How I avoid paying for the beach
Ahh, spring has arrived — a reminder that I prefer going to the beach in the winter.
Exactly 10 years ago, I spent a day at Greenwich Point that is the high water mark of my many beach days. I strapped The Kid (then on the edge of 5 months) to my chest and introduced him to vistas of Stamford and Manhattan along the 2.25-mile loop. At the tip of the Point, I opened our Yellow Submarine diaper bag containing lunch in the form of sandwiches and unidentifiable mush the color of camouflage.
He wore a cap like he was selling newspapers to Bogie in 1943, along with a look that muttered, “this is embarrassing.” Which is exactly how he reflected on the matter when I showed him a tin-anniversary selfie Friday.
A Facebook posting of the image drew inevitable wisecracks about whether The Kid had a pass to get into the park. He doesn’t live in Greenwich, after all.
Greenwich will never shake its reputation for trying to keep outsiders from entering Greenwich Point. No one bothers to notice that most of the other beaches along the Gold Coast might as well be Fort Knox.
If you want to buy a one-time, prime time summer pass to Greenwich Point as a nonresident, it costs a reasonable $9, and an unreasonable $40 to park. You also can’t buy tickets at the door. Those are sold at the Eastern Greenwich Civic Center 6 miles away.
Passes are needed from May 1 through Oct. 31. The rest of the year, the beach is free to everyone.
A state lawmaker’s efforts to make fees more reasonable is a reminder of the sticker shock at Connecticut’s shores. Westport not only dings nonresidents with a season pass of $775, but limits sales to 335 buyers.
At $292.46, Stamford’s season pass for nonresidents is a bargain by comparison. But a daily pass is $42.50 per car on a weekday, jacked up to $69 on a weekend.
Those prices were raised two years ago to discourage out-oftowners crowding beaches during the early months of COVID. As a result, many visitors simply parked in surrounding neighborhoods to dodge the fee, drawing fire from residents.
A few years ago, I was taking a dawn walk around Cove Island Park in Stamford when I met a guy from the Bronx who arrived early to claim shade beneath a tree to host a birthday party for his daughter. The Kid wanted to know when he could crash the party. The dad was ecstatic that he skipped the entrance fee by arriving at daybreak. I crashed the party instead with the news that he was guaranteed to get pinched with an $80 ticket.
Today, beach access remains a Catch-2022. Raise the price too high and the neighborhoods get slammed. Offer an affordable rate and there may be no room left in the lots, or on the sand.
Greenwich’s reputation reached a low in July 1995, when filmmaker Michael Moore’s Fox show “TV Nation” mocked what was then a residents-only beach policy. Serendipitously, it aired five days after a quintet of Greenwich students were suspended for hiding a stealth and cowardly racist message beneath their yearbook photos.
Comedian Janeane Garofalo framed her “TV Nation” segment with the words “I always thought the ocean belonged to everyone. No one could actually own the beach. Even in Greenwich, where they own a lot of things.”
“What if residents in Arizona turned the Grand Canyon into a residents-only Grand Canyon?” she reasoned.
After her busload of New Yorkers were turned away at the gate, she returned with a flotilla to storm the beach under watch from the Coast Guard and Greenwich police. She and a few others swam to shore, only to be escorted to the exit.
“Enjoy your private beach, while it lasts,” Garofalo warned.
It did not. Before that autumn arrived, a court decision ruled against the policy. Appeals followed before the matter seemed to finally be settled for good in 2001, when the state Supreme Court determined resident-only beach ordinances were unconstitutional.
The courts did not address the matter of fees, leaving it to percolate for 22 years.
I’ve always felt a little defensive about Greenwich’s quandary. There is not much parking on those 147.3 acres and there’s only a single lane leading to the peninsula.
But the prices everywhere should be more reasonable. Let’s face it, there are no Connecticut rivals for Jones Beach ($10 to park), let alone Hanalei Bay.
Norwalk’s $40 per car rate for Calf Pasture is better than most. But I trained The Kid well. On Valentine’s Day 2016, temperatures dipped into the single digits. We went to Greenwich Point, where we were the only people there to see something you’ll never see in July: The surf was frozen.
The Kid, then 4, hurled a stone at the icy foam.
“It didn’t break,” he mused. He tried again. Then he stomped on it. No luck. Finally, he declared for the only time in his life, “I’m cold,” and we returned to the car.
A year later, in 2017, The Kid, now 5, got me up before 7 on an April Sunday to take a walk. We drifted 2 miles to the Stamford station, jumped aboard a random train, and walked 2 more miles from the East Norwalk station to Calf Pasture, where we enjoyed a car show and a day roaming the beach. By the time we got home, we’d been on our feet for most of 10 hours.
We returned to Greenwich Point Thursday afternoon. The booth was empty, but warned that the causeway was closed. A mist cloaked the park’s treasures. Now that The Kid is 10, I’d have had to strap him to my chest again to get him to put down his screen and contemplate winter’s climax.
Still, it was better than seeking solace among the distractions of jellyfish, loud music, skeeters, sunburn and sand in my shorts. And it was free.
The beach in winter. You should try it sometime.
Better yet, don’t bother. When it comes to the beach, I prefer social isolation.