New Yorkers Have 10 Beaches to ‘Wrap’ Up On

New York’s a lonely town

When you’re the only surfer boy around

--”New York’s a Lonely Town,” sung by The Trade Winds

It is simply not true that if you ask a New Yorker for directions he will invariably tell you to drop dead. On the contrary, he will be just as likely to say, “How should I know? I always take a cab!”

But if your destination is the beach, some street-wise gent from nearby Pelham Bay subway station will probably offer to point you in the right direction for only $2.

The beach in this case is Orchard Beach, New York’s only full-service beach. You can rent a towel and a bathing suit or even a locker--if you’re an out-of-towner. New Yorkers change right on the beach.

Orchard Beach is one of New York’s 10 urban beaches. Six can be reached easily from mid-town Manhattan by subway and four more on Staten Island are accessible by bus. To visitors accustomed to the likes of Redondo or Zuma, culture shock is a distinct possibility.

Let’s start with smoking. At Orchard Beach, bathers lay their towels flush against yours, and then they light up. Do they lift the corners of their towels and flick their ashes discreetly into the sand? No, they flick them onto you.

Properly Outfitted

While Orchard Beach isn’t the Hamptons or even Fire Island, nonetheless you’re expected to dress appropriately. All New York beachgoers, no matter how lowly their station, wear what they call a “wrap.” Generally this is a loud print shirt or blouse with a terry-cloth lining; once upon a time we called it a cabana top. Then there are the socks. They must be black.

So how do you get to Orchard Beach? From mid-town Manhattan you take the Lexington Avenue local subway to Pelham Bay Park, the end of the line. Buses are waiting to take you to Orchard Beach in the bowels of the park, the biggest in New York.

Or, you can go by bicycle. Pelham Bay Park is the eastern terminus of the 4.5-mile North Bronx Bikeway, which begins at Van Cortlandt Park. Too sissyish for a tough place like the Bronx? Not at all. People even go bird-watching in Pelham Bay Park, and the park maintains a bird line-- (212) 548-7880.

At the southern terminus of the 6th Avenue local, as well as three other subway lines, lies Coney Island, the ne plus ultra of New York beaches.

First, a suggestion: Visit Coney Island after Labor Day. On hot summer weekends Coney Island is so crowded that bathers will not only walk across your towel to get to the water, they will often step on you. And if you stay past sunset, they will beat you up.

Gargiulio’s, Coney Island’s most popular first-class restaurant, has found a way to keep the folks around after dark. When you’ve finished your dessert, they ask you to pick a number between 1 and 90, then they shake a bag and roll out a numbered tile. If it’s your number, your whole party’s meal is on the house.

If you lose, a meal at Gargiulio’s with a veal or chicken entree and a side order of pasta plus dessert and lots of house wine will set you back about $25, including tax and tip. It’s two blocks north of the beach, at 2911 West 15th St.

Cheap Grits

On a budget? The old original Nathan’s is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Hot dogs are $1.45. Also available are pizza, buttered corn, French fries, hamburgers, fresh clams on the half-shell, corned beef and pastrami.

For each food item there is a separate line, and there is yet another line for drinks. Here at Surf and Stillwell avenues the riffraff, the ragtag and the Lords of Flatbush gather, and they queue up politely, like Englishmen.

They’re watched closely by the police, who parade through Coney Island at night in phalanxes of six. That’s a strong police presence, as there seems to be in all New York beach communities.

At Jacob Riis Beach in Queens, federal agents ride through the sand on horseback in groups of three. This beach is part of Gateway National Recreation Area, and is beautifully maintained by the U.S. Department of the Interior. The sand is soft and clean. There’s a boardwalk, a pizzeria and a beer garden. Pilots from nearby Floyd Bennett Field put on a daily air show. Surfing is allowed. You can take the C train from 8th Avenue in Manhattan, or you can park for $3 in the 10,000-car lot.

The police presence in nearby Rockaway Beach, patrolled by lone officers from the New York Police Department, is relatively subdued. Rockaway Playland was torn down in July, and the unsavory elements drawn to amusement parks have gone elsewhere. Condominiums, financed in part by Los Angeles entertainment figures, will be going up in its place.

Surfing is superb around 119th St.

5 Stops to the Beach

The A train, the 8th Avenue local, makes five stops in Rockaway Beach, but free parking is available on side streets and you might want to drive just because the ride is so interesting.

One possible route across Brooklyn and Queens takes you along the Belt Parkway. This is a 55-m.p.h. highway with limited access, just like a freeway. But people fish from the side of the road and, between the Flatbush Avenue and Kings Plaza off-ramps, there’s a gas station in the center median. And then a drawbridge.

Barbecuing is permitted at Rockaway Beach at 17th, 88th and 98th streets. For a very special experience, though, you might want to eat at Abbracciamento on the Pier, on Canarsie Pier at the southern tip of Rockaway Parkway.

Wide-open spaces are rare at New York restaurants and scenic ocean views are rarer still. You get both at Abbracciamento, plus outdoor dining in season. Pasta and fish are the specialties. For about $15 try the terrific baby flounder stuffed with ricotta cheese and spinach, with side dishes of petit pois and stewed potatoes. Parking is free and slips are available for those who arrive by boat.

You can enjoy a wildly different dining experience at Brighton Beach just east of Coney Island. Russian markets and restaurants line Brighton Beach Avenue for 15 blocks. This is not a neighborhood for fast food. Most of the locals, Jews who left the Soviet Union in the 1970s, figure on spending the evening.

The big restaurants--Sadko, the National, Primorski’s and Odessa--feature dancing and entertainment. One night I walked into Odessa with my family while the keyboard player sang a Russian song with a rock beat. He looked up at my 11-year-old daughter and said, “ Buenas noches .”

He then broke his routine and performed “Besame Mucho,” “La Paloma” and “Hernando’s Hideaway” in our honor.

It was all very nice, but my daughter’s name is Natasha, and my wife and I are the offspring of Russian Jews.

Eight blocks east of Brighton Beach lies Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn’s smallest, only three-tenths of a mile wide. John Berenyi, in “Up Against New York,” described Manhattan Beach as a hangout for “coarse” young people but that is no longer true; coarse old people go there, too.

Smoochie Woochies

What we’re talking about here is necking--ceaseless, unrelenting necking. They neck in front of the bathhouse and the basketball courts and even over the barbecue grills. They neck on the esplanade and on the boardwalk. If Brooklyn were Paris, Manhattan Beach would be considered the most romantic spot in town.

Now we cross the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to Staten Island. This area is a great outpost of pizza. Possibly the best is Mike’s Place at 4010 Hylan Blvd. at Nelson Avenue, on the road to Wolfe’s Pond Park, New York’s least-crowded beach.

For $6 you get a 20-inch pizza, big enough to feed six, thick at the edges, thin in the middle, chewy and cheesy, heavy with oregano. Mike will show you, whether you ask him or not, how to eat it New York style: Just fold each slice lengthwise and shove it into your mouth.

Wolfe’s Pond Park is no ordinary beach. It is New York’s least-polluted, and the only one so heavily wooded that you can get lost there. You can swim in the Atlantic or in the freshwater pond. Even in summer you’ll have the place to yourself. On one recent hot July day only five cars were in the lot.

It’s great for picnicking, with fireplaces near the ocean and the pond, and you can fish there, too. In winter the pond freezes over, and hundreds of Islanders gather to ice skate.

Weather-Worn Shanty

Three miles northwest lies another wildly improbable New York Beach. Great Kills Park is a homey, friendly place, part of Gateway National Recreation Area, staffed by U.S. park rangers. The long drive to the ocean is lined with cattails. Parking is free. At the beach, food and beer are sold at a weather-worn shanty right out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

There’s a model airplane flying field, a marina with sail and power craft, and a fishing basin. The tranquil waters are filled with happy families.

The 2 1/2-mile Franklin D. Roosevelt Boardwalk begins at Midland Beach as we continue northwest along the Atlantic. Midland Beach is a gorgeous belt of wide, untrammeled sand with its back to a ghastly neighborhood of beat-up shacks with clothes hanging on lines visible from the street and old cars rusting on the front lawns. The beach is well-guarded, but no one is there.

Finally we come to South Beach, likewise deserted. This time, though, there’s a posted reason: The waters are hopelessly polluted. Coney Island has been declared unsafe for swimming now and then, as have other New York beaches, but South Beach’s “No Swimming” signs have been bolted firmly in place behind chain-link fence so that neither vandals nor time can destroy them.

It’s a peaceful place. Though South Beach lies in the shadows of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the beach seems hundreds of miles removed from the city. Playing radios loud is prohibited; you must wear earphones. Only the creak of the boardwalk beneath the occasional cyclist or jogger breaks up a solitary reverie in contemplation of the crashing of the waves.