A Face in the Sand: 1906

Do Not Sit In Chairs With Wet Suits.

What continues to amaze me in all these turn of the century beach scenes is that everyone just sat on the sand. Nobody seems to have thought of bringing a towel or a blanket to spreadout and sit on. I guess they all went back to the bath house, showered, and changed into street clothes when they left, making it less necessary to keep the sand off.

[Doing laundry was much more of an ordeal back in pre-washing machine days, especially man-handling (or, in reality, woman-handling) a big water- and sand-logged towel. And even before that, lugging it all the way home on a train. Many of these folks even rented their bathing togs at the beach, so had nothing to take home but themselves. - tterrace]

Has anybody even noticed the little black boy behind all the chairs, with his face to the sand?

Is that lady wearing a bustle under her bathing costume

I don't even know that this is the proper name for them, but we have a good look here at their backs & have seen them often on Shorpy. My question is, what were they? Did one rent a space in them? When did the disappear?

[They're similar to this, a folding patio chair/lounge (which are still made, though usually with a metal frame), but here on the beach are mounted semi-permanently. - tterrace]

Sure looks like three, maybe four, tepees on the pier.

I think we found his missing zeppelin. What could that be on the roof?

[As noted in the caption, it's an airship exhibit. More speculation here. - Dave]