A hairy new proposal for Manhattan pool managers to mull over
Last summer brought the typical sweltering heat to Manhattan that leads so many there to the cool waters of public pools. However, it led one man on a mission to make a change.
John Steinberg, a 62-year-old avid swimmer, was doing laps in the John Jay Pool last year when he swam into a clump of hair. Disgusted, he scooped it up and saved it for his new plan. When he got home he wrote the park commissioner a letter, requesting that a new regulation requiring the use of swim caps be imposed on the swimmers at John Jay Pool. The idea would be to start it there as a pilot program and eventually spread the new regulation to other Manhattan public pools. Along with the letter, he sent the clump of hair he had pulled out of the pool.
The response he got was not at all what he had been hoping for. The office of the parks commission denied his request for the new mandate. The reasons included the possibility that the new rule would discourage people from swimming and that bullying would increase with kids stealing each other’s caps.
“In my own opinion they (the parks commission) are loath to propose an unfair burden on people of limited means,” Steinberg says. “But a cap doesn’t cost that much, less than two dollars.”
Steinberg says he has not given up yet, though. His plan is to continue to try to negotiate with the man who runs the pool, which so far has not gotten him much further than his letter to the parks commissioner.
When asked about what he’ll do next to try and put this mandate in place he says, “I’ll probably give up when nothing happens and just swim in dirty water.”
