Daring Enough to Bare It All for a New York Swim (Published 2013)

Lifeguards prepared to leave the easternmost tower at Jacob Riis Park beach, blowing shrill warnings to swimmers that they would no longer be watching them that Saturday evening.

For most, it signaled the end of a steaming summer day. But for some on land, more than a couple of them flushed from alcohol, it was the declaration they had been waiting for — to rush in, clothing optional.

Soon swimsuits hung like ascots around the necks of men and women in the waves. Cheering greeted a man streaking to the surf. Another, more tentative, took off his black underwear in the water, shrieking when his roommate ripped them from his hand and rushed ashore.

“Give them back!” he called out.

Skinny-dipping, a hot-weather pastime that calls to mind rustic swimming holes and summer camp double dares, has always been strongly correlated with extreme heat and an available body of water. But it is not often associated with New York’s miles of densely populated shoreline.

Here, an extra level of daring — or, possibly, intoxication — is needed to make the dive. Naked swimmers act quickly under cover of darkness or in permissive pockets of the city: at the gay-friendly patch of Riis beach in the Rockaways or at a marina on City Island where Ivy League sailing teams sometimes bare all. They are even found away from the shorelines, in Bushwick hostel hot tubs or Midtown office building water towers.

“It can be a little bit claustrophobic,” said Ida Benedetto, 28, of her water-tower dips with co-workers above their media company office. “I did this about twice a week for a summer.”