BATHING BEACHES OF NEW YORK.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 261, 3 November 1928, Page 7 (Supplement)

BATHING BEACHES OF NEW YORK.

A WORLD LN SWIMMING SUITS. A tour by aeroplane of the beaches around New York is being talked about by the people engaged in making money by entertaining the public, and it is a great idea. It will come some day. The plane will cross the harbour, and fly over the beaches of Staten Island, then pass down the New Jersey coast through all the plebeian and fashionable resorts as far as Atlantic City, and return to fly over the sands of Coney Island and the ocean beaches of Long Island farther out, and finally above the beaches of Long Island Sound. The impression for the passengers in the plane on a warm Sunday will be that the entire human race is assembled in bathing suits at the edge of the Atlantic. The beach spectacle certainly beats anything on earth for visible concentration and congestion of the genus homo. For a distance of a hundred miles scarcely a single stretch of good beach is solitary, and the popular beaches, extending many miles, are kaleidoscopic serpents of coloured umbrellas and wriggling bathing suits—as seen from the sky. The bathing industry is enormous. New York stores have whole floors stocked with bathing paraphernalia. Railroads run no-stop expresses to the beaches, competing with coaches and boats and the Fubway. There are acres of hotels, restaurants, bath houses, amusements, all subsisting as parasites on the surf. And these are scores of cottage colonies, summer towns made up of hot-weather fugitives from the world's metropolis. Feminine dress for the beach, where real flowers do not grow, is exotically like a garden this season. Over bathing suits that keep out ever so little of the sunlight the girls Wear light shawls and scarfs figured in gorgeous blossoms, and their slippers and parasols are also blooming. Regarding bathing suits themselves, the vogue for fresh air and s m<=hine has gone far. Slightly below the arm the suits are slitted so the ribs may get a sunning. I noticed one girl in a bathing suit all flesh-coloured from the waist up. From a distance she looked disturbing. About life-savers: These gentlemen are supposed to lead a glorious existence, embracing lovely women in the name of rescue. The fact is they sit on small platforms by themselves, over the sands, waiting for the public to begin to drown. Ever so often they jump down and plunge in after somebody. It is usually a duffer, some skinny swain, who has been showing off for his girl friend, and has been pulled out to sea against Ms will by th« undertow.