I went to the Astoria Park Pool on Sunday because a friend swore it was the best free pool in the city, and she was right, and now I'm slightly heartbroken about it.
Here is what you should know about the Astoria Park Pool: it's enormous, WPA-era, this beautiful old public pool sitting right under the Hell Gate Bridge with the Triborough humming beside it. You take the N or the W up to Astoria and walk toward the water and there it is, packed with the entire neighborhood.
Everyone was there. Ecuadorian families with entire feasts in coolers. Teenagers being loud in that eternal August way. Old men floating on their backs like they had nowhere in the world to be, because they didn't.
I floated too. Looked up at the bridge, that huge steel arc, and had one of those NYC moments where the city stops being expensive and hard and just becomes yours for a second.
The thing about the Astoria Park Pool in late August is that it closes for the season after Labor Day. So Sunday had this bittersweet edge to it. Everyone knew. You could feel it — the last-warm-Sunday energy, the way people stayed just a little longer than they should've, drying off slow, reluctant to leave.
Summer in this city takes forever to arrive and then leaves like it has a train to catch.
I thought about how in Ahmedabad the seasons were less dramatic to me — hot, hotter, monsoon. Here every season feels like a whole love affair with a scheduled ending. You know it's going to break your heart and you fall anyway.
I stayed till the light went gold. Bought a mango popsicle from a cart on the walk back, which felt correct. Sat on the seawall watching the water go pink.
The Astoria Park Pool will be closed and drained soon, and I'll be back in boots and coats before I've forgiven the calendar for it.
Go swim while the swimming's good.
Love,