Escape to the Beach - BDE (III)

A good friend has a game she calls: BDE. It's where you design a great day for you and your friends. The rules are as follows:
- it must include at least three different stops
- one stop must include art
- one stop must include a cocktail
- one stop must include food

Each stop cannot cost more than $12.

You can have more than three stops but not less than three. She calls these days: BDE - Best Day Ever. Last weekend I had a BDE with a friend that lasted 16 hours and included a beach.

We were the only ones we knew who were excited about swimming in dumpsters, so we agreed to meet at 10:00 on Saturday morning in our bathing suits and head to the dumpsters. Three Saturdays in August the city of New York shuts down Park Avenue from 72nd street to Battery Park and turns Manhattan into a pedestrian wonderland. They rent free bikes and roller blades, host free fitness classes, and preview shows from the Fringe Festival in Battery Park. The star of Summer Streets though, is definitely the dumpster pools. The city takes five oversized dumpsters and turns them into mini pools outside Grand Central Station, complete with free rafts and makeshift cabanas. It had been a hot summer, and I wanted to take a dip in a dumpster.

We got there at 10:00 and they had completely sold out of wristbands. We stood in the “stand-by” line for a while, but got bored and decided to get our free bikes and take a spin. On our way to 51st, we stopped by at the arts and crafts tent, where there was a surplus of sidewalk chalk spilling onto the street. I picked up a piece and created the outline of a hopscotch court. Soon, people from ages 6 to 70 were joining our game of hopscotch, arguing over the rules and demonstrating their technique. We met a woman from Brazil who told us the game was called “Acha” in her home country. An older couple became quite sprightly as they hopped through the faded numbers. It was a great moment of shared laughter with fellow New Yorkers.

When we got to the bike tent, they had run out of bikes. We were batting zero on our plans, but we decided not to sweat it. It was a beautiful day and we were excited to be out and about. My friend decided that because we were in our bathing suites, we should go to the beach. It certainly wasn’t on the agenda for the day, but I agreed. We walked through Times Square to get to Penn Station and they were having a kiss-off in celebration of the famous photo of a soldier kissing a nurse in Times Square during a V-Day parade. There were hundreds of couples and the media was there to cover it. I was even interviewed by Telemondo…in Spanish.

We made it to Penn Station, got our tickets, and rode the train an hour out to Long Beach. After picking up some picnic food, we made our way to the ocean. It was a super hot day and the beach was crowded, but we scoped out a good spot. The ocean breeze was reliably refreshing and we had a great time eating, swimming, napping, and reading the New York Times. Around 6:00, we decided to make our way back to the train and slept the entire way home.

In the Times, we had read about a famous meteor shower that was happening that night. So we went to another friend’s apartment, where he had access to his roof, and a group of us lay on giant blankets on the roof, looking for shooting stars with the city lights of Manhattan sparkling below us. We laughed and talked and gazed at the stars for hours. We polished off some wine, ate some fresh corn, but mostly just watched the sky. None of us saw a shooting star (it is Manhattan, for Pete’s Sake), but it was a wonderful summer day in the city and definitely qualified as a BDE.