Flash back 1998: Day at the beach is no day at the beach

     Are you having a good summer? Me too. Outdoor concerts, picnics, travel, hiking. One thing I'm not doing, because I never do it, is go to the beach. The reason is ... well, once I took a crack at trying to explain why.

     I have not gone to the beach this summer. Nor last summer. Nor the summer before that. Or before that. Didn't go in 1994. Or the previous summer. Or in 1992. Summer of '91? Nope.
     In fact, I haven't gone to the beach at all in the entire decade of the 1990s, though I live a brief stroll away from a rather popular one.
     Not only have I never gone to the beach; I never considered going to the beach. Why would I? The beach is a crowded desert ending abruptly in a flood.
     First, think of sand. Sand is an awful substance. Sand is used to make glass. In a sense, a beach is just an expanse of crushed glass. Sand sure feels that way, in your shoes.
     And sand gets everywhere. Try this experiment. Take a teaspoon of sand and put it in one of those double-seal plastic sandwich bags. Then put the bag in a coffee can and wrap tape around the lid. Place the coffee can in the basement. Now go run your hand over your sheets — sandy, right? That's how sand is.
     Second, people. Lots of people, spread out everywhere. Nearly naked people. Nearly naked, fabulously unattractive people who, in their public state of undress, are a profound, silent argument for the importance of clothing.
     Finally, there's water. Lake Michigan is frigid slush except for about an hour on the last day in August. I went in once, one July day, long ago. It was like jumping into liquid nitrogen.
      Despite all these strong feelings, I was prepared to go to the beach, as an experiment, influenced by reading Lena Lencek and Gideon Bosker's new book, The Beach: The History of Paradise on Earth.
      While of course disagreeing with their premise that the beach is important, historically, I found enough fun trivia to reward my chewing through the book's dense thicket of academic babble. (And boy, is it thick. For instance, the idea "going to the beach" is rendered, I kid you not, as "the inspirational pilgrimage to the ephemeral boundary of land and sea.")
      Where else could one learn that, in the summer of 1936, the country agonized over whether men should be allowed to go topless on public beaches.
     "No gorillas on our beaches," Atlantic City declared, banning topless bathing. Cleveland passed an ordinance requiring that men's bathing trunks cover the navel. Galveston went further, legislating tops for men's suits.
     The authors trace the lure of the beach back to Greek times and, swept up in the history of it, I resolved to head to the beach and see if, perhaps, I had been neglecting it unfairly.
     "Don't expect me tomorrow," I told the city desk, breezing out the door Monday evening. "I'll be at the beach."
     That night, I cataloged everything I would need. Pail and shovel, of course, for digging. Sun block. A cooler of some sort. Drinks and snacks. A towel. A thick beach book. (Having finished The Beach, I thought I'd bring along my current project, A History of Private Life from Pagan Rome to Byzantium. Talk about interesting trivia. Did you know that the Roman emperor Justinian created a scandal by marrying a stripper, Theodora, famous in Constantinople for her act involving geese peckinggrain from, well, a place where geese do not normally peck grain?)
      Everything was ready. It was a ton of stuff to schlep — my wife suggested taking a wagon — but, hey, inconvenience is what going to the beach is all about, at least in my mind.
     Then — and those whose long-term memories go back 48 hours may have seen this coming — Tuesday broke, all gray and rainy, and my careful plans were abandoned. So I stayed home, made progress in A History of Private Life, and happily postponed going to the beach for another year, or another century, or never.
     Just as well.


—Originally published in the Sun-Times, July 9, 1998