WestWords: Umbrellaville

Sea, Sand, Sky, Sun, Umbrellas

5th avenue beach from boardwalk.

One of the odd things about summer at the beach is how easily we accept the creation of temporary cities on the sand, and how well they work.

Take Asbury Park, for instance. We start in the morning with an empty stretch of sand, dotted with lifeguard stands and trash cans and not much else. Then the early arrivals start to trickle in. Some lie on blankets or towels, quite a few set up umbrellas, there are a few tents, and there are also examples of a relatively recent arrival called the cabana.

Tents in the Bible

Tents and umbrellas seem to have been around basically forever. The first mention of a tent in the Bible is in Genesis 4:20, and they're all over the beach in Homer's Iliad. The umbrella shows up early in places like Egypt, India, and China, and the parasol seems to have been popular with the ladies of Athens in the 5th century B.C. (A note on nomenclature. The French have two words for umbrellas. The parasol is a sunshade, and the parapluie is for rain. The word umbrella means little shade.)

So when did the beach umbrella get its start? Well, people needed to start going to the beach first. As I've mentioned before, Odysseus met Nausicaa on the beach. The ancient Romans were fond of their seaside resorts, particularly the ones located around the Gulf of Naples, such as Capri and Baiae. In modern times, seaside resorts started to develop in the eighteenth century, catering mainly to the wealthy. For the rest of us, it seems fair to say that spending a day at the beach only took off as a leisure-time activity in the nineteenth century. So when did people start sticking umbrellas into the sand and sitting in the shade? I don't know.

The Brooklyn Public Library has a small lithograph entitled The Bathing Beach at Coney Island in 1869. There are two umbrellas in the picture. They both appear to be carried and not stuck in the sand. (This picture is a hoot. The main activity seems to be gambling.)

Here's the best I can do just now. I have in my possession a picture postcard entitled Casino and Bathing Scene, Asbury Park, N.J. It is postmarked Ocean Grove, N.J., August 9, 1909. There are numerous umbrellas on the beach. Some of them are being carried by ladies. Others are clearly planted in the sand, with at least one person sitting under each of these umbrellas. These planted umbrellas are small, apparently the same size as the parasols that various ladies are carrying, and much smaller than a modern beach umbrella.

Many of the people on the beach are dressed in street clothes. One man is striding purposefully toward us, wearing a black suit, a necktie, and straw boater. Next to the lifeguard stand a person is sitting erect in a spindle-back wooden chair, its legs shoved firmly into the sand. The lifeguard on the stand is wearing a singlet and smoking a cigarette. (I published this postcard in The Wreck of the New Era.)

A different world, but one in transition.

Cabanas

The cabanas we're seeing on the beach these days are a modern invention. This cabana is essentially a square beach umbrella. After you place the center post in the sand, you open the umbrella. From the four corners of the canopy, lengths of fabric drop down to the ground. At the bottom of these four extensions there are little pockets that you can fill with sand, further stabilizing the structure - a very useful thing on the Asbury Park beach, which can be breezy and is prone to unexpected gusts. Hardly a reason to stay home, but you really don't want your canopy to turn into a freelance sail, and take off airborne down the beach.

The cabanas I'm seeing on the beach now are usually CoolCabanas. The company got its start in 2014 in - where else? - Australia.

This is not what cabanas were when I was growing up. At the time I associated them with France, but it turns out they were a more widely European phenomenon - known, for instance, in England as beach huts.

The old cabanas were made of wood, and they definitely did not fold up and go home at the end of the day. I think they were mainly used for changing and less for hanging out.

These cabanas may have been inspired by fishermen's huts, possibly mediated by the bathing machine, a curious device that arose in the eighteenth century; it was a small wooden structure with wheels that allowed people to roll into the water and bathe in privacy. (What can I say? If this seems like another world, that's because it is. For a little more on bathing machines in an American context, see Patricia Campbell Warner, When the Girls Came Out to Play: The Birth of American Sportswear, 2006, pp. 62-63.)

All of these old structures had walls. The CoolCabana does not have walls, which is one of the reasons why it is cool. However, I do occasionally see fabric cabanas with walls. Here is a picture of one on the beach in Asbury Park.

Tents Are Actually Verboten

The Asbury Park beach has quite a few rules. You can look them up on the city's website: "Umbrellas with a central pole at 90 degrees in an upright position that are no larger than 6ft in diameter are permitted." And: "Tents, camping tents and canopies are not permitted." (Let me hasten to add that baby tents under three feet tall are permitted.)

A canopy can be many things, but on the beach the term generally refers to a flat fabric roof stretched across four corner posts (no center post).

Many tents have center posts or king posts, but they generally rely on tent pegs for stability, and it's basically impossible to secure a tent peg in dry sand. You still see the occasional tent, and it may happen that the people who put it up are asked to take it down. Both of these things are increasingly rare.

What I think the lords of the beach are looking for in these regulations is a center post that, when properly driven into the sand, will inhibit the umbrella or whatever from going airborne in a sudden gust of wind.

And if you're thinking about bringing something exotic to the beach, like a tepee or a yurt, I suggest you follow the center post rule - and maybe use your common sense.

The Midday Crush

During the morning hours on the beach the population increases steadily, but the real crush comes with the fierce light of midday. This is when the true sun worshippers arrive en masse, with many putting up umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun that they have come to worship. And, in many places, the beach from the boardwalk looks almost continuously covered in umbrellas.

This is never exactly true. And the beach never looks like Coney Island did back in its heyday, when the famous photographer Weegee took his photographs of crowds packed together elbow to elbow, like sardines in a tin.

But things definitely look busy.

Activity and Inactivity

What the umbrellas do is create a safe place - a temporary home, if you will. Many people are content to plop down a beach towel and call that their safe place. I've done both. These days, I'm happy to hide from the sun, look out at the scene, and read a book.

People do venture out from their safe spaces, marked by an umbrella or a towel on the sand, to engage in a substantial variety of activities, some focused on the water and some on the sand. They encounter friends, new and old, and they meet new people. When is a volleyball game actually a mating ritual? I will leave that to the anthropologists.

There is an astonishing variety of activity, from bathing in the surf to surfing on a surfboard to sitting under an umbrella reading a book, to building a sandcastle with your six-year-old grandson (numerous lessens on hydrology and the properties of sand, with excursions into metaphysics when a rising tide eventually obliterates the castle), to volleyball, soccer, throwing a football or batting a pitched wiffle ball, to fishing in the surf or from a jetty. And some people just lie on a towel and sunbathe. Active sunbathing generally involves intensive interaction with an iPhone. And some people just close their eyes and maybe even go to sleep. Although it's best to do this in company, so a friend can wake you up when you start to burn.

Oh, and people get married on the beach. I think the City should do some research to see if couples married on the Asbury Park beach stay together longer than the national average.

Getting Along with People and Mother Nature

It is remarkable how well all these people, doing different things, get along. The main issues that arise on the beach tend to arise not from interpersonal conflict but from mother nature - specifically, the wind and the sea. The sea, in particular, keeps the lifeguards busy protecting those who are unaware of the perils of the deep.

It turns out that many people these days are unfamiliar with the natural world. I can't imagine how that happened, but it does explain why people are surprised when things blow away in the wind. The City can make rules, and even explain them (there are placards explaining why it's a bad idea to walk on the dunes), but the fact is that people expect nature to be indestructible, benign, and predictable, when of course it is none of these things.

The wind can be mild and steady and then pop a sudden gust without warning. And there will always be an umbrella or two that tries to take flight. Often a quick hand reaches out to grab the pole, perhaps followed by someone standing up out of a chair and closing the umbrella's canopy. But sometimes there is a merry chase down the beach that almost always ends well. Still, there is danger, particularly for the unwary. The tip of an umbrella pole coming at you looks remarkably like the tip of a spear.

The main problem, however, comes from the sea.

Many people seem to think the ocean is simply a large bathtub. Yes, it's true that after the movie Jaws everybody is terrified of great white sharks, which, after all, are dangerous. The media just love shark sightings of almost any kind, especially if it's a slow summer for fire ants and killer bees.

More likely to kill you is the rip current, when the placid water in your bathtub suddenly grabs you and pulls you out to sea. If you panic, it may kill you. Otherwise, if you know what to do you can probably save yourself - and, failing that, a lifeguard will do the job for you.

Asbury Park also has a number of jetties - basically piers constructed of very large rocks. (Why they are there is another story.) What I don't understand is why people are so ready to go blithely into the water next to a jetty. You can see the ocean blasting waves against the tip of the jetty, and spray jumping ten feet into the air. What happens if one of those waves decides to come around the side and push you up against the rocks?

Going into the water next to a jetty generally leads to much whistle-blowing and arm waving by the lifeguards on the stand. If the citizen proves to be utterly oblivious, one of the lifeguards may get down from the stand, pick up her badge of office - a small flotation device that I've never actually seen used in a rescue - and proceed to engage the fledgling daredevil in colloquy. That usually works, but on one occasion that I watched from my beach chair, the police had to be summoned.

The Cosmopolitan Canopy

In his book The Cosmopolitan Canopy (2011), Professor Elijah Anderson describes places he knows where people gather in numbers, where all are welcome, and where people generally do their best to try to get along with others. He draws his examples from Philadelphia, focusing particularly on Rittenhouse Square and the Reading Terminal Market, two places I know well. And he calls them cosmopolitan canopies.

Recently I was sitting in a beach chair under an umbrella on the Asbury Park beach, chatting with my son. He suggested that, in addition to our umbrella, we were sitting under one of Elijah Anderson's cosmopolitan canopies. I thought about it for a bit, and agreed with him.

I had hesitated briefly. The beach population is very diverse, but until recent years there had been a distinct shortage of Blacks. This in a town where a large proportion of the permanent population is Black. In the last few years this may actually have ceased to be a problem. Blacks are now coming to the beach in numbers, and they appear comfortable doing so.

Still, things are not entirely perfect in this transient utopia. There is intermittent territoriality, not surprising considering America's history as a settler empire, with small flags used to mark off an area where others are presumably expected not to tread. I've seen less of this in recent years, but there is an innovation - using windbreaks as fences (see picture below).

And yes, there's a tent.

So I think we're cosmopolitan, if human, and I also think the word canopy is particularly appropriate. This is indeed a world of umbrellas, with a diverse and amiable population.

Most of the temporary settlements in history have been populated by more uniform populations who didn't go home at the end of the day. We are not a tent city housing an army or a religious camp meeting. Instead, people arrive in small groups and find themselves surrounded by other small groups of total strangers. And, by and large, everybody gets along just fine.

Quiet Times

I'll let you in on a secret. The beach isn't alway crowded. Come early. You won't be alone, but there's plenty of elbow room.

Even in the middle of the day, if you take a few steps, you can find yourself in an entirely different environment. The surfing beach, for instance, doesn't allow swimming, so the beach is generally less crowded. Fishermen can walk out on a jetty and be in a completely different world.

And then, at the end of the day, everybody packs up and goes home.

Well, not everybody. A few people love to sit quietly on the largely deserted beach as dusk gathers, looking out at the sea and sky and feeling the sand between their toes while, up on the boardwalk behind them, there is the hum of people walking and talking, or chatting and eating dinner at the boardwalk restaurants. Many of the people on the boardwalk are also glancing, from time to time, out to sea.

During this story, we've been looking almost entirely out to sea. As we start on our way home, however, we turn our gaze inland, and this is what the view looks like.

Those who linger may find themselves looking again out to sea as the sun sets. In the east, Mother Nature frequently puts on a companion show for the sunset in the west. It's mostly pink and various shades of blue, with some white clouds thrown in. What we're looking at in the picture below is technically called the Belt of Venus. There is naturally a very complicated explanation for this phenomenon, but basically there are still a lot of photons bumbling around in the sky at this hour, and a bunch of them agree to line up and turn pink in the eastern sky as the sun sinks in the west.

This lovely photo of the evening sky over the ocean is a gift from a friend who wishes to remain anonymous.