One of the most popular summer activities of my generation was to go to the beach to get tan. Women lubricated their skins with baby oil and virtually fried under a blazing sun, rotating to roast every square inch, sure to leave no skin untanned. Men strutted about with tan musculature, also perfectly and evenly toasted.

New York City has a plethora of beaches – Coney Island, Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach, Riis Park, and the Rockaways, all accessible by public transportation. My personal choice was always to venture a bit further out of city limits to Jones Beach and Robert Moses on Fire Island. For those who did not want to leave home, there was tar beach – the NYC rooftop. From the New York Times:

“Tar beach,” as all roof rats know, is the urban alternative to the Hamptons on a hot summer day; it’s as near as the flight of stairs outside the apartment door. The 1930’s seem likely as a birth date, because it was around then that the suntan became fashionable for the masses. According to “The City in Slang” by Irving Lewis Allen, getting a tan on tar beach was often the preparation for a trip to Coney Island. “By the 1940’s,” he wrote, “city rooftops, those ersatz beaches, were given the fictitious place name tar beach, alluding to the black tarred and graveled rooftops.

And absolutely de rigueur was the need to get color. Come springtime, examination of each other’s skin invariably led to comments like you need some color, I need to get some color, or some other variant expressing the dire need of a suntan. The desire for light or dark skin color is both time and culture based. Dark skin has been associated with the lower class, where work would have commonly been outdoors. In Asia, light skin is still prized for this reason. White skin has been desirable until the 20th century, when the therapeutic benefits of the sun and vitamin D began to be recognized. Coco Chanel is often credited with the desire for darker skin when she accidentally got sunburnt visiting the French Riviera in the 1920s. From that time on, sunbathing became popular as we saw the bikini of the 1940s and Coppertone’s iconic ad with a little blond girl and her cocker spaniel tugging on her bathing suit bottoms, sunglasses, sunscreens, and SPF.

Recently, an old college friend and native New Yorker (now transplanted out west) was making one of his periodic visits to NYC. Inevitably, his love of the ocean means a requisite visit somewhere to a city beach. On this visit, three of us found ourselves touring the beautiful seaside community of Belle Harbor on the Rockaway Peninsula of Queens.

After decades of seeking the suntan, we now live in a world of ozone depletion and concerns of premature aging and skin cancer. Whereas 30 years ago we would have set ourselves up on the beach in order to maximize sun and get some color, we now canvassed the boardwalk for any scrap of shade.

At Beach 118th Street, we found a small spot against the back railing of the boardwalk by a lone conifer tree with just enough shade for the three of us. Here, we spent the afternoon in gorgeous weather chatting about old times, relationships, and other matters, some grave and some inconsequential, enjoying the peacefulness and beauty – rare commodities in New York City. As the day passed and conversation ensued, I reflected how, as always, some things remain the same, some change, and some change back. A lone lifeguard under a bright orange umbrella joined us in a world that has seen Sunners and Shunners…

More on beaches: Teleportation, The Hamptons, Plum Beach, The Shore