Coney Island Polar Bear Club: The Center for Weirdness

Photos and text by Kyria Abrahams

Whatever you do, please don’t ask them if the water is cold. It is.

“It clears my head,” says Dennis Thomas. “It’s not about jobs, relationships. You have to be in the moment. You can’t think of anything else.”

Like many of the people here, Dennis never expected to jump in the icy ocean more than once. That was 28 years ago. Now he’s the club president.

"It became the center of weirdness for me," he recalls.

For me, this is my very first experience swimming with the Coney Island Polar Bears. It is the first time my cowardly, comfort-seeking body will willfully do something that even crazy people describe as “pretty crazy.”

Perhaps 28 years later I, too, will remember that I never intended to do this more than once.



Dennis wears a white hoodie and a blue cap, both emblazoned with the club’s official logo and available for sale on the club's official merchandise page. This morning, Speedo delivered a box of free bathing suits. Many members of the club wear Speedo and I'm here on assignment to ask them about it. Unfortunately, the Polar Bears are ambivalent. These are not the sort of people who care about product placement.

"I hate to do this," I say, "But I have to ask you about the Speedo."

“I took one Speedo off and put another Speedo on,” Dennis says, trying to be helpful.

"Will it help keep you warm?" I ask, hopefully.

"Not a chance."

“What if you want to wear a wetsuit?”

His answer is definitive: “Stay home. Don’t bother.”

I’m saddened to realize that my 'Optik Splice Splashback' (which I will later be reimbursed for) won’t help me preserve precious body heat, but at least the lycra has a surprising shapewear effect. It’s mid-March and I’ve been scarfing mashed potatoes nonstop since November. Wearing a spaghetti-strap anything is second on my list of things to avoid -- right below jumping into the freezing cold ocean wearing only a Speedo.





I do not want to do this. I took this assignment because I do not want to do this.

“You can do it,” I tell myself. “You have to. Just think of it as a giant glass of ice water that happens to be controlled by the moon and is full of sharks.”

The 107-year-old club has about 205 members these days, but 75-year-old Oscar remembers when there were only 12 or 15. He also remembers when the tight, knee-length lycra shorts that the men are sporting today were called 'pedal pushers'.

"They were for bike messengers," he says, shaking his head. "Later, they'll take those off and put on real shorts."

"I remember wearing lycra shorts in Junior High," I say "Stripe down the side. With fringed boots and big hair."

Oscar smiles. "Okay kid. Get outta here. You better go interview some more people before it gets too late."

When I get home, I'll go to Oscar's website to discover he's kind of famous.

"Don't mention my last name," he tells me. "I don't want to be associated with this. I don't have a problem with any of it but... it's just not like it used to be."

How it used to be was simple, low-key. Just 15 guys on the beach. Now it's an event. There are photographers, and merchandise, and newspaper articles. Now there's Speedo.



Club members gather in the Coney Island "Education Hall", on the boardwalk right behind the Cyclone. This is also something new, a comfortable clubhouse. The room has back-to-back metal chairs and looks like a bus terminal with taxidermied sharks on the wall. Near the door, a volunteer is manning the hot cocoa table. I'm kindly informed that I'm not allowed to take photos in here.

"I'm sure no one told you," Dennis says without a hint of anger.

I spot Genie ("As in 'I Dream Of'," she says,) sitting against the wall under a mounted sea creature, wearing a pink Speedo swim cap and goggles. She's a competitive swimmer on her ninth Polar Bear swim, maybe around 40-years-old, and she giggles when she speaks. She is wearing Speedo Vanquisher goggles, which she honestly adores. "They don't give you raccoon eyes," she says, laughing. "It's hard to explain if you're not a swimmer like me."



She's the only person here who genuinely has an opinion about Speedo.

Meanwhile, Joan Lupo will complete her twelfth swim transforming her from a “cub” to a true polar bear. You can't just stick a toe in the water and claim you're a badass. Like Judaism, you have to prove you are serious. She is brought to the front of the room and the whole club applauds the newest inductee.

Then most suddenly, with no noticable reticence, it is time to jump in the water.

After a brief photo op on the boardwalk and a round of army-inspired jumping jacks, the group heads inexorably toward the Atlantic Ocean. I realize with horror that I am being swept along with them. And they are actually about to walk into the freezing water.



I spot Joan to my immediate right. “You’re going to have to help me,” I say. “I don’t think I want to do this.”

I expect she’s going to tell me to turn around and run home with the other babies and wetsuit-wearers. Instead, she just smiles and takes my hand firmly in hers. We keep walking in. It seems simple enough. All I have to do is not stop.

“We’re going to go under,” she tells me, and she begins counting back from three without my concent. She places a gloved hand on each of my shoulders. I am shaking my head. Absolutely not. I refuse. Not a chance, Joan.

I refuse to go under until I’m under. I'm freezing and there's not a damn thing I can do about it but accept it.

“You did it!” she says.



I start laughing uncontrollably. Not screaming, but laughing. And Joan is nodding her head, wide-eyed, with me all the way.

“See the people out there who are halfway in? They’re trying to stay warm but they’re freezing. The only way to do this is to get in all the way.”

I'm completely in the moment. There are no jobs, no relationships. I had to get cold to understand. These people aren’t crazy, nor are they masochists. They don’t love freezing water any more than you or I. They’re zen masters, daredevils, philosophers.

Luis, 69, is one such philosopher. He has been swimming for 30 years. He came from Puerto Rico at the age of 15 and has a noticable accent. About seven of the old-timers he knew are left.

When Luis first swam with the Polar Bears, he had arthritis so bad he couldn’t walk. It was his cousin who forced him to go, who helped him out of his wheelchair and into the water. After his fifth time swimming, he was cured. He can tell you how the experience changes people.

“If you come to the water and you are angry, you might change. You might leave and find that you are happy. You might change into a happy person.”

Luis, who stayed in the water for 15 minutes today, is shivering uncontrollably as he says this. He is a happy, changed man. He got in all the way.

Original Salon Article: How (and a bit of why) I Stuck So Many Women With The Check

She's deleting it from Salon, but several people took screen captures.

Here's a pdf: http://www.box.net/shared/lqgq5vysks47im895u6e

And here's the original article:

How (and a bit of why) I Stuck So Many Women With The Check

DECEMBER 5, 2010 3:23PM

by Susan Crain Bakos

The aging lesbian artist sat across the restaurant table from me, her eyes aglow as she praised me. Her sexual pass was feeble, easily put off with an “I don’t know what you mean” shrug. She said she was preparing to fight her landlord’s eviction (though he was right, she was behind in the rent) and trying to get a show and worrying about finding replacement income now that she couldn’t sell Obama condoms on the street. An old Leftie in the East Village mode, she was, had been and always would be poor, proud, ineffective and angry. She will take aim at someone with the dying push of her fingertips on the keyboard. What did she want from me, except perhaps the chance to score a heterosexual sexpert? Buy her paintings. Write about her. Help her get a book deal. Introduce my banker friend to her friend who needed investment. I stuck her with the check—and cab money.

Let me be clear. That was mean. Every time I’ve done it, I’ve known just how mean it was—and not justified by my contempt of the “mark.” Rather, even more my bad for having lunch with them.

Sometimes I’ve walked the check when cash-flow constricted and more often with more than enough money in my handbag to pick up that check. I say I didn’t bring my wallet and hand it over—usually to the woman who wants to “network” with me, i.e., she’s younger, full of herself, very ambitious in the sense of wanting to get somewhere fast and be somebody NOW but not in the old-fashioned sense of: Willing to work hard to get there. So many girls identify themselves as sex coaches or educators, going by the name of Luscious Lola or Divine Deenie or Sumptuous Sade, posing, for example, with nearly bare—and why oiled?—ass thrust toward camera, glancing cheekily over their shoulders— like the girls of the 80s, 90s, 00s, but a bit more dummied down in each re-incarnation, especially this one The Cupcake Re-Generation. Most men don’t network like this and women don’t either, but “girls” of any age do. They gush over me, “love” me, “love” my work, call me an “icon” or something similar meaning “old achiever on way out.” They ask me to read their work, help them write a book proposal for free, send my contact list. Yet they come expecting me to buy lunch too. I claim missing wallet, hand over check and tell her I will need cab fare.

Within hours, she is blogging nasty comments about me (in a blog read by tens of people). Suddenly I am old” and not as talented as they are. They will sell more books than I do, they say—they “hate” me now they say—or so I’ve been told they say because I don’t read any of it. (The lesbian artist wrote her intentions of collaborating on an “anonymous” Hate Susan website with another woman in an email that a third party forwarded to me. Smart girls, huh? I won’t mention their names because I don’t want to drive traffic to their sites, selling their products. Let my lawyer/lover/cousin go after them if either ever makes a profit.)If I don’t care about people, I don’t care about what they think or write or say—even if I am the subject. Anonymous internet trolls and mean girls, snarky jealous people and the poor little marks who didn’t get all that free help they wanted? Time-wasters. Watching a syndicated episode of “Friends” is a better use of time than reading them.This check-dodging is relatively new behavior for me, a new category in a series of bad behaviors that is—at least I can say this much—declining in severity and intensity to the point where it is an errant stream, not a river sometimes overflowing its banks.

For much of my life I have been struggling with psychological issues. Following a suicide attempt seven years ago that was very nearly successful, I began hearing a new diagnosis from a succession of therapists. Programs run out; new ones open up; everybody has their own diagnosis and treatment concept; nobody ever put me on drugs which should have been a clue to Borderline. When I was out of those options, I saw a semi-retired therapist who had a sliding fee scale fee. I paid her in lump sums when writing checks came in. Some therapists said Borderline Personality Disorder; others did not. My first therapist following the attempt labeled it “reactionary depression to a series of life setbacks.” My current therapist, an expert in the field of personality disorders, describes me as “on the borderline of Borderline,” not quite putting me in, not quite taking me out. (“BPD is an umbrella term, covering a range of symptoms and behaviors, manifested differently in each sufferer; and in the majority, the symptoms are treatable, the behaviors can be changed but it takes time which is why insurers go for the ‘untreatable’ label.”) Her treatment plan includes dialectical talk therapy and Buddhist meditation. (Google the research, people. It works for many of us.) Brain scans prove that Buddhist monks have been able to change their brain patterns through meditation. And brain scans of Borderlines also show abnormalities in certain regions of the brain.

If I fell to my knees, wept, tore my hair and told you I’d found Jesus and will devote the rest of my life to spreading His word, some of you would likely forgive me anything except maybe cruelty to animals. But as I confess my crimes, I am also trying to understand them, an intellectual exercise that will offend the judges among you. Like the first confessor in this series, I expect to be pilloried by the outraged. It won’t be the first time. Six years ago I wrote about liking black men in bed and I still get death threats from angry, ignorant racist black women and their counterpart white men. (Idea for a dating service?) I read far enough in to pick up the scent of the tar pits from which they spring—and delete or forward to a cop when threats are involved.

Understand. Explain. Not Excuse. Or even Defend.

The emotional conundrum is that I feel some emotions with inappropriate and painful intensity—which is why BPD sufferers have been compared to burn victims—yet also suppress and distort emotion, channeling it into actions that have nothing to do with the feeling. I’ve not exhibited the big bad behaviors of poor Lindsey Lohan, but I have left when I should have stayed, played havoc with schedules, mine and other people’s, lied, cheated, managed money badly, including my phase of picking up too many checks and attempting to buy love, veered from thinking I am worthless to exhibiting a sense of entitlement (like “entitled” to getting my checks picked up)—and now in a sense, I have stolen. The latest—and truly, I hope the last—bad behavior is a con, you’re thinking, aren’t you?

What is a con?

Bigger than the small stuff we sinners are confessing to in this section on Salon. Really. We are street hustlers, small players for petty cash or the equivalent. A hustler or a con artist works on the same basic knowledge of human nature: The greedy, the self-involved, the dreamer with a romantic vision of her future success that doesn’t include a trail of blood, sweat and tears—he and she can be conned and hustled. It takes but a tiny amount of leverage to use that greed or lust for fame against her.Applying the leverage, pulling the hustle, feels good at the time—really a high—but awful afterward. I imagine binging/purging must feel like this in the mind and soul. Or shoplifting. I am trying to understand and explain the behavior—and recognize the trigger points, usually major life events out of my control—to stop it because Jesus is not there for me (but Buddha is.) Looking back, I see that I risked months, years of stability and happiness on a big gamble (or, in this case, in little crimes)that let out some of the emotion, like blood-letting. The street hustle as pressure valve.

My former friend Alex Zola based his blog The Zola System on his father’s life philosophy. His late father, a Holocaust survivor, once hustled the streets as a survival tactic while Alex has done it for the same reasons I did: for the high and out of contempt for the mark. There’s a lesson here for you too: If you go out looking for a free lunch, you will probably get a check, payable now in your case, or later with interest in mine.

The Tattoo Interview: Brianna Karp

An (oldish) interview I conducted with Brianna Karp, author of The Girl's Guide To Homelessness back in April. On The Zeitgeisty Report:

Brianna Karp Reveals The Healing Power Of Ink

New York Magazine on Susan Crain Bakos

"Behold the sad, strange tale of sexpert Susan Crain Bakos, the author of such titles as Best Sex Ever and The Sex Bible, who has a troubled history of tricking aspiring writers and photographers into paying for her meals in order to punish them for networking..."

Wacky Sex Columnist Sticks Young Women With the Check by Joe Coscarelli

Help spread the word about Susan Crain Bakos - The Grifter Granny

Among the various bizarre lies that Susan Crain Bakos, author of The Sex Bible flung at me over her free croquettes at Pipa this past Tuesday was a tempting job offer: $1000 in cash to get started doing SEO and social media work for her website.

Although she didn't pay me (I'm sure she will, though!), I would like to get started doing some of that SEO work pro bono.

Please link to "Never Have Dinner With Susan Crain Bakos" everywhere you can. The goal is this:

When an unsuspecting girl gets asked out to dinner and Googles the name of Susan Crain Bakos, author of The Sex Bible, Don't Go To Dinner With Susan Crain Bakos will be the first thing that comes up.

So please link, Tweet, Google+, and get the word out there. Your link could be the difference between some young writer buying her birth control or buying Susan Crain Bakos a sandwich next month.

Made possible by viewers like you.

That being said, I've worked in web development for the past ten years and I'm currently unemployed. I was also displaced from my apartment this summer while I work to pay the back rent I accumulated during this hard economic downturn. Some of the ways I've paid my rent include working as a wedding photography assistant (see my portfolio here) as well as cleaning houses, painting a friend's kitchen, and even writing $15 eHow articles for a content mill.

Most recently, I was hired by Socialbrite as project lead on a series about how nonprofits can best use Twitter. I also wrote an article called "Should Your Organization Launch A Podcast?".

As you can see, I've been hustling. But it's just not enough. I work almost non-stop, but it's hand-to-mouth. I don't make enough money to pay off my debts, only to eat for that week. And I work too long and too hard cleaning people's apartments to successfully look for work, or, god forbid, have the emotional space to write a second book.

That's how it is in this recession.

One thing I never did, however, was purposely stuff someone with a dinner bill.

Susan Crain Bakos may have stiffed me and countless other women for hundreds of dollars, but maybe we can stop her from doing it again.

In just two days, we've already made Manhattan a safer place.

Thanks, internets!

You Played Yourself

Yo, VIP. Let's kick it.

Had shrimp tacos at Lime Jungle tonight.

Totally paid for them myself.

How I roll.

U Mad Bro?

Received these emails today. I forget who they are from. I don't really understand them (I only speak English), but I found them entertaining in that "Wacky Engrish" kind of way. I guess she's Japanese??! I'm going to go put them in Babel fish and see what they say now. Something about... loving black cock like a boss? I think? Oh well! I give up! They are still fun.

On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 7:58 PM, u mad, dog? (PWNED@EFFINPWNEDBITCH.com) wrote:

Subject: you take down the blog post...and pics,

including a shot I discarded from photo shoot.

as a professional photographer you cannot put up the outtakes.

OR
I write the story, accepting responsibility for my bad behavior AND quoting your emails.... if you think that offering to buy a belt for suicide etc. will make you look employable.....

then let's go for it.

You were overpaid for the phtos....by your own admission.
you didn't pay for the tapas. I did.
and I still await Marco's invoice.

You also left out the part that I had surgery yesterday morning.

The whole story will make you look like a nutcase.

But if its what you want, Kyria, let's roll it out.





On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 8:00 PM Someone?? (whitenready@luvblkmen.com) wrote:

Subject: ps

I will also post on nycwriters that you were paid in full for a job...in fact paid three times your asking price.... and used unflattering outtakes on a blog to make fun of me.
should build your client list.

Kyria, seriously, I may have problems, but you are crazy.

Nobody looking for work behaves like this.



On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 8:19 PM, HURRR DURRR RACIST (hurdurrRACIST@hotmail.com) wrote:

Subject: Just spoke with my lawyer

You have that blog down by tomorrow, shut up already or I am taking you public.
I wrote about you in my blog today: without using your name or even hinting at your identity and focusing soley on your age/sex issues.....
your rant about that clearly had nothing to do with a restaurant check but represented your issues.

After writing this morning that you didn not want to publicize this etc., you assured me I wouldn't hear from any more of your friends and you turned around and blogged....
using my name and outtakes of a phto session which you are NOT entitled to use at all....and, yes, of course, I've heard from more of your idiot fan base.

So I will sue you for a refund of fees in addition to writing the full story if you dont take down the post immediately and shut up.
What is wrong with you?
You have done 1 book in your 37 yers and have little else as claim to fame. I would think you need to build connections.....
not waste your time on such BS. And I cannot see how you think violating the confidentiality of a paying photo client benefits you at all. Even people who think I shouldn't walk out on restaurant checks won't hire you to take their photo because they can't be sure you won't get mad about something and use the outtakes against them.

I will check in the morning and if your blog post is not down,
I want my photo fees returned or I will sue....and I will quote your lovely emails. Maybe the mail next time will come from other people who have received similar emails from you.
You had an opportunity to end this today.......
the truth is....and truth would be hard to find on your blog....that I owe YOU nothing.

You, however, owe me a refund of photo fees.




On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 10:47 PM, CRAZYCAKES MCGEE (BLEEEEEARRRRGH@TWEEDLEDEEDOO.com) wrote:

Subject: here is how I have decided to handle the situation; ignore previous emails

fyi,
I will copy your blog post with the "transcript" as you edited it--
and then the emails as you actually sent them.

My goodness, dear, you left out so much............all the really ugly nasty stuff.............
and I will not bother to blog it...
1. will just post your revision with the transcript and a warning on nycwriters re. your photo services
2. send same to your agent-
3. send same to your publicist--who will no doubt be thrilled you passed up a chance for a good review to blog that. Great career move!

and
4. have a law clerk file a suit in small claims court for the return of photo fees.

If keeping your post up is worth the grief to you, I'm ok with that. But I reconsidered blogging it. I'm not giving you free publicity by mentioning your name or book.

oh, and re. taking down posts....i took down my blog. SEO person hired says outside blogs must go.....odd you, with your incredible genius, didn't get that.
I may update and post the restaurant check walk on. Stay tuned. But I still won't mention your name.

---

Never have dinner with Susan Crain Bakos

(Update: You can read comedian and writer Carolyn Castiglia's take on Dinnercon '11 here: A brief glimpse inside the hate-filled mind of a con artist

You can also read accounts of two other women Susan Crain Bakos has scammed in the comments section over here: Ridiculous White Woman… Hold My Pocket)

---

Beware, up-and-coming female writers in New York! There is a raging 'Dine and Dasher' who is preying on women at some of the city's finest restaurants.

The Granny Grifter is cleverly disguised as a diminutive 60-year-old sex columnist with a penchant for inviting young women to dinner to discuss "a possible job opportunity."

Her name is Susan Crain Bakos, and she is the author of The Sex Bible. She claims she used to be a ghostwriter for Dr. Ruth.

Unbelievably, she has fully admitted to her short con on a blog post she wrote for Salon, called "How And Why I Stuck So Many Women With the Check".

She's currently trying to delete her blog, but thankfully, there's such a thing as Google cache.

For now, you can read a pdf of her essay here:

How and Why I Stuck So Many Women With The Check by Susan Crain Bakos

(Cached Version Here )





Below, is an open letter in response to her article on Salon:

Dear Susan Crain Bakos,

The dinner was great. Thank you again for the invitation. I, myself, also had it for free, since I was unable to pay. I had to speak with the management and give them all my information (and yours!) so they would let me leave. As such, I applaud you on masterminding the lamest con ever.

A Jim Thompson novel you are not.

Your essay was written eight months before we met, so it seems you left out a few of the more current details about your exploits. An innocent oversight, I'm sure.

For example, you didn't mention how you contacted me first and claimed that you had a business opportunity. Nor did you mention how you lied and said that you needed me to take photos for an article you are writing for Playboy.

If you recall, as I sat down at the table, I told you I wasn't hungry (to be gracious and not assume you were paying the bill, I had eaten before I got to the restaurant) but you INSISTED we order huge swathes of food, telling me multiple times "It's on me."

It certainly is all on you, Susan Crain Bakos.

For all intents and purposes, you invited me to a business meeting. A business meeting about which you lied through your teeth and summarily walked out on the check.

Without judgment, I have to wonder: who would want to do business with someone who exhibits these sorts of behaviors?

So, you write about it on Salon. Some might say it's what you do well. You explain that this is a con you enjoy inflicting on other women. You use tags like "my con." You insinuate that the women somehow "deserve" it because they want to network (network over lunch in New York? My stars!). You think they are looking for a free meal.

The main issue is that the scenario you present in your story is absolutely nothing like the actual scene which took place on August 2 at 4:30 PM in Pipa. The one in which you repeatedly said "It's on me." The one where it was your idea to go to dinner.

You made up a story about writing for Playboy and contacted me - an unemployed writer and photographer who is working my RUMP off as a freelancer - to request that I be hired on as your personal photographer.

If anyone was trying to get something for nothing from this situation, I'd say it's you, Susan.

To top it all off, once you finish demonizing your victims as lazy and dumb, you then have the utter gall to claim you're exploring it in an essay because you're trying to understand why you do it?

Well, let me take a wild stab for you.

It's because you grew up with no sense of self worth other than your looks. You have no idea what you can offer to society outside of a sexual context. And now you steal steak dinners from young up-and-coming authors at Pipa and The Ace Hotel and god knows where else. Have you been to Chipotle? They have excellent guacamole.

Do you honestly think these women "deserve" this, or are you just trying to justify your antisocial, cruel behavior?

Do you think you get a free pass because you have "psychological issues"? Because you're a grandmother? Because no one would ever suspect the 60-year-old author of The Sex Bible of purposely being on the grift?

I can think of many reasons you might be doing this and absolutely none of them are acceptable.

Gorging your face on fried ham in a tapas bar and running out on the bill isn't going to change who you are.

Nor is blaming your victims and insinuating that they somehow deserved it because they wanted something from you. Something that you offered.

It's time to do what the rest of us adults in the world have to do and grow up. You're 60-years-old for Godssakes.

Please, Grammy. Act your age.

Oh, look! I just saved you a $75 therapist appointment!

(Not that the check you'd write to the doctor would be any good.)

Sincerely yours,

A (not so) naive mark