Saturday September 04, 2004

Why the Beach?

As summer draws to a close — a summer in which I spent several weekends on the beach in Ventor, New Jersey, right next to Atlantic City — I was interested to find this account of why it ever occured to us hang out at the beach in the first place.

The idea that going to the beach was good for you was a creation of 18th-century Britain. Entrepreneurs keen to promote an alternative to the spa hit upon the idea that immersing people in cold salty water might be healthy. One of the first recorded bathing expeditions took to the North sea at Scarborough in 1627. A century later, a string of seaside alternatives to the spas at Bath and Buxton were well established. Before that, beaches had been regarded as hostile places, at best a working space for people who made their living from the sea: fishermen, smugglers, wreckers. Swimming for pleasure, and sunbathing, were unheard of.

(via Arts & Letters Daily.)