiently for the lifeguards to unlock the gate between the men's showers and the pool. Sometimes they wouldn't show at all. I recall several days when I'd hear someone inside the pool area—which you can't see from the gate—and I'd yell and rattle the gate, like a prisoner, only to have them ignore me for 10 minutes.
The disorganization has improved—actually, come to think of it, it may not have. What has changed is that I've become smarter, arriving at 7:30 a.m. Still, the experience couldn't be farther from Chelsea Piers (although, to be fair, it is less than half the cost).
The locker room is a dump, but I can get undressed and dressed pretty quickly. The showers are another story.
See the dirty tile? Luckily, I don't. This is one of those rare instances when I'm grateful for my nearsightedness. Now, a few readers may consider "gang showers" as potentially sexy, but I can't stress how unsexy these are, not least of all because the water is often scaldingly hot. (No, it's not adjustable; in fact, most of the showers don't have knobs at all.) You can't not take a shower after swimming, especially in this super-chlorinated pool, so you stick an appendage in the water, swear, and repeat. There's little water pressure, naturally, and the shower heads are the kind that spray a fine mist. At first I was grateful that the showers had soap dispensers at all, but I believe they contain hand soap. My first week back at the pool, I grew increasingly itchy all day long, to the point where I worried I had contracted crlice there. Eventually I remembered that I had a L'Occitane metal soap container at home, and I was greatly relieved that the soap was in fact the problem. Adam brings me soap when he stays at a fancy hotel for work. The scent of lemon verbena does not feel at home.
The pool itself is not bad looking. It's six lanes (or it would be if they'd put the last lane line in) and 25 meters long, and it's in a very high-ceilinged room with a few windows. If this sign in the locker room is any indication, there's good reason for the water to be super-chlorinated.
In the afternoons, a kids' swimming school uses the pool, which on one hand, I'm in favor of—I believe all kids should learn to swim. But the school is a bit lax about making sure that, say, the kids don't wear Band-Aids in the pool. (If I see one, I fish it out because touching a used Band-Aid is preferable to watching it every time you swim a lap, hoping it doesn't drift up into your mouth.) And I'm guessing that the school is responsible for jacking up the temperature until the water is like soup. Not that most of the swimmers mind: Ninety percent are over 65, and they don't swim so much as bob and chat. On Sundays, there's a big group I call the aquaklatsch: Maddeningly, they take separate lanes and talk over the lane lines like neighbors on either side of a fence. I don't care if people can't swim well—I happen to have a fondness for the old man who does a sort of backstroke so feebly that he looks like he's falling in slow-motion—but I like them to make an effort or get out of the way. (I'm not sure what they make of my swim cap that says "The wetter the better" on it.)
The lifeguards are friendly one day, standoffish the next. One is a man who talks non-stop—I've wondered if he's on coke—and his frequent partner is a woman whom he makes fun of. Neither is particularly bright, and I often remind my internal organs not to fail while I'm in the pool. Then again, I could just be pissy because the woman has a tendency to yell "Is that it?" or "You're done already?" as I'm leaving the pool.
Note: I'm filing this under I Love-Hate New York because if I lived pretty much anywhere else there would be somewhere better to swim.
The neighborhood pool in Santa Barbara, CA: http://www.coralcasinoclub.com/
Posted by: Adam | 30 January 2011 at 06:18 PM
A little bourgie...
Posted by: The General Situation | 30 January 2011 at 06:40 PM