Rockaway Beach (Queens, NY)

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    The Beaches Are Open in New York City. So Are the Lifeguard Chairs.

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    Beach season began Saturday with 280 lifeguards, well short of what the city needs, amid a yearslong staffing shortage. But more will come by summer’s peak.New York City’s 14 miles of public beaches opened for the season on Saturday, moving the city one step closer to the official start of summer.And with the opening of the beaches came the lifeguards.Before 10 a.m., groups of them made their way to posts across the city, from Orchard Beach in the Bronx to Rockaway Beach in Queens. Not long after, one group sprang into action on Coney Island.“We’ve already got someone on the jetty,” one lifeguard said to another. And then they were off, jogging out to the rocks, whistles blaring.The city had 280 lifeguards certified as of Saturday, according to the Parks and Recreation Department. That’s well short of full staffing for the city’s beaches and pools, but 50 more than were available on Memorial Day weekend last year. City officials say that’s a somewhat encouraging sign as the city struggles to address a yearslong lifeguard shortage — a common affliction among parks departments across the country.Daniel Jimenez, one of the lifeguards on duty on Coney Island.Danielle Amy for The New York TimesA lifeguard chair outlines the rules.Danielle Amy for The New York TimesSue Donoghue, the parks commissioner, said she expected overall staffing to grow over the next few weeks as students finish classes and summer officially arrives. There are 374 new lifeguards currently enrolled in training classes, according to the department, and returning lifeguards are expected to join up in time for the height of summer. Last year, the city had certified more than 900 lifeguards by Fourth of July weekend, up from just 230 at the start of beach season.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      From Here to Eternity, a Choreographer Sinks Into the Sea

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      Faye Driscoll uses the ocean as her collaborator in a sunset dance celebrating the 10th anniversary of Beach Sessions.Faye Driscoll has been spending a lot of time at the ocean, in the ocean, with the ocean — watching it as it stretches into the horizon. What if, she wondered, instead of poisoning and polluting the ocean, we were able crawl inside it? To merge the water in our bodies with the water of the sea?For this summer’s iteration of Beach Sessions, a performance series at Rockaway Beach now in its 10th year, Driscoll was drawn, at first, to the choreography of beachgoers — swimming, lying on the sand, lugging their gear. She was also drawn to the lifeguards, decked out in bright orange. But then her gaze shifted.“What I really sunk into was the sea,” she said in a video interview from Rockaway, where she has lived this summer. “Just daily staring: looking at this vast horizon, this great mystery and feeling the sand and the wind.”“Oceanic Feeling” will be performed at Beach 106 at 6:30 p.m. to make use of the phases of twilight.On morning walks, though, she couldn’t ignore the plastic. “I think climate crisis is on all of our minds,” she said. “It’s not like I came here thinking, I’m going to make a piece addressing that” — and she hasn’t — “but I started thinking, what would it mean to put my body on the altar toward the ocean?”Driscoll, an experimental choreographer, has built a body of work embracing a primal, sensorial side of dance; in last year’s “Weathering,” dancers performed on a rotating platform, like a raft, on which they fought to survive, eventually morphing into a sculpture of flesh. In “Oceanic Feeling,” to be performed Saturday at Beach 106 at Rockaway beginning at 6:30 p.m., the dancers, succumbing to the elements — sand, water, wind — melt into one another.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Angry Birds Take on Drones at New York City Beach

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      American Oystercatchers are attacking drones that have been deployed to scan for sharks and swimmers in distress.One is a distinctive shorebird, slightly smaller than an average sea gull, with a bright orange bill that pries open clams, oysters and other shellfish. The other is a remote-controlled gadget with rotating blades.In the skies above Rockaway Beach in Queens, bird and drone are not, it seems, coexisting in harmony.Just as New Yorkers flock to the beach to escape the sweltering summer heat, American Oystercatchers have taken to attacking a fleet of drones deployed by city officials to scan for sharks and swimmers in distress.The aerial conflict between animal and machine is raising concerns about the safety of the shorebirds, as they aggressively pursue the buzzing drones in defense of their nests, city officials and bird experts said.“They fly toward the drone, they’ll vocalize, and they might even try to swoop at it,” said Katrina Toal, deputy director of the wildlife unit at the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. “The danger is to the birds, of course. They could strike the drone, injuring themselves.”The display of a shark-monitoring drone controller provides an aerial view of Jones Beach.Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More