Allow me, if you will, to rant about bad business models. Let's say you lived in a metropolitan area of, oh, 16 million or so people, and you started up a new ferry service to get some of those people from various locales in that metropolis to various other locales, via one of the busiest harbors in the country. Would you institute an advanced, automated ticket service? Or would you have one man get off the ferry boat at each stop and individually handle cash/ticket transactions with each and every individual passenger?

I went to Sandy Hook yesterday--part of the Gateway National Recreational Area--and all I got was a sunburn and a shredding of what little patience God gave me at birth. Adrienne and I met at Pier 11 in lower Manhattan at 10.40am, for the 11am Seastreak ferry to Highlands, NJ/Sandy Hook. That 11am ferry left Pier 11 at 12.45pm. We stood all that time in 90-degree sun, on blacktop, with no breeze. And, waiting in separate lines--she holding a place for us in the line to board the boat and me waiting in the ticket-buying line--we were talked to ad nauseum by irritating strangers. I was taught to not talk to strangers, and haughty New Yorker that I am, I still live by that invaluable lesson as much as possible. 'Cause you know, my presence isn't an invitation for you to speak.

When the boat finally arrived at the pier, one of the crew stood at the front of the line of 300 people waiting and individually sold us our tickets one person at a time. Good grief. Have these people never heard of the World Wide Web? We were near the front of the line so after we boarded the ferry we had to wait in the blistering sun for them to sell tickets to the 250 poor suckers behind us.

All this for just $31!

Once we got going, the ride itself was quite pleasant. The ferry goes through New York Harbor, between Governors Island and Brooklyn, by Lady Liberty, east of Staten Island, through the Verrazano Narrows and under its bridge, and out into the Atlantic. I'd never boated under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge before, and it was wonderful--a soaring, blue feat of engineering.

We pulled into the dock at Sandy Hook, and--single-file, now!--disembarked. A little school bus was waiting for us to take us to the beaches. You know, a short bus. The connotations here are so obvious I'm not going to bother lowering myself to make fun of special needs kids to point it out. Suffice it to say, I somehow found this an appropriate irony for a federally run program. I know the Federal Government is an easy target, but come on--a National Park in the metropolitan area of the nation's biggest city and one little school bus is what's waiting to bring the masses to the beaches? New Jersey readers, please call your Senators about this inadequacy!

And those hundreds of people who got on the boat after us? Yup, they got off ahead of us and we found ourselves at the back of the line for a tiny little bus. Our options: wait for god-knows how long for the bus, walk 6 miles to the biggest beach area, or walk "a short distance" to a smaller beach area there at the northern end of the island. Given the heat, the sun, and the lack of shade in the waiting area, we opted to walk locally to the smaller beach.

Ten minutes and ten gallons of sweat later, we arrived at a very clean, very wide beach. At last! After trudging across the hot sand, we threw our stuff down, stripped down to our swim suits, and ran to catch a wave! Wait a minute. Where are the waves?!?! Oh hold on, there's one--oh, did you blink? I'm sorry, but I've seen bigger waves in Lake Erie. After all this, it turns out that despite being on the ocean side of the island, and not the bay side, there are no goddamn waves at Sandy Hook. Thank you. Thank you very much.

The beach was lovely and Adrienne I read and slept and talked and ate our sandwiches and enjoyed ourselves. I mean, what else could we do? We were bummed about the ferry fiasco, and dreaded walking back, but it was of course lovely to be dug into the sand with a cooler full of fresh fruit and the first of what will probably be many very hot, humid, sunny summer days.

After a few swims in the cold Northern Atlantic, I needed to hit the concession stand to buy more water for us. The line at the concession stand when we arrived was very very long, but when I got back there later in the day it was reasonably short. But with just one service window open, and just two underpaid workers inside, I waited about 45 minutes in the blistering sun to buy my water (I upped the order from 2 bottles to 3 due to the heat, so perhaps their slowness is a purposeful trick to sell more).

I applied 40-spf sun-block at numerous times throughout the day. But in the end I fell asleep in the sun--though wearing a long-sleeve t-shirt and with my legs under my towel. So I have funny little sunburns on exposed areas--ankle, calf, shoulder, neck. Not a bad burn, though, so it's fine.

The ferry ride back was fine--we snagged seats in the boat's air-conditioned interior--but as we approached the beauty of the lower Manhattan skyline the captain announced that 34th Street would be the first stop, and Pier 11--our stop--would be second. Good lord, can these people not do anything right? The ferry ride to and from Sandy Hook is supposed to be half an hour each way. But we spent more time commuting, waiting, waiting, waiting, ferrying, walking, and back that the reality looks like this:

10am - 2pm travel
2pm - 4.30pm beach
4.30pm–7pm travel.
6.5 hours of travel for 2.5 hours of beach time. For $31.

Compare this to Jones Beach, which if you get the express LIRR train gets you Penn Station-to-sand in exactly 1 hour. For $11. Why? Well, the physical nature of trains v. boats (20 doors v. 1 door) is one factor, but imagine if they sold train tickets one at a time! No, you buy 'em in advance. And then, when the train lets you off at the Freeport station on Long Island there's a whole fleet of huge MTA busses to take you and your thousands of fellow travelers to the beaches. And as an added bonus, when you get to the ocean--it has waves!

So, two big thumbs down on Sandy Hook. Catch you next week at Jones.

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