After more than a month of closed beaches — and pitched battles over access to the ocean — Rachel Thompson, a schoolteacher, finally frolicked in the surf at Rockaway Beach in Queens.
“Yay!” she said. “It feels fantastic to have Rockaway open, to have lifeguards so kids can swim safe.”
New York, transformed by the coronavirus and the protests in support of Black Lives Matter, has been cooped up, and a good, old-fashioned swim “takes the edge off,” Ms. Thompson, 45, said. She was at Rockaway on Wednesday as New York City opened its beaches for swimming — just in time for the Fourth of July weekend, when even more people are expected to pack the sand.
Still, several beachgoers that morning, Ms. Thompson included, were feeling a bit jittery about the city’s gradual reopening. An hour after the ban on swimming was lifted, the mayor announced that indoor dining at restaurants would not resume on Monday as anticipated, citing the virus’s rapid spread in other large states.
Even as Ms. Thompson shed her face mask, she called it sensible to slow down indoor dining.
“Out here, there is a breeze,” she said. “You know, there’s air moving.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio, worried that large crowds might risk transmission of the coronavirus, had kept the city’s 14 miles of beaches closed even as temperatures rose — along with frustration from long-quarantined New Yorkers.
“This is something people have been waiting patiently for — maybe not always patiently for — but it’s here,” Mr. de Blasio said at his Wednesday news briefing.
The mayor also said that in late July the city would open 15 of its 53 free outdoor pools in communities “hit hardest” by the virus and furthest from beaches. It was a partial reversal of his announcement in April that the pools, a vital cooling option in many lower-income neighborhoods, would not open.
Even as suburban beaches opened for swimming on Memorial Day weekend, Mr. de Blasio emphasized that the city’s beaches — which include such well-known spots as Coney Island in Brooklyn and Orchard Beach in the Bronx — were uniquely vulnerable to virus transmission.
With an estimated million visitors total on a hot day, they are some of the country’s most crowded shorelines, and people largely access them via subways and buses.
The beaches at Coney Island were only partially full on Friday morning, and the water was even less crowded.
Olga Vlasenko, 35, a home health aide, splashed around in a black swimsuit and a pink Yankees hat.
“It’s wonderful, I feel that I’m cooling off, refreshed, that I have a little more freedom,” he said.
However, the specter of corona kept her, “a little bit nervous,” she said.
“But we keep distance,” she said. “You can see we don’t crowd each other.”
Brighton Beach was more crowded with sunbathers and swimmers than Coney Island on Friday, which made it more challenging for Paul Hirschorn to swim with his 4-year-old daughter, who asked him repeatedly about sharks.
“There’s no sharks, sweetheart,” he said as she played in the surf. The horror movie was not “Jaws” but “Contagion.”
“It’s not as comfortable as it would be without Covid,” said Mr. Hirschorn, 38, a chief technical officer who lives in Brighton Beach. “It feels just quasi-normal.”
On Wednesday at Rockaway Beach, the air smelled of sea salt and suntan lotion before thunderstorms rolled in.
Ed Westley, 76, of Queens, took his first swim of the season and saw a pod of dolphins breach and frolic in the water.
Kasey Gustaveson, 18, a surfer from Queens, said that being in the water, “You feel like corona never happened.”
Still, worries lingered about a possible backslide in New York State, where, after reining in the virus, there have been a few alarming outbreaks, such those at a house party and graduation party in the suburbs just north of the city.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is requiring visitors from more than a dozen states, including the nation’s three largest — California, Florida and Texas — to quarantine for 14 days after arriving in New York.
“I just hope it’s safe; we’ll see how it plays out,” said Dragan Jenovac, 53, a crane operator from Queens visiting Rockaway Beach on Wednesday. “I’m a little concerned it’s coming back.”
Nearby, Sal Cirone, 38, a baker from Queens, said the beach afforded him the opportunity to shed his mask and gloves and feel “somewhat normal.”
“We’re in the open,” he said. “We’re not really next to anybody.” Still, he said of the pandemic, “It’s always in the back of your mind.”
As the first deputy commissioner of the city’s Department of Parks, Liam Kavanagh, put it, “The beaches are going to look different from what they normally do.”
Think: “Baywatch,” pandemic style.
Lifeguards will patrol the shoreline in masks and carry waist packs containing a face mask, gloves and hand sanitizer.
Hundreds of city workers, deployed as social distancing ambassadors, will hand out masks, keep space between beachgoers, tally beachgoers to prevent overcrowding, tend beach entrances to limit capacity and, if necessary, direct people to less crowded sections.
Beachgoers must keep at least six feet apart and wear face coverings when on the sand or the boardwalk.
“We don’t want it to turn into heavy-handed enforcement,” Mr. Kavanagh said, adding that education, not discipline, was the goal.
Restrooms will operate at half-capacity, and boardwalk concessions must offer to-go service only.
In May, when the city was an epicenter of the outbreak and still under lockdown, Mr. de Blasio, citing concerns that crowds could lead to the spread of the virus, said beaches would not open for bathing but would be available for limited visits by local residents.
Once the mayor hinted, around Memorial Day, that beaches might open late, “It turned into a sprint” to open the beaches, Mr. Kavanagh said, and city officials began working furiously behind the scenes to prepare for a possible opening.
Beach preparations typically begin in January with the recruitment, training and certification of lifeguards, and expand in March with beach preparations.
“All that was thrown up in the air because of the coronavirus pandemic,” Mr. Kavanagh said.
A main challenge was coming up with enough lifeguards to open beaches before the Fourth of July, said Henry Garrido, executive director of District Council 37, the union that represents parks workers.
“You don’t just flip a switch and open the beaches,” he said.
Finally, the city certified 512 lifeguards. More than 600 are usually employed, Mr. Garrido said, and this season’s shortage could mean a reduction in swimming areas.
But Mr. Kavanagh said: “There’s plenty of space for everyone. There’s plenty of ocean and there’s room to spread out.”
Janet Fash, 60, a chief lifeguard at Rockaway Beach, said some lifeguards had a “bit of trepidation” about returning to work, partly because of the lack of pandemic-related training or guidelines.
Close contact with swimmers during rescues would probably be avoided since lifeguards typically swim a flotation buoy out for the swimmer to hang onto, she said. Still, lifeguards will try to limit rescues by being more adamant about keeping swimmers away from deeper water and rip currents.
On the beach issue, Mr. de Blasio tried to strike a difficult balance between maintaining public safety and providing a critical relief valve in a city with limited cooling options.
He insisted that large beach crowds might endanger the strict social distancing that has helped bring down infection rates, and kept the beaches closed, even as Mr. Cuomo coordinated with officials in New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware to open state beaches in the region.
Opponents of Mr. de Blasio’s decision countered that there was a low risk of transmitting the virus outdoors. They also called opening the city’s beaches crucial at a time when many outdoor events, summer programs and family vacations are canceled, and conventional cooling centers and many other air-conditioned spaces are closed.
There was also backlash from municipalities outside the city who criticized the mayor’s decision and closed their beaches to New York City residents under the belief that an exodus of sun-starved New Yorkers might overwhelm their seasides and jeopardize social distancing.
Critics said banning swimming would create a problem of its own as the hottest days of summer arrived and New Yorkers poured out of boiling apartments in search of relief.
In late May, a 24-year-old man drowned while trying to swim off Rockaway Beach, and on Tuesday, an 82-year-old woman was found at 8 a.m. on the shoreline near Beach 17th Street in nearby Far Rockaway.
While lifeguards would not have been on duty during these times under normal conditions, some people pointed to such incidents as proof that simply banning swimming, with no lifeguards, would lead to a surge in drownings.
But politics was far from the mind of Ruby Deliote, Ms. Thompson’s mother, as she stood on Rockaway Beach on Wednesday.
“I haven’t been out for a long time,” Ms. Deliote, 65, said. “I feel like I’m free again.”
Nate Schweber contributed reporting.
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