New Haveners don’t think of ourselves as living by the water, but we do. We’re right there on the Long Island Sound, and one of our city parks, Lighthouse Point, is a beach, with a lighthouse and an old-fashioned carousel. In the center of the city, we have a traditional New England town green, but it’s not unusual for seagulls to land on it, mixing with the pigeons. One of our best radio stations, WEHM, comes from Long Island, the signal zipping across the water, serving up indie rock and old Laurel Canyon fare to billionaire vacationers in the Hamptons and at the same time to me and my children at the Dairy Queen drive-through on Kimberly Avenue.
A few days back, I picked up Davey at school and took him to the Boston Post Road, in Milford, to run errands. The Boston Post Road has the power to make me very sad. The stretch I drive, about five miles long, is ugly and traffic-congested, lined on either side by spending opportunities of all kinds: big-box stores, small-box stores, strip-mall stores, stores we need, stores nobody needs, and uniquely American outfits that must be incomprehensible to people from other countries and cultures, like the “party zone” places that feed our children bad pizza and entertain them for an hour with arcade games and inflatable “bounce houses,” so that we don’t have to throw a low-fi party for them in our back yards. The Boston Post Road even has a store called Batteries + Bulbs, which sells batteries and bulbs. Every time I drive by it, I think about the clerk inside who has deep knowledge of the battery inventory and can find just the right AA battery for your gaming device. There are so many different jobs.
And that seemingly infinite variety of jobs, and spending opportunities, can, in the right light and at the right time of day, make me very happy. In the way of Dave Hickey essays, Stewart O’Nan’s Last Night at the Lobster, or the color photographs of Joel Sternfeld, the Boston Post Road as it passes through Orange and Milford is a celebration of uncurated capitalism at its most energized. Just imagine, it says to us, you can make a living selling batteries and bulbs. And then you notice how many stores on the Post Road cater to specific immigrant populations—South Asian groceries, for example—and the street becomes far more beautiful than the stately Long Island homes across the sound.
After I picked up Davey and drove the fifteen minutes to the strip, our first stop was the Barnes & Noble, so that he could use the bathroom. We then proceeded to a car wash that proved too expensive, forcing me to do some nifty reverse-gear driving to get out of there without paying or getting the car washed. Then we went to Once Upon a Child, to buy used size-5 clothing for a growing boy. And then we hit up Dip Top, for ice cream. It was in the high 80s, and I had driven past this ice cream joint many times, and it seemed high time to sample their goods. David got Cookie Monster ice cream, which he enjoyed, but he got “confetti sprinkles” on top—they are like very miniature Frisbees of sprinkleness—which proved a mistake, he decided. I got some version of coffee ice cream.
And then, leaving the ice cream shop and stepping out into the heat, it occurred to me that we were really close to the beach. I popped Anchor Beach into my GPS, and nine minutes later we were there. Anchor Beach is a public beach that principally serves the borough of Woodmont, which used to be a mostly Jewish summer resort community. Today, Woodmont is no longer that Jewish, and Anchor Beach serves whoever knows about it, which judging from the sparse crowds isn’t that many people. Even in deep July, it’s never that crowded, and parking is easy.
And on a May day, in the middle of the afternoon, there was almost nobody out. It was the perfect place for me and Davey to kick off our shoes, wade into the ocean, and climb some rocks. We stayed for about half an hour, then drove home with sand in our shoes. It was our unofficial first day of summer.
I live about twenty minutes from Anchor Beach, and about as far from Lighthouse Point, Silver Sands, and Stony Creek. I can get my feet in salt water much faster than most people who live in Los Angeles or San Diego. I don’t know why my neighbors and I don’t go more. Is it the lack of beach culture—surf shops and five-and-dimes and mini golf—to remind us? The way the concrete barrier of I-95 cuts us off from our maritime selves? The lack of any scenic drive along the coast, no Pacific Coast Highway to stoke our imagination? The lack of radio stations branded “The Wave” or “The Beach”?
No matter. We have only ourselves to blame. The sun is out. The ice cream trucks are coming, with their teenage help and ear-worm jingles. The water temp is climbing above 60 degrees. No excuses. Davey and me, we’ll be seeing you there.