Public Pools - Red Hook - Jail

Again not fashion related, but it's what aspiring fashion designers do that's important.

This weekend found me zipping up the Saw Mill with David to see their big and spooky house for the Elisabeth Shue movie he's working on, "Fist Born," a creepy thriller/wake-up call to husbands (and women who live in big lonely houses with their newborns) about post-partum depression/psychosis.

That adventure was followed by my brother's co-birthday with his girlfriend at the public pool in Red Hook. A highlight was seeing my brother's friend, who also happens to be a chief architect of Blogger! I was weak in the knees to be in the presence of such a coder. Imagine: I was able to pester him with all sorts of questions like "What's that link field for? Are you going to Wysiwyg it? What do you like better: ASP or PHP? What do you do in your 20% project time?" For a girl-geek-in-training, what a dream. Follow him and his Blogger developments here.

Ah Red Hook. Home of yummy ethnic food, tow yards, and the public pool. "No one goes there! It's unbelievable!" says my brother. David, on the other hand, familiar with the area for the filming of Kevin Bacon's "Loverboy", knew otherwise. What we did NOT realize was how a NY public pool operated. If you want to know how Judith Miller might have felt when she entered prison, read on.

Rule #1: your entry is free, but bring a lock and towel
Rule #2: you cannot enter the pool area unless you have showered. otherwise, if you need to make sure your friends are there, a pool staff person must escort you past 3 policemen and a young boy requesting that his brother be paged because he's lost him
Rule #3: don't even try calling your friends to make sure they are inside, because cell phones are not allowed
Rule #4: if you have one lock, but are a two people, one being a boy and the other a girl, the boy must strip to his bathing suit to put in the girl's bag, as she's the one who's going to be in charge of locking the bag in a locker (I made that rule up)
Rule #5: t-shirts must be white, or no t-shirt at all in the pool area
Rule #6: boy's bathing suits must have a lining, or they cannot enter the building that houses the pool
Rule #7: no running, or "come back next summer," as told to us by a still petrified little boy
Rule #8: change in the large, gymnasium size locker room and lock your stuff
Rule #9: no tennis shoes allowed in the pool area. water shoes only
Rule #10: shower before entering pool
Rule #11: shake your towel for the pool guards right before entering pool area

Yeah! You're in the pool! Now listen up:

Rule #12: half the pool is for laps. there are no lane lines, so it looks like a great body of water to play in. it's not. swim laps, NOW!
Rule #13: while in water, move at all times
Rule #14: no boy-girl contact, no boy-boy contact, no girl-girl contact
Rule #15: no hanging on the one lane line. duh.

Have fun! This is the safest environment in the country! Safer than any airport or any anal midtown office building.