I just want to swim goddamn it

I mean, is that too much to ask?? In New York City it is. Like everything else in New York, swimming is a process. We tried to go swimming in the Floating Lady yesterday - an artificial pool built in New Orleans, transported to Brooklyn, and docked on the Brooklyn Heights piers, I know I know. It's docked right below the Brooklyn promenade, so we figured we'd just walk to it and jump in, pretty straight-forward.

The scorching sun bearing down on us, we walked through abandoned warehouses next to the noisy highway. We get there at 6 pm, knowing that it closed at 7 pm, thinking we could enjoy a nice, cool 30 or 45 minute swim. Perfect, right? But true to new york form, there were scheduled time slots for swimming (?!?!) and they wouldn't let us in because we missed the last 'slot'. DUDE. We ended up having wine and chips on top of Ali's roof, which was also nice and cool, but swimming was on the brain.

Today, I partook in the brutal but quintessential g-h-e-t-t-o Brooklyn experience of jury duty, in the g-h-e-t-t-o-est part of Brooklyn (Jay Street). Jury duty took all day, and the only saving grace was the a/c and wifi. For breakfast, I'd eaten 2 granola bars and washed those down with two watery cups of coffee from the vending machines in the court room. And because I was missing my daily fiber dose of Google fruit, I felt gross and thus decided to end the day with a swim in the Red Hook community pool.

I'd called several times to ask when the pool closed and of course got three different answers from three different people - 7 pm, 8 pm, 8:30 pm - who sounded like they had no clue what the hell was going on and just making stuff up, which they pretty much were. Walking from the subway to the pool, the sidewalks were lined with smelly garbage, great. And then I passed the refuse center , which emanated an even stronger stench. New York is just so gross sometimes. But there was a sign outside saying the pool was open until 8 pm, awesome.

Finally I get to the pool and, in the locker room, the women who work at the recreation center are yelling at us that the pool closes in 7 minutes. Wha?? It's only 7:30 right now. So I go in anyway, and on my way into the pool, ask a lifeguard what time the pool closes. She says 7:45 pm. WHATEVER. I dip into the pool. Aaaah, cool velvet envelopes me and washes away the g-h-e-t-t-o stenches and stresses of the day. I'd barely swam two laps when all the lifeguards start blowing whistles and yelling at us to get out. You can't be serious. After 10 minutes of mass chaos and confusion, I finally get the 411 from the lead parks and recreation dude. The pool is usually open for lap swimming from 7 to 8:30, but today, because they extended general swim times to 7:45, they had to kick everyone out and then let us back in. (Literally, they shooed us into the women's locker room, where we stood there and waited for 10 minutes and then went back to the pool). At 8 pm sharp, once the rabble cleared out, all us yuppy lap swimmers went back in.

It was awesome, except that there were a couple of rude, testosterone-y dudes splashing excessively and taking up too much space. I switched lanes to where there were slow girls swimming. Heh. Even the G train ride back home didn't completely cancel out my relaxed post-swim zen. But sure was nice re-surfacing into the peaceful, non-smelly, partially gentrified neighborhood of my part of Brooklyn.