More Bette Midler Than Barbara Hershey

You could call them beaches, but then it’d seem like you could actually swim there:

Call them the secret beaches of New York.

Hidden in the nooks and crannies along the city’s riverbanks lie dozens of small, sandy oases.

But don’t grab the beach towels just yet. Most of the estimated 60 to 70 “beaches” in the five boroughs and New Jersey are isolated, neglected and debris-strewn. Still, some nature enthusiasts are optimistic.

“Right now . . . these beaches are not great sunbathing options,” said Rob Buchanan of New York Harbor Beaches. “But they could become that if people start to take care of them.”

Buchanan, 47, is among a group of hikers and boaters who spent the last year combing the East, Hudson and Harlem river shorelines.

Not everyone is pleased with the idea of opening up the small beaches. Officials at Community Board 1 in downtown Manhattan, for example, downplayed the area under the Brooklyn Bridge for fear of increased drownings.

But John Lipscomb, patrol boat captain for the nonprofit group Riverkeepers, sees people fishing, crabbing and wading along the shoreline around the city all the time.

“People want to use the water,” he said, adding that pollution remains a major problem. “We need to get to a point where mothers can take their children there to play and build sandcastles. We’re on our way, but we’re not quite there yet.”

Not all the beaches lie on public land, and many are not easily accessible. They’re tucked under bridges, below city parks and on rocky strips in neighborhoods like DUMBO, Astoria, Battery Park and the South Bronx.

See also: New York Harbor Beaches.

Six-Six-Six: The Number Of The Beast (But Not This Woman’s Child, To The Extent That She Can Help It)

Some will go to great lengths to avoid even the appearance of Satan:

A Brooklyn woman says she was ready to go through hell to avoid delivering her son today — on the bedeviled date 6-6-6 — but fortunately, he was a little angel and arrived early.

“I’m not superstitious but I just didn’t want to put my kid through any teasing at school,” said Bela Ioffe, 25, who had even scheduled a C-section for yesterday to ensure that she wouldn’t give birth on a date associated with the devil and the Apocalypse.

Thank God she went into labor on her own at New York Hospital of Queens, the new mom said.

“My husband thought it would be cool [for the baby to be born today] — but he didn’t get his way,” Ioffe said.

The beaming mom said her husband has already jokingly dubbed their child “Little Devil” — although the baby will soon get a proper name straight from the Bible: Daniel.

The Only Thing Weirder Than A Golf Course On Governors Island Is That Dennis Quaid Is Hollywood’s Best Golfer

I don’t know how you forget about an entire golf course, but whatever:

It’s tee time on Governors Island, where a long-forgotten golf course will be revived for a celebrity competition this fall.

The Manhattan Golf Classic on Governors Island, announced yesterday for Oct. 22, will pit female champs Annika Sorenstam and Natalie Gulbis in an 18-hole battle of the sexes against actor Dennis Quaid, rated Hollywood’s best player by Golf Digest, and another star yet to be named.

Actors Craig T. Nelson and Bruce McGill, who was the rowdy D-Day in “Animal House,” will be among those squaring off in a four-man celebrity contest also being planned.

. . .

ArenaCorp Holdings, which is paying $75,000 plus expenses for use of the island, will restore the nine-hole course last used by Coast Guard officers before the service left in 1996.

The nine holes, spanning a relatively compact 10 acres or so, will do double duty by rearranging the tee approaches and placement of the pins.

“We’ve been able to embrace the historic character of the property . . . with meandering holes around Fort Jay, the skyline and the Statue of Liberty,” said Robert McNeil, president of The Northeast Golf Co., which is helping to restore the course.

You Want Weird? We’ll Show You Weird! You Want Psychologically Twisted? We Got That, Too!

Parents are still subsidizing their adult children (this coming after we learned that parents subsidize their adult children):

At 23, Jason McGuinness lives a postcollege life in Manhattan that is very nearly typical. He works as a media research analyst, making about $30,000 a year. Sharing a two-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor of a walk-up building with a roommate on the Upper East Side, his portion of the rent is $1,100 monthly.

The walls are decorated with pennants and posters from Syracuse University, his alma mater. He orders takeout dinners, carries peanut-butter sandwiches to work and occasionally takes in a Mets game with friends.

And like many of his peers — educated, employed, urban-dwelling young adults — he receives monthly assistance from his parents, in the form of a $300 check and the payment of his cellphone bill.

. . .

Middle-income parents earning less than $72,600 a year can expect to spend $190,980 on a child through age 17, according to 2005 government statistics. But Dr. Schoeni said that parents can plan on paying almost 25 percent of that amount again over the next 17 years, or $42,280 in 2005 dollars. This sum includes higher education but also much more.

Parents pay $2,323 a year to help support children 25 and 26 years old, said [University of Michigan associate professor of economics and public policy] Dr. [Bob] Schoeni, and $1,556 annually for offspring 33 and 34. (All amounts are in 2001 dollars and reflect support to children living both independently and at home.)

All of which is well and good — until you hear that the adult children of David Maysles* are also subsidized, which is when it just gets really post-modernly weird:

While some parents earmark contributions for food and rent, others expect their children to take care of the basics while they pick up special expenses like a vacation.

“I’m enjoying watching them spend their inheritance,” Judy Maysles, a real estate agent in Manhattan, said about the support she provides to two grown children, John, 30, who works with a hedge fund in New Jersey, and Celia, 27, a filmmaker. “I’d rather spend it now and watch them and enjoy it with them. I think that a lot of my generation feel that way.”

She bought her daughter appliances for a house in Portland, Ore. Now the proceeds from selling that property are enabling Celia Maysles to make a documentary about her late father, the documentary filmmaker David Maysles.

Eventually, most children outgrow the need for a stipend. But the instinct of parents to give — and of children to receive — can linger on. When John Maysles got a dog four years ago, his mother told him he couldn’t leave it alone all day.

“So I pay for doggy day care,” she said. “It is $16 a day. Probably he could afford it, but it has been on my credit card and I haven’t changed it.”

Aggh! Don’t bring up pets in connection with the Maysles family! (Thursday Styles is on fucking fire this week!)

*Maysles co-directed the creepy documentary Grey Gardens, which basically defines “emotionally fraught parent-adult child relationship.”

Nearly Swallowed Whole By A Brooklyn Street

The first few words of this story almost make it one of the best ledes ever:

A terrified Florida woman was nearly swallowed whole by a Brooklyn street yesterday when the cracked pavement collapsed under her SUV after a water main break, authorities said.

Then again, the story is strange enough as it is:

Nancy Batista, 46, would have been trapped in the 20-foot-deep hole in Bay Ridge if not for a pair of anonymous good Samaritans who pulled her from the mangled Ford Explorer, relatives said.

“The guy ripped the door open and said, ‘I got you!'” said Maggie Nieves, 45, after talking to her shaken sister, who was treated at Lutheran Medical Center. “She said it felt like Niagara Falls.”

As water gushed atop the Explorer at 3:35 a.m., a mystery military sergeant and a passerby rescued Batista, who, at first, was too scared to get out of the 15-foot-by-20-foot-wide hole.

“She was scared she might misjudge the step and that she would go down and nobody would be able to get her back up,” Nieves said.

Batista, who traded Flatbush for Kissimmee, Fla., a few years ago, was at a stoplight on Fourth Ave. at 73rd St. when the ground suddenly caved in.

“All she remembers is making a turn and the street opened up and swallowed her,” said Nieves, who first saw the wreck on TV when their mom in Florida called her Harlem home.

Gallons of water and a 2-foot-thick section of mud and debris collapsed along 300 feet of subway tracks below, shutting down the local R line between 36th St. and 95th St.