McCarren Park Pool: Long Lines, Fights, & Poop

by NowPublic Staff | July 16, 2012 at 01:02 pm

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McCarren Park Pool Reopens, Problems Immediately Begin

Williamsburg's McCarren Park Pool reopened on June 28, 2012 after a $50 million renovation. However, the pool's customers are also its worst enemies. After being closed for 28 years, McCarren Park Pool is serving as a stark reminder of why we can't have nice things:

Long lines: 1,500 sweaty hipsters might be lined up at once, waiting for a chance to cool off during the early-summer heat wave. Check out the video below to get an idea of how crowded the pool can get.
Fights: Gangs of teens have been attacking each other, lifeguards, and cops. That's what happens when they show up drunk and stoned.
Robberies: Someone is breaking into the McCarren Pool lockers. It would suck to have to walk home in your swimsuit.
Poop: The pool had to be shut down for half an hour on July 9 after someone pooped in the pool. NY Parks Dept. management euphemized it as a "diaper accident", but a cop who was on the scene said, "That was no baby diaper. It was a big piece of shit!"

Why is there not any footage online of the brown trout in McCarren Park Pool? After all McCarren Park sits between Williamsburg and Greenpoint in Brooklyn: we thought that smartphone ownership was a requirement to even enter the neighborhood.

So was a child actually allowed in the pool wearing a diaper that came loose, or did someone simply drop their kids off at the pool?

The description of video below predicts "urine soup". Instead we've been treated to fecal gazpacho. It's a shame, because, when you're facing near-100F heat with no air conditioner, a swimming pool would be a real treat. In fact, many of Greenpoint's long-term residents (as opposed to those new to the neighborhood due to gentrification) didn't want McCarren Park Pool reopened at all: they wanted it demolished, for the very reasons bullet-pointed above: the same stuff was going on in the Eighties.