Say what you will about Robert Moses, but the man had an eye for bathhouses. For Jones Beach, he insisted on expensive brick for his \u201cpeople\u2019s palaces\u201d because it complemented the sand. His follow-up, a giant Art Deco complex in Jacob Riis Park, in the Rockaways, introduced generous amenities to Depression-era New Yorkers: a solarium, an open-air dance floor, a skating rink. After the city ceded control of Riis to the federal government, in the nineteen-seventies, the monument to public recreation was shuttered. Since then, it has lain dormant, hovering over the People\u2019s Beach like a ruin.<\/p>\n
This month, the Jacob Riis Bathhouse is reopening as the Rockaway Ocean Club. The project began with the firm behind Brooklyn Bazaar, which once threw warehouse parties in Williamsburg and now runs some boardwalk concessions. Overhauling the historic building required eighty-eight million dollars in investment, along with some upscaling of the original mission. A portion of the complex is now a private club, with members-only access to a new pool, a co-working space, and other perks. Annual memberships start at two thousand dollars, not including a hefty joining fee. The club offers discounts for locals and people under thirty. To some on the peninsula, the rescue was a betrayal.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems like the government is selling off our public property,\u201d Janet Fash, a Rockaway resident and the city\u2019s first female chief lifeguard, said the other day. The club had reached out to Fash, who is sixty-six, about hosting a reading of her new memoir, \u201cLifeguard: A Love Story.\u201d A few days before the soft opening, a tour was arranged for Fash and her husband, Bob.<\/p>\n
Ursula Damani, a co-owner of the club, was leading the tour and had been trying to get ahead of the criticism. \u201cPeople keep talking about how the bathhouse was free, it was public,\u201d she said near the entrance. \u201cBut actually it wasn\u2019t free.\u201d She stopped at some original limestone ticket windows, where beachgoers once paid a quarter for a locker or fifty cents for a dressing room.<\/p>\n
Fash, who had on a turquoise bucket hat and a floral-print dress, read from a plaque, dated 1932: \u201cErected by the city of New York for the recreation of its citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has guided everything in our project,\u201d Damani said. They passed through a courtyard into a restaurant that will serve Mediterranean cuisine. Bob, who wore a polo with the logo of an F.D.N.Y. motorcycle club, asked about the dress code. \u201cWe just had this conversation about whether we\u2019re requiring shoes,\u201d Damani said. \u201cWe have to, because of insurance.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the government took over Riis, the east wing of the crumbling bathhouse was given over to the National Park Service lifeguards. \u201cPeople joked the chief lifeguard used it like it was his garage,\u201d Fash said. She recalled going to parties in the asbestos-filled building as a teen-ager: \u201cAll the Rockaway girls would come. One night there was nitrous. Everyone was talking like a duck.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a recent boardwalk heckling incident, Damani said she had been consoled by Fash\u2019s memoir, which traces her long battle against corruption and sexism in the lifeguard union. \u201cI learned that if I give the shit back to them, they respect me,\u201d Damani said.<\/p>\n
On the second floor, a construction crew worked on finishing twenty-eight hotel rooms, set to open next summer. A private lounge, clad in original aquamarine tiles, faced the sea. The shoreline below has been fenced off for more than two years, pending the removal of old wood pilings. \u201cThey have not maintained the park,\u201d Fash said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t make sense to me.\u201d Damani blamed bureaucracy, which she said had also delayed the club\u2019s opening: \u201cIt took us six years to sign the lease. I\u2019ve probably dealt with every acronym in the federal government.\u201d She was less concerned about a boycott by a coalition representing the beach\u2019s long-standing queer community, which has called the club a \u201cflimsy privatization scheme.\u201d \u201cOnce we open and they see this,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m not too worried about it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Say what you will about Robert Moses, but the man had an eye for bathhouses. For Jones Beach,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1006289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[341358,5229,4180,402780,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,129708,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-1006288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-_talk-of-the-town","tag-america","tag-magazine","tag-members-only-dept","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-splitscreenimageleftinset","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117110385409210054","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1006288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1006289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1006288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1006288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1006288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}