How to quit your job and travel around the world

Photo: John Jay public pool closed between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. July 30, 2007.

When you live in Manhattan, the city has a way of making you feel extreme gratitude and petulance simultaneously. In the summer months, we residents are forced into inmate-tude, groveling to our gatekeepers who can grant or deny us the pleasures associated with warm weather. The public pools of the city are the perfect example.

Pool time is rare in New York, where the majority of natatoriums are dinky subterranean lap lanes in pricey gyms. Outdoor pool space is the golden goose. Today, hovering in the mid 80s, I thought I would try the John Jay public pool on 77th and York Ave, one crosstown bus away from my apartment.

A towel, a suit, a leftover Sunday paper. Not so fast. The pool has regulations. Lots of them. And about several dozen idling staffers to somewhat enforce them with mediocre politeness. For example, you can’t take a bag to the pool, so you must have a lock for the grotty lockers in the dressing room. You must be wearing a bathing suit; no street clothes in the pool area and they must also be locked up. You can’t read the paper at the pool; all reading material must be ‘bound.’ You can’t swim between the prime hours of 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. because that’s when the lifeguards and other pool personnel need their break time, forcing the question of why can’t they work in shifts? There seem to be plenty of them.

A second pool – beaming brilliant turquoise – is empty because it is the diving pool. It appears to open rarely with only one board out of the two actually functioning.
Normal pool rules – no running, adult supervision for young kids, swimming caps and showers before entering – are non-existent. However, the John Jay pool is pleasant and an enjoyable balance between the stress of the aquatic bureaucracy and the pleasure of swimming in hot weather. It is considered, after all, the premiere public pool of the city.

But for all the trauma of getting into the pool, truth is, you don’t come to swim. You come to sit outside with the possibility of swimming. Pool time, as we know, is mostly about relaxing near water. And this is where the gratitude of being a New Yorker comes in. There were no fewer than nine elderly stateswomen of John Jay, adorned in shower caps, earrings, lipstick and sunglasses conversating for hours at one end. There was a bearish and frighteningly tan man, keeping a keen eye on all the bikinis and shadow boxing with himself in the pool. There was a six-year-old girl with no teeth, purple goggles and an earth shattering scream to punctuate every splash. There were squads of middle-schoolers cannon balling and shy teenage girls who may or may-not know how to swim sitting on the side giggling. Lap swimming is a tricky business in these waters, leaving only one lone sporty 30-something woman. The pool had it all: ages 6 to 90, lily white to copper brown, goodwill swim shorts to Harvard baseball caps.

After my hour of sunbathing and quick dip were up, I strolled back into the locker room. I changed and walked cheerfully my M79 bus stop. My petulance had faded, and my gratitude grew again. In a city that prizes status and exclusivity, I felt not just refreshed from the pool but from the very fact that it existed and that it is free. I felt gratitude for the amazing social experiment that day in and day out Manhattan conjures. This is a great democracy and sometime it just takes a dip in the pool to remember that.