The coolest pools in town are getting too hot to handle.
On a recent Saturday scorcher, the rooftop common space of One North Fourth, a luxury rental building in Williamsburg, was wall-to-wall revelers, dancing and weaving to music so loud it it threatened to puncture the eardrums – or the Instagram-shaped swan-shaped pool float ready to float.
Kevin, 29, a resident of the building who works in real estate, had been planning on spending a serene day by the pool amid the recent heat wave, but he could barely find a chair, let alone dip a toe in the water. The deck was covered in sweaty bodies, some of which did not appear to belong.
“It’s not just residents, it’s people who know there’s a pool and come up,” Kevin, who declined to give his last name, told the Post.
With rising temperatures and a series of shark attacks making local beaches less appealing, New Yorkers are diving headfirst into private pools in luxury buildings this summer. But the tides aren’t calm: Overcrowding sparks conflict across the city as residents and trespassers looking to party at the pool go to war with those who want to enjoy calm waters and a pool without excessive consumption of alcohol and vomit.
“It’s free for everyone,” Kevin said of the pool, which he pays $65 a month to use, along with other building amenities like a yoga room. That’s on top of the $4,750 a month rent he pays for a one-bedroom apartment.
“The building is not cheap. You pay for a certain level of peace and quiet,” Kevin said, noting that he can’t even score a lounge chair on the weekends before the bikini-clad, bucket-hat crowd descends.
At nearby 420 Kent, another Williamsburg luxury building, a trail of glass bottles from the night before littered the seventh-floor outdoor patio on a recent afternoon and another party was just getting started. Drunken behavior has become such a problem that building management recently had to send out a note discouraging fraternity antics. An unnamed resident said he recently saw vomit in a public area, although it’s unclear if anyone swam in the pool.
“When people party irresponsibly and love, get too drunk and throw up. Then it gets in the way of everyone’s fun,” the resident said, noting that they’re not a total joy. “I’m all for people being able to party — that’s what the pool, and it’s summer. ”
Even those who don’t live in a building with a pool call the blame. Joseph Bonvouloir, 26, founder and CEO of an asset management company, pays around $300 a month to access Equinox Hudson Yards’ expansive pool. So far he’s been left cold by the crowd. “On weekends, if I’m not there at dawn, the waiting time is about four hours just to get a chair,” he complains.
Wet and wild scenes have some tenants and potential members cutting and running, before signing paperwork.
Last month, Dennis Shirshikov, 32, was looking for an apartment on the Upper West Side.
He wanted a luxury building with a pool, but when he stepped foot in the indoor pool on a Thursday afternoon at an upscale building on West 87th Street, he was shocked by what he saw. There was a mix of Gen Z and millennial sunbathers screaming and splashing, leaving a trail of empty beer cans in their wake.
“The pool itself was unruly,” Shirshikov, a father of three young children, told The Post. “It was a fellowship night on a Thursday afternoon,” he said.
Shirshikov, a strategist at Awning.com, a real estate firm for investors, knew he could never have his kids around the heckling and moved on to the next list.
Next month, he will move into a building near Lincoln Center, where he says things are more civilized.
“I’m going to do laps after work, relax and sit quietly,” Shirshikov said. “People stay in their own lane.”
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