While Members Catch Rays, Beach Clubs Catch Government Scrutiny

New York Times ^ | August 31, 2009 | Manny Fernandez

[reaganaut1]

...

The Silver Gull is one of the few private beach clubs left in New York, a 46-year-old throwback in the Breezy Point section of Queens which, despite the state of the economy and the plethora of free beaches in the region, continues to serve as a summer getaway for a few thousand New Yorkers. Its membership is made up largely of middle-class families and retired couples from Brooklyn and Queens, all of whom pay from $715 to $4,260 to rent a bath cabin, cabanette or cabana for the summer season, along with a membership fee of $390 to $465 per child, senior citizen or adult.

And there is one unusual perk that goes unmentioned in the membership application: the use of a private club on public, federal parkland. The Silver Gull and another nearby club, the Breezy Point Surf Club, sit on the National Park Service’s Gateway National Recreation Area. In 2007, the inspector general for the federal Department of the Interior criticized the park service for allowing exclusive clubs like the Silver Gull “to monopolize desirable locations” and for renewing the clubs’ permits without proper environmental-impact reviews.

Now, the long-term future of the Silver Gull is uncertain.

In April, the park service and the principal operator of the two clubs, Tom August, reached an agreement that allows the Silver Gull and the Breezy Point Surf Club to remain open three more summer seasons, a deal brokered with the assistance of Representative Anthony D. Weiner and Senator Charles E. Schumer. Parks officials are creating a new management plan for the Gateway that will decide the fate of the two clubs beyond the 2011 summer season.

[reaganaut1]

Liberals believe the rich should vacation on Martha's Vineyard, but the middle class should know its place, which apparently is not at the beach.

The clubs are paying the government in $700,000 a year in fees. Why shut the clubs and throw away that money? If private clubs on federal land are so terrible, why not sell the land?

[mia]

It’s all about control. Those middle class families are more fortunate than others, so the others should have the same benefits the middle class families have paid for.

[FreedomNotSafety]

It is only private in the same sense that Sam's Club is private. So it is o’k to set aside millions of acres that are only accessible by special permits given freely to favored groups but impermissible to grant paid access to the masses?

How can you have a “majority” if it is Italian, Jewish, and Irish? I thought all three were minority groups. Is there some favored group missing?

I know I am missing some PC angle what is it? How is this different then all of the concessions granted in practically every national park I have ever visited?

[reaganaut1]

How can you have a “majority” if it is Italian, Jewish, and Irish? I thought all three were minority groups. Is there some favored group missing? I know I am missing some PC angle what is it

It's under your nose. Italians, Jews, and Irish are white, and middle-class white people must be stomped on. I'm a brown person myself (Asian-Indian), and if I lived near NYC our family would probably join. But if not enough black and brown people belong to a certain insitution, even if there is no discrimination, the elites try to crush it. It's ok for the elites to summer in mostly white Martha's Vineyard, where most of the brown people are hired help and middle class whites are absent.

[FreedomNotSafety]

But wouldn't these be mostly liberal or democratic leaning white people? I can't work up a great deal of sympathy but it still strikes me as wrong for some reason.

I always thought we would ultimately divide by ideology and not skin color. I guess the liberals are redrawing the lines.

[VeniVidiVici]

I’m willing to bet that Breezy Point was there before the National Park Service.

[Buckeye McFrog]

this reminds me of that Michael Moore clip where he loaded up a bunch of public housing residents from the Bronx into a boat to storm a private town beach in Connecticut (which, I believe, put private beaches in that state out of business for being “racist”)

[Oztrich Boy]