Naked Truths on 97th Street

by Kailey Aiken

Just when I was beginning to think we’d seen it all, 97 surprised us once again.

Last Thursday, an overcast day with smaller waves and only a few people in the water, presented us with a case that I had never seen before.

A surfer came into view near Beach 93rd Street rocks, coming from the closed beach. It wasn’t clear from the sand what was going on, but he didn’t appear to be struggling. However, the rock jetties can be dangerous, even for experienced swimmers and surfers, so lifeguard Matt Bambury went out on the rocks to check out what was happening.

“Hey, are you okay?” he asked from the jetty, seeing that the surfer had ditched his board and was now just holding onto a rock.

“No, I’m naked! I lost my shorts,” the surfer replied, with slight panic and embarrassment in his voice. The poor surfer was completely naked, hiding out in the rock jetty. From the shore, we had no idea what was going on and watched the interaction in confusion.

Like the good Samaritan he is, Bambury sacrificed his prized orange sweatpants for the naked surfer. He threw them down to the surfer, who put the pants on in the water and was able to climb up the rocks once he was clothed. We all had a good laugh once we figured out what had gone on. Hopefully the surfer is enjoying his new pants.

As more horns (new guards) are being placed in shacks on the beach, our numbers are going up, which historically has meant the workload becomes more spread out. This year, with the reopening of 117 Shack, the addition of the second bay at 106, and all of 135 and 149 getting lifeguard chairs, we have acquired more chairs than lifeguards at this point.

The NYS Department of Health in article 167 “Bathing Beaches” states: “There should be one elevated lifeguard chair for each 50 yards of beach front, or at locations provided in the approved safety plan.”

This equates to about eight lifeguard chairs in a five-block radius, which as many of you have seen, is extremely close together. Even with the chairs this close, they still want a walker up if there is even one person in the water, making a ninth lifeguard necessary for eight chairs.

With double the number of chairs as there used to be, lifeguards in most shacks are stuck sitting three-ways almost every day — three lifeguards for two chairs. This is a five hour and twenty-minute day on the chair. If you’ve ever lifeguarded, you understand this is a long day. And you’re usually alone since there aren’t even enough other lifeguards on the sand to keep you company.

Every lifeguard dreads sitting three ways, but it can also become an unsafe situation on busy days. There is so little manpower to react to emergencies and maintain supervision on the water, that it is nearly impossible to do both at the same time.

I don’t know what the right answer is, but there’s got to be a better way to utilize the lifeguards we have instead of packing eight chairs into one area and leaving others completely empty.

Over in Long Beach, on the same exact coastline as us, they have one chair for an entire ~400-yard area. They also have flags to mark where rip currents are and where it is unsafe to swim, updated uniforms (our swimsuits are nearly identical to the ones from 40 years ago), and time to do drills. Perhaps we can take a few pages out of their book.