St. Mary’s Recreation Center

***REVIEW FOR POOL ONLY***
Oops, I almost gave this aquatic facility three stars, then realized that it’s not the pool’s fault that I do not live way up in the Bronx. Also not the pool’s fault that I didn’t consult the printed schedule (available AT the rec center)…for the adult lap swim times seem to change at will every couple of weeks.
Having last confirmed via telephone (718−402−5155) that there was swimming from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, I took a trip there this past Tuesday.
From my work in Soho, I boarded the 6, switched to the 5, and took it to 149−3^rd Ave. Walked East on 149^th (with the big McDonald’s to my left across the street) and progressed past a whole bunch of discount clothing stores, discount DVD stalls, and Latin American bodegas… then past a creepy deserted lot with someone’s apparent haunted house project (a howling wolf with a bloody mouth next to a casket) behind a chain linked fence.
Took a right onto St. Ann’s, which borders a magnificently wild looking park whose mysterious hills prematurely closed out the last traces of the sun. Almost as was my experience visiting St. Johns pool in Brooklyn, I saw the basketball courts first, and here, too was an ice cream truck with its warbling tune making the rounds about uninterested b-​ballers on the crisp fall night.
Except this area was a lot nicer on account of the pastoral park. I walked a few more blocks past other facilities belonging to the Parks system, and kind of had to go up an alley-​like ramp to the recreation center. The entrance was in the back with a wide sweep of concrete in front of it; oddly inaccesible to cars (but this is a good thing).
The locker room had an extremely high ceilings. There was a pretty clean changing area with plenty of space. The lockers were the medium-​tall ones with hooks intact, and didn’t have filth on the bottoms. At one point, a lone woman walked in and started saying, «What are you looking at?» Involuntarily, I flinched, and she let out a belly laugh saying she had been yelling at her supervisor right outside the door. She then continued complaining about her day while I modestly got into my suit.
The bathrooms were in the next area down a long hall, and the showers in the area even farther down the same hall. Chilly. The floors of the toilet stalls were fillllthy; that brownish, damp, sticky filth that makes your whole body itch on contact. It was a relief to go to the showers, but I did not linger because the curtains looked too much like body bags or operating scrubs. I went into the one stall with a perpetually running spigot and a curtain that had been torn down. It took a while to saturate my suit.
Then, the doors to the pool were locked, and I knew something was wrong because I saw a bunch of teenagers and no lanes. I knocked desperately until a disturbingly overdeveloped teen came and let me in. The lifeguard told me that Tuesday was currently Family Swim. «Can I still swim here?» I asked. «No, it’s gotta be a family,» he said. I looked around, and saw no families… and the guard must have felt for me because he whispered, «But I’ll let you go today. You came a long way, right?» he chuckled.
Damn right.
The pool was surrounded by bleachers. It was clean, deep (8 ft.), and blue. Such a shame that there were no lanes and everyone was swimming across it sideways, but there was a semblance of order in the swimmers’ behavior that I really appreciated.
There were girls training with the lifeguard and dudes having breatholding contests in the quiet corners of the tank. Since this was my first swim since my 10K race, the environment gave me license to take it easy while still getting the blood flowing.
There’s something about the Bronx that’s really LOCAL. Being an obvious transplant to any part of this metropolis, I always feel sorely out of place but delighted to be there. The greatest discomfort isn’t in catcalls, but in silent stares and surprised glances. I won’t say it’s racial or economical. It’s just a feeling why I know I’m a foreigner on this turf and how they know I am as well. But I was welcomed at the pool, and at a pizza place on a corner of 149^th where I chased the rising bile for the Yankees on TV with bites of a tangy square of Grandma pizza.
The train home was long, but hey, it was direct on the 2 line. If I lived here, this would be my spot. I’d just have to call the VERY DAY I was going to swim laps just to make sure it was a lap day.