The $2 Vacation.

As a beach boy who doesn't much like to leave New York City, who has never owned a car and doesn't normally wear a watch, who thinks that meeting trains or planes scheduled to fixed times is strictly for neurotics, I've necessarily become a connoisseur, a gourmet really, of the beaches accessible by our MTA. And I mean the real beaches available for swimming, serious swimming, not those crowded shorefront sunbathers' oases in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

The atmosphere at New York's beaches is pervasively, surprisingly mellow, even on the hottest days, because most people settle down with sufficient space between themselves and others, and everyone is as pleased as everyone else to be near the water. Public beaches are my model for mellow anarchy, where everyone is equal with respect to visible wealth or power, few trying to put down others. Or as a portly friend put it, his arm sweeping across the horizon, "Fashion models don't hang out here." If only the whole world could be forever like a public beach.

Because New York City's beaches are so accessible, one can hop into a subway around noon, swim for an hour and even take a nap before returning by subway home for dinner and a night in one's own bed. The only other world capital where, in my experience that is possible, is Berlin, which has several comely lakes, but I'd rather body surf or swim in the ocean with its extra buoyancy than lap around a dead lake or chlorinated pool. Accustomed to the easy access of MTA subway stations, I'd also rather not navigate the ugly obstacles of Penn or Grand Central. Masochism need not be a prelude to the pleasure of a summertime beach in this town. Then there is the inarguable truth of anarchist economics: The best things in life, in this case sunshine and surf, are absolutely free.

The most accessible, and always the most popular, has been the beach that runs continuously from Coney Island to the west to Brighton Beach on the east. Over three miles long, only one long block away from the elevated MTA stations, it has for over a century been a proletarian playground with a wide spacious boardwalk that runs from end to end. So convenient to public transportation is this beach that the walk from the boardwalk to the water's edge is usually longer than that from the subway to the boardwalk. Likewise conveniently, several subway lines once again (after reconstruction) serve the four stations parallel to the beach: Brighton Beach, Ocean Pkwy., Aquarium-W. 8th St., and Stillwell Ave.-Coney Island.

The subtle truth of this beach is self-segregation, which is to say that the successively numbered bays (divided usually by rock jetties running perpendicularly from the shore into the ocean) attract radically different cultural groups. Nowadays, most of the people at bays 1 to 6 are Russian immigrants from nearby Brighton and Sheepshead Bay. The bays in front of the Stillwell Avenue and Aquarium stations, numbered 10 through 13, have for the past few decades hosted mostly Latino crowds. No signs tell prospective bathers where to go, but there are good reasons why, say, the sellers of mangoes wrapped in plastic bags, poked with a thin stick and freshened with hot sauce rarely go east of bay 9. (I can recall a Russian friend asking me, "What are those?") Needless to say, most guidebooks don't acknowledge this segregation.

On the other side of bay 13 are beaches yet emptier, but often closed with a makeshift fence, especially before July 4, and patrolled by uniformed people threatening to arrest you if you bathe there. When open to water-lovers, these are the cleanest beaches for the simple reason that fewer people use them. On the western end of this beach is Sea Gate, a community secure behind a forbidding fence that goes out into the water. (Not knowing anyone residing in Sea Gate, I've never sampled its beaches, but my father, who did a summertime rental there with his buddies in the 1920s, tells me that they were great then. Yes, 80 years ago, and he's still around, though not swimming. You don't need to subscribe to the Gaia hypothesis to believe that Sea Gate beaches fronting into New York harbor are no less hospitable several decades later.)

For distance swimming, which is what I do, the Coney Island-Brighton Beach can't be beat. Go out far enough and you can swim (and think) without needing to worry, as you might in a swimming pool, about colliding with someone else. Though the water comes from the Atlantic Ocean, this is actually a bay protected on the west by Sandy Hook, the New Jersey peninsula that extends north into New York harbor, and on the east by Breezy Point, the westernmost end of the Rockaways. On most days the water here is placid; only with the threat of a hurricane will there be waves high enough to body surf. Surfboarding is unknown here.

On truly hot summer nights, some try to stay overnight on this beach, which would be reasonable, if the city did not insist on sending out noisy trucks in the middle of the night to churn garbage out of the sand. Awaking to these dinosaurs can, I'm told, be an unforgettable nightmare. Decades ago, people homeless and otherwise, both loved and loveless, could spend the night under the broad boardwalk, but this becomes less possible since the Army Corps of Engineers raised the level of the beach sand roughly to that of the boardwalk, thereby making a windowless cave of the areas under the planks. All New York City beaches are officially "open" only until 6 p.m., from Memorial Day to Labor Day, which is to say that only during those times will they be staffed with lifeguards and ancillary city workers who scare away fishermen and give first-aid. Since the beach isn't fenced off, people do stay after 6 p.m., when newcomers carrying fishing poles emerge. Since the temperature of the water is higher in September than in June, some patronize New York City beaches after they are officially "closed"-after the lifeguards (and garbage cans) have departed. Others swim into the winter. The Rockaway beaches are different because they front the Atlantic Ocean, much like the beaches in Fire Island or even the Hamptons, which is to say that here is sea essentially no different (and no dirtier) than that in the purportedly classier watering holes to the east. A century ago, the Rockaway beaches attracted the same sorts of folk who nowadays go further east. I have a collection of century-old photographs from the Rockaways, portraying people looking prosperous not only on the boardwalk, but overdressed in the water.

Sometimes the water on the Rockaway beaches is placid; other times there are waves-real waves-when this seafront can be dangerous, especially to non-swimmers. The lifeguards here make many more saves than those at Coney Island, and several people drown here every year, usually before or after the lifeguards work, or in areas that aren't watched. This stretch is more than seven miles long; its boardwalk, while much narrower than Coney Island's, is several miles long and remarkably empty in comparison.

Unfortunately, much of the Rockaways is officially closed. Sometimes it's purportedly for a lack of bathers, which is true, as the bungalows near the ocean between 35th and 72nd Sts. were scandalously demolished in the name of "urban renewal" four decades ago, leaving miles of oceanfront property pathetically empty ever since; other times it's for a "shortage of lifeguards," which seems dubious, given how little they are paid. Anyone trying to swim in these fenced-off areas will soon attract a visit from a uniformed official.

This beach is self-segregating in ways reflecting two factors-the kinds of people living in the streets near the beach and the routes of public transport. The beach around 60th St. is roughly 300 yards wide, 50 feet deep, kept officially open to service a grim-looking low-rent housing project overlooking the ocean. Sometime last summer, the New York Times' intrepid beach reporter, Corey Kilgannon, wrote that the project people didn't patronize this beach because they thought it "too dirty," which it isn't, or because they couldn't swim, which seems more true. Therefore, during the weekdays it might have two-dozen patrons (at 2000 square feet apiece) along with several lifeguards. The water on one side of the jetty I find best for body surfing; that on the other side of the jetty has 200 yards for continuous swimming. On weekends, Caribbean-American families arrive, and in the playground behind the beach are generous barbecues, one mostly Latino Caribbean, another West Indian. This 60th St. beach is directly accessible from Manhattan and Brooklyn on the A train marked "Far Rockaway," not Lefferts Ave. or Ozone Park, just three stops after Kennedy airport.

The folks on the A train with giant surfboards are probably going to the first stop, 90th St., changing to the shuttle train that begins anew at Broad Channel, itself the first stop after JFK airport. The beach at 88th St. has been officially set aside for surfboarders. This shuttle train (marked "S") continues parallel to the ocean, only a few blocks away from the water, to its terminus at 116th St., which is a shopping thoroughfare of sorts, with the only Rockaway stores offering beach paraphernalia (as well as Irish bars that are plentiful in this area, unlike, say, 60th St., which has none).

The beach at the end of this street is invariably the most crowded and boomboxy in the Rockaways, usually with teenagers. Older or quieter folks might prefer to get off at the stops at 98th or 105th Sts., the emptiest beach being around 103rd St., or to walk west of 116th St.. The beaches in the 120s reflect the predominantly Irish-American population of Belle Harbor; those in the 130s and 140s the Jewish upper-middle-class of Neponsit. One reason why beaches here are under-populated is obnoxious street signs forbidding parking in the daytime during the summer months, which is to say that aspiring bathers driving here from elsewhere must either park in a friendly driveway or go somewhere else. The lack of public lavatories here also discourages outsiders.

Another way for the car-less to get to the Rockaway beaches is taking the public bus that originates at Brooklyn College, which is also the southern terminus of subways #2 & 5. Bus #35 proceeds down Flatbush Ave. over the Marine Parkway (aka Gil Hodges) Bridge to the Rockaways, where it swings east. The first stop is Jacob Riis Park, which is a large if aged New York State facility with lifeguards (some of whom wear spectacles, which are forbidden to NYC lifeguards) and locker facilities, as well as food concessions. Its 16 sections are likewise self-segregating. I've been reliably informed that at the eastern end is a beach favored nowadays by gays; two decades ago, it was the only nude beach within New York City. (Nowadays, those with Northern European "naturist" tastes go to Sandy Hook or eastern Long Island.) The section on the other, western end of Riis Park is reportedly favored by Italian-American teenagers who tend to get into fights among themselves. In between are a succession of crowds more subtly defined.

This #35 bus can also take you through Neponsit and Belle Harbor, if you want to sample those sparse beaches, probably before walking down to 116th St., where there is a public lavatory under the boardwalk, not to mention a subway home. Yet other public buses, #21 and #53, come from Queens across Jamaica Bay over the other bridge to the east, Cross Bay, to run parallel to the shuttle train, likewise terminating at 116th St..

On the other side of Riis Park is Fort Tilden, a sometime military base, which in the 60s housed the Nike missiles facing out into the Atlantic. It has magnificent beaches that are officially closed and thus lacking lifeguards but nonetheless accessible. Indeed, several of us once celebrated Rosh Hashanah with a midnight swim here, and we were not alone on the beach at that time. Yet further to the west, well beyond public transportation, is Breezy Point, which is another gated community, much like Sea Gate, but far less secure, as its fences don't extend down the beach into the water. This is the most beautiful beach in New York City as well as the most isolated, separated by dozens of yards of sand dunes from the nearest housing.

A friend recommends the beach at 25th St., at the end of a row of classic bungalows still occupied, which is also accessible from the direct A train. "It's quite wide with dunes and that same wave energy," he tells me, "protected from erosion by Atlantic Beach," which is the western tip of the barrier island called Long Beach. (The barrier strip beyond it has Jones Beach; the next extending out into the ocean, to the east, is Fire Island.) I don't claim to know the beaches east of 60th St., because, not unlike others in the Rockaways, I tend to regard everything east of a certain point to be fearsome. For those residing further to the west, the cut-off points can be 88th St., 103rd St., 116th St. or even 132nd St.. But that's another Rockaways story.