Strongly Worded

Life's A Beach

Boston is not a beach-oriented city, and if you're experiencing beach-going urges, you're most likely to go to one of a handful of places: Cape Cod (this is an extremely preppy, expensive, and time-consuming undertaking), or a gentrified fishing village like Rockport or Manchester. Despite the fact that the city is built right on the water, people do not tend to swim or sunbathe right around town. So living in Boston and getting your beach on generally means planning a whole day traveling to a "real" beach, avoiding traffic/crowds, eating fried clams (or lobster if possible), and wearing a layered ensemble to account for the extreme temperature differentials between the air-conditioned car/restaurant and the actual seashore.

It was 86 degrees out today, and my delightful Israeli conversation partner, Ziv, and his wife, Zsipi (OM and I refer to them as Z squared) suggested that we hit Nahant Beach, which Ziv said was highly rated on yelp.com. OM has lived in this area for most of his life and never been to Nahant, a working-class city of Boston's North Shore. We expected it to suck: a gritty urban backdrop, possibly a dollop of medical waste, maybe a hairy high school principal sunning himself. We wondered if we were better off going to some other more precious destination. But we were up for adventure, and happy to be proven wrong.

At the same time, we wanted to manage the expectations of Z&Z, who had never visited a New England (much less a city) beach. Without being a hater, I tried to intimate that "it might be a bit cold for swimming" when we picked up Z&Z, and they were both wearing swimsuits, and expecting a 4 star Yelp experience, while OM and I were hoping not to step on a syringe.

When we got to the beach the tables turned fast. OM and I were struck by how adequate it was. It seemed, to us, that it had the right amount of sand and water and sun. The beach was quite long and wide and sandy, and it was mostly clean (though I did not check the water quality online beforehand). It was less than 30 minutes away, traffic and parking were definitely manageable for noon on the first hot day of the season. This description makes it sound idyllic or even nice - and there was nothing nice about it at all. It wasn't a place we would choose to go, but it wasn't nearly as bad as we'd expected.

Z&Z, however, were underwhelmed. They found the sand dirty, and the beach itself undeveloped. We discussed the fact that there were no cafes or bars or cool places to hang out - just a kitschy restaurant at one end near the parking lot; no place to rent a chaise or sun umbrella; no flowers or landscaping or anything.

As we walked along the beach, Z&Z stopped in their tracks. What the hell? Are those horse shoes those people are throwing? They had never seen a game of horseshoes before, which was natural enough, I now realize, but I never thought of horseshoes as a uniquely American thing before. Apparently they don't have seagulls in Israel either; but Zsipi recognized the sound from one of her relaxation tapes.

And the kicker? The tide was out, exposing a long slick expanse of wet sand. OM pointed out where high tide would eventually reach, and then OM and I learned that the Mediterreanean doesn't have tides (well, technically it has negligible, "feeble" tides), and so in one afternoon we discovered that:

1) Nahant Beach is a fairly decent city beach
2) Not all oceans/seas have tides
3) Horseshoes is an American game
4) There are no seagulls in Israel

I'm not sure who learned more today: the locals or the "foreigners."

Posted by Dori at 10:21 PM