Rant #2,410: The Swim

Let me just say right out the outset that no, my novel did not make the cut.

It did not win the contest it was entered into, and I took the announcement well.

I mean, a one in 50 chance is rarely achieved, even though I have done it myself in the past.

Now, I wait for a professional evaluation from the company that ran the contest, and let's see what happens with that.

So I wasn't in the swim, so to speak, but plenty of people will be doing just that in the summer of 2020.

In what amounts to a major move by state and local government, many beaches will be open in New York State and surrounding states this summer.

The announcements came during the past couple of days, and, of course, they come with a lot of rules and regulations.

You can swim in the water and sit with a small group of people on the beach--basically your family--but you can't do much else.

When you get to the beach, you have to wear face protection, but you don't have to wear it once you are on the beach or in the water.

But you will have to bring your own food and drinks, because nothing will be open--no concessions, no food spots, no nothing.

(And you know how filthy and dirty beaches get on normal beach days ... you can just imagine how absolutely filthy they will be with people bringing their own food and drink to the beach, where bringing food and drink is allowed.)

And you have to even social distance on the beach, meaning that you have to put your towel away from others.

In fact, people will be turned away from a day at the beach if the beach visitor population becomes too dense. I have heard that officials are looking at a 50 percent capacity at those beaches that are open.

Long Island, for one, is known for its beaches, and keeping the visitor population at 50 percent is going to be the mother of all hassles. But there is one other major problem that might foul things up even more for Long Island's beaches.

New York City has not signed onto this deal, and its beaches--among them Coney Island and the Rockaways--are closed this summer.

Which means that you are going to have New Yorkers who need to get out and swim to go to Long Island's beaches, or maybe even New Jersey's beaches, and some Long Island legislators already see a problem with that.

They claim the influx of New York City residents swimming in Long Island beaches is going to make density questions paramount, not only clogging up beaches, but clogging up the roads leading to the beach.

Think about it. You live in Canarsie, and you decide you want to go to the beach. You pick one of the Long Island beaches that is open, and you and your family trek out to the Island on a hot summer day.

Problem is that thousands of others--New York City residents and Long Island residents--have decided to do the same thing.

You sit in a line of thousands of cars trying to get into the beach, but you are told that the maximum number of beach visitors was reached hours before. You are steamed even more than the 90 degree temperatures outside, and you and a thousand other guys decide that you've driven more than 40 miles to go to the beach, and you aren't leaving so quickly.

Nope, I would not want to be either the one that tells you that you can't spend your day at the beach nor the one who has to control a crowd that is not going to leave so peacefully.

New York City Mayor Bill deBlasio closed down the beaches--and all city pools--weeks ago, when the pandemic was at its height. Few could argue with his decision at the time, even though many did. The Brooklyn borough president--in one of the most racist tirades I have ever heard--bluntly stated that "if you don't give my people something to do, there will be a rise in crime" in his borough, condemning not only all good citizens of his borough as thugs, but more succinctly, a group of people who have been castrated by stereotypes for generations.

He basically said that yes, the stereotype of 100 percent correct, and I cannot believe that to this moment, he has not been taken down for such racist remarks.

Anyway, deBlasio still maintains that no beach or pool in New York City will be open because of safety reasons during the pandemic.

He says that people can walk on the beach, even walk on the sand, but they cannot swim at any New York City beach, whether it be Coney, the Rockaways, Orchard or any other beach in the five boroughs.

Yup, you can walk on the beach but can't go into the water on a hot summer day? That is like saying an alcoholic can go to a liquor store, but can't drink any of the merchandise, just smell it, and that will suffice.

Yup, it is not going to happen.

New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo said that yes, many beaches are now going to be open, but if there is a dramatic rise in coronavirus cases, he will "shut down the beaches the next day."

Yup, the Pandora's Box is open, and once the beaches are open, there is no way that people won't avail themselves of the water, legally or illegally.

Look, these are trying times, nobody is going to debate that fact. These legislators are really trying to navigate in uncharted waters, and that includes deBlasio, Cuomo and yes, President Trump (sorry President Obama, what you said this weekend was completely uncalled for, but you won't be taken to task, like the Brooklyn borough president, for the same reasons, which I am not going to get into here).

They are trying to do the best that they can, but they are really all up the creek without a paddle.

Thus, they are trying to formulate their own "paddle" by often creating rules that on paper look good, but in practice, are unworkable.

I have said it all along. Once the summer brings up warmer weather, all the rules and regulations that they have created to fight this thing are almost all out the window.

People simply are not going to go whole hog into this like they have been doing, and while the efforts have been admirable, you cannot expect people to follow like sheep when it is 90 degrees outside and people want to get back to normal.

My family is lucky. Although we thought that we had closed our backyard pool down for good, we decided to reopen it this summer, and although it is nothing more than a big round bathtub, it will give us something to do when the summer heat hits.

Most people are not as lucky as we are, and the beach is their summer refuge.

You simply cannot bar the opening of beaches in New York City, yet have them open in Nassau and Suffolk counties and in New Jersey.

Smell the sea air? That is fine for some, but most not only want to smell the sea air, they want to jump into the sea water to cool off.

And that is just what they are going to do, no matter what our often well-meaning, but just as often clueless, politicians say.