They’ve been there so long, we don’t even notice them. They go by a couple of names — lockers, bathhouses — but except for a few sagging doors bearing rusty combination locks, no one seems to use them.
The Compo Beach bathhouses
It’s time for the Compo Beach locker/bathhouses to go.
In the 1920s, 750 bathhouses rented by the hour. In 1935 the “Nash Pavillion” — site of dining and dancing — burned to the ground, along with some bathhouses.
In the 1950s and early ’60s, bathhouses stretched all across the current playground. They were dank and gloomy — scaring the hell out of me as a child, then providing great spots for hide-and-seek and rowdier carousing as I got older. When they were demolished, a wonderful new section of beach opened up.
The same thing would happen if the last bathhouses — rotting largely unused behind Joey’s — were demolished. No one’s making more land at Compo Beach, but we could reclaim some open space — in a prime location — with a few whacks of a wrecking ball.
Keep the still-handsome brick walls, if you wish. But a bit of grass, a few picnic tables — maybe mini-golf, or something equally creative — in that now-wasted space would make our beach even more attractive and popular than it is now.
And that’s saying something.
