City Beaches

• Review
• Tuesday, August 19, 2008

The main attraction of NYC's beaches isn't that they're remote pristine hideaways, but they offer a cool eclectic respite from summer's blazing concrete and asphalt. If you can shrug aside drab changing rooms, and share outdoor showers with hordes of sandy folks crowded under more-often-than-not dribbling spigots, all 14 miles of NYC's public beaches await free of charge without proving residency or joining a club.  It's all a quick and cheap subway ride to sandy stretches like Orchard Beach aka the Bronx Riviera pulsing with a medley of salsa and merengue while push cart beach vendors serve up piraguas,  brightly colored cups of shaved ice flavored with different syrups. This crescent-shaped spit of sand is right on Long Island Sound in Pelham Bay Park off the last No. 6 train stop. Or try Fort Tilden, a decommissioned military base in the Rockaways where huge concrete bunkers, old munitions sheds, and defunct nuclear missile silos share space with the sand dunes. At the small beach at Barretto Point Park in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx, you can set out a beach chair and check out the huge prison system across the water on Rikers Island.  Or head over to Coney Island but continue a little further down the shore to Brighton Beach and body surf amid a sea of recent Russian émigrés.