the pool tour

Photo: Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Swimming pools in New York City. I arrived here and basically they immediately pumped up the heat. June saw a week of 40 degree days. Welcome to the city.

So I was on the search for a swimming pool. I would have been happy with any puddle but my inquiries were continuously met with, 'Oh, no when I'm hot I just take a shower.' Cool.

Sometimes Australians seem really naive overseas. I know I look like this all the time. We expect things to be the same as home. Hot = swim. Simple. We live good lives.

Anyway it turns out that there are swimming pools in New York City. They are outlandish, romanesque, palatial. And for a very good reason. Public swimming pools are free in NYC. They are for the poor. The poor who don't leave the city during the summer. The poor who don't have a house in The Hamptons, let alone a caravan park site in Lorne.

The really lovely Olympic pools were built in the 1930s when the WPA decided it needed to get the kids out of the East river. Too many were drowning, dying from parasites, diseases, rats...
So they built 11 huge pools, spread out over the 5 boroughs. And they were visions. Visions of European splendour, architectural escapism from the slums. The message being that even the working class could swim like royalty.

So it all seems so Robin Hood - the poor getting even, getting given castles. But something doesn't quite stick. Unless I am so much a product of pay-as-you-go that I couldn't possibly understand a time and a place when governments provided. Either way we are going to go on a little tour.

I am going to swim in every public swimming pool in NYC.

And then I will report back.