NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Monday, July 3, 2017, 4:10 AM

It was all so easy. Just some plywood, two-by-fours and screws to construct simple privacy walls to give male swimmers at Hamilton Fish Pool on the Lower East Side a place to change their clothes not in full public view.

Congratulations to the Parks Department for rectifying a sexist situation after we complained.

Thus all 36 of the citys main outdoor pools, which opened for the summer on Thursday, have full changing areas. While female swimmers have always had a real Ham Fish locker room (even equipped with a bench), long ago the boys/mens lockers were converted to a computer room. The guys were exiled to outdoor lockers fully exposed.

The choices for modest males were 1) use an out-of-the-way toilet stall or 2) arrive in your bathing suit and stay in your bathing suit or 3) try the old towel-around-waist-while-wiggling-your-suit-on-and-off technique.

The fix the workmen installed at Ham Fish last week is the same already in place at the Sunset Park, Highbridge and McCarren pools: A few wooden walls attached together. No floors or ceilings or electric or plumbing. Just privacy.

Now the parkies should deliver the same idea of basic changing areas to the citys seven beaches. The 14 miles of sand and shore are Orchard Beach, Coney Island/Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach, Rockaway, South Beach/Midland Beach, Wolfes Pond and Cedar Grove.

Even though master builder Robert Moses created them with changing areas, just as he made 11 giant pools like Ham Fish, no city beach now provides a place other than toilet stalls to change from street clothes to bathing suit and back again.

Moses also built Long Island beaches, run by the state. There are seven, covering 14 miles: Jones, Robert Moses, Sunken Meadow, Wildwood, Heckscher, Orient and Hither Hills. Same number, same mileage, but all have changing areas four each at Jones and Robert Moses.

The same at more than 80 state-run beaches upstate. All have free to use changing areas apart from the toilets. How can the city do any less?

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Unsuitable beaches with no place to change - New York Daily News