The lost beaches

Part 4

by Jason Gay with Sarah McNaught

To date, the rehabilitation of Boston's beaches has remained something of a secret. That's because these city beaches aren't exactly oases: they are surrounded by highway overpasses, train tracks, loading docks, airport strips, row houses, storefronts, and miles of pavement.

But there's something very unpretentious and satisfying about these urban beaches. Most people in the Greater Boston area never think to visit them, and it's their loss. Though they won't find rolling sand dunes, they will find local color, and plenty of it -- working mothers, construction laborers, and elderly men with fading navy tattoos, smoking cigars the size of billy clubs. Boston beaches are pleasingly yuppie-free.

Certainly people whose idea of a beach is defined by Bar Harbor or Nantucket may not be attracted to city beaches, which don't offer much in the way of solitude or sweeping vistas. For instance, earplugs aren't a bad idea at East Boston's Constitution Beach; it's sandwiched between the Blue Line and a landing strip at Logan Airport. Tenean directly faces the Seymour's Ice Cream factory and rusting chain-link fences. And at Wollaston Beach, a long concrete seawall attracts more beach chairs than the sand does.

But Winthrop Beach has surfers. On a windy day, swells at this rocky beach -- just north of the Deer Island wastewater treatment plant -- attract a small, loyal brigade of boarders like Chris Carlson, an affable, barrel-chested local who has surfed in Boston Harbor for five years.

"It's just a few local boys -- about 10 of us," says Carlson. "When people see me with my board, they're real surprised to hear I'm surfing here in Winthrop. It's our little secret."

The promise of clean water, Carlson says, has brought the people back. City dwellers who would never have considered a city beach in the '70s or '80s are finding themselves parked on a blanket in Southie or Quincy, soaking up the sun.

The rejuvenation of Boston's beaches is not over. Wollaston's water woes remain, and there are major construction projects planned for bathhouses at Constitution and Carson Beaches. Malibu Beach needs to solve its growing sea-grass problem. Winthrop Beach could stand to lose about three million rocks and get a few truckfuls of sand. And the public is just beginning to appreciate the three harbor islands -- Lovell's, Peddock's, and George's -- managed by the MDC.

If people keep coming back to the city shores, it will do more than cool off the population at large. Boston's beaches can reconnect the city and its waterfront in ways not seen since the middle of this century. Talk all you want about booming oceanfront development, depressed Central Arteries, and the return of marine life, but nothing will symbolize Boston Harbor's recovery more than thousands of people splashing around -- safely -- in the city's salt waters.

Part 5

Jason Gay and Sarah McNaught can be reached at jgay[a]phx.com and smcnaught[a]phx.com, respectively.