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Mostly Cloudy Memorial Day weekend brings large crowds to Long Beach
Officials: turnout a ‘terrific start’ to summer season
Residents and tourists flocked to the city’s beaches over the Memorial Day weekend for a sample of the upcoming summer season, and the city described the turnout as “terrific.”
“[T]he whole town was mobbed, even in the West End,” said Chief of Lifeguards Paul Gillespie, adding that the 120 lifeguards on duty reported no incidents. “… [B]oth ends of the town brought in good crowds. We have a lot of new things to do around Long Beach, and so many spots to visit. With the amount of things to do, all we need is to have good weather to show what this town is about.”
The weekend kicked off a beach season that follows last year’s record summer, in which the city netted $4.3 million in beach pass revenue and attracted an average of about 25,000 visitors to the shore each weekend. But City Manager Jack Schnirman said that while the city saw record revenue, the beach park typically loses nearly $1 million per season, and bad weather last June slowed beach pass sales — especially of daily passes, which accounted for $2.8 million in sales. As a result, the city raised a number of beach pass fees and increased daily pass prices from $12 to $15 last month, though the cost of dailies remained the same for residents.
With the price hike for beach admission, as well as new food concessions at the comfort stations and other amenities, city officials said they are optimistic that more revenue will be generated this year, and that the weekend was a good start. “We’ve worked so hard to make [the beach] a central attraction for Nassau County, and it’s turning out,” said City Council President Len Torres. “God willing, we’ll have this weather that’ll work with us and we will have a record summer again.”
And, though season beach passes have been on sale since the beginning of May, Council Vice President Anthony Eramo said that the cold weather over the past few weeks gave residents little incentive to buy ahead of time. As summer weather rolled in last Saturday, beachgoers rushed to ticket booths, creating long lines to purchase beach passes, which Eramo attributed to a holiday weekend spike in sales. Passes went on sale May 10, and officials said that as of Wednesday, the city had taken in $1.3 million in daily, seasonal and Long Island Rail Road sales, a 30 percent increase over the same period last year.
Residents have complained about overcrowded beaches over the past few years, but Rich Papetti, who has lived in Long Beach since 1981, said the bigger issue is where the summer crowds go at night, filling the many bars near his West End home on Friday and Saturday nights.
“The crowds for the last dozen years just seem to keep getting bigger, and they’re just a generation that is a bit disrespectful and uncaring that people live in the area,” Papetti said. “Beech Street was like Times Square.”
He said he has seen bar patrons urinating on the streets, parking illegally and trespassing on private property. He added that although the Police Department has been responsive to his requests for stepped-up enforcement in the area, the crowds are becoming more difficult to handle.
With the large number of visitors over the holiday weekend, police officers also began enforcing the new smoking ban in the city’s parks and on the boardwalk and beaches. The City Council approved the new ordinance on May 3, joining the 261 municipalities across the country with smoke-free beaches and 1,263 cities and counties with smoke-free parks, the city said.
“This weekend, because the ordinance was passed so recently, we didn’t have signs made up yet, so we put up temporary signs and we gave warnings this weekend,” Long Beach Police Commissioner Michael Tangney explained. “Once you were warned and you smoked, then you could get a ticket, but we’re trying to be kinder and gentler with it.”
Resident Ingrid Dodd, a co-founder of the Long Beach International Film Festival, was among those who hit the beach over the weekend. “This was the most exciting Memorial Day weekend, because the weather was gorgeous and Long Beach looked absolutely stunning,” Dodd said. “I’ve never seen the whole city just look so cool and hip and amazing, between the new ticket booths that are painted and the … concession stands, and it really gave everybody a jolt of excitement for the summer.”
Though some residents resent the crowds of Manhattanites and other tourists who flood Long Beach during the peak season, Dodd said she enjoys seeing travelers enjoying the City by the Sea. “Long Beach is a transient community in the summer — people come from all over the world,” she said. “I love all the different languages I’m hearing on the beach. I just think it’s really cool.”
