I'm a black person who does not swim. How's that for promoting racial stereotypes?! I just don't understand why anybody would want to take their shirt off and wade together with a bunch of strangers in public pool of water that, at one point in the day, somebody will pee in. I've learned that my personality type isn't fit for gratuitous outdoor lounging in the sun. If we could maybe be in the shade, adjacent to the pool, and maybe it's one of those nice infinity pools like in the Bret Easton Ellis novels, where I could maybe just dip a pinky toe into the water from time to time, perhaps even a full leg, and if I could wear a Givenchy swimsuit with a nice, billowy cape attached, then maybe I could cave in a little on my whole no-large-bodies-of-water thing.
Recently, Brooklyn's McCarren Park Pool reopened as an actual pool for the first time in 28 years. The line to get in to the place stretched around the block. Only in New York can a pool be so fabulous that there's a line to get in. Located on the border between Greenpoint and Williamsburg, the center of hipsterville, the pool originally opened in 1936 as a Works Progress Administration project built by Robert Moses, but was shuttered in 1984 due to skyrocketing racial tensions and a lack of funding. Later, as Williamsburg gentrified and introduced more cool, scenester kids to the neighborhood, the pool was used for live concerts by indie bands—a brilliant reuse of public space.
On the surface, it looks like a great idea to use the space as a pool again, but I'm worried the neighborhood's demographics won't allow it to work. Guess what?! Skateboarders are already defacing it, which I think is cool. A police officer got punched and then one of the lifeguards got his ass kicked by some kids. Heat waves make people do some crazy shit! The reason I think the pool is a hot mess is because big public pools are usually family-oriented affairs, and in Williamsburg there are just way too many young, hip, single professionals and gay dudes competing to out short-shorts one other, un-tanned pink balls dangling out of the front, for the McCarren Park Pool to be a full-on family affair. This is the potential cultural clash, if there is one. It's about the specificity of Williamsburg's imagined position as a place with a certain kind of subcultural capital.
I'm terrified of large bodies of water. When I was four or five years old, I remember playing in a city pool like the McCarren Park Pool and one of my older cousins thought it would be absolutely fucking hilarious to shove me in. Surprise! It sure looks innocent and funny when you're not the one face down at the bottom of the pool. I was four, so I didn't know what the fuck was going on. I did know that I shouldn't be breathing water into my lungs. Anyway, the whole thing was really traumatizing, slipping into the pool like that and not knowing if someone would be there in time to save me. I don't have many memories from my childhood, but this is certainly one I have never let go. I don't remember what it felt like when I fell in and started inhaling water, and I have no clue what happened when I got pulled out and they did whatever they do to keep you from dying. All I remember is the fall, and now you can't get me anywhere near a big body of water.
But there's a difference between going to the pool and going to the pool. The pool is the most conspicuous, cruise-y place you can go. You've worked hard for those abs and now you get to show them off. You brought the latest Jonathan Franzen novel—or whoever you people read—but you're staring blankly at the page and intensely at the girl across the way who you think needs some serious help putting on her sunscreen. The "p" in pool is for porn, and that's why everybody goes.
I was recently at the Dream Hotel in New York where there's an interior courtyard with a pool. The day I went it was fabulous because there were no kids and people were in the water but it's New York so nobody was actually swimming. It was basically just dancing to very loud house music, in the water, while everybody made out and drank cocktails.