Cabana Boys, a Queens Throwback, Hustle for Big Tips and Bigger Dreams - midteso batam

source http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/nyregion/cabana-boys-a-queens-throwback-will-do-anything-almost-for-the-tips.html?_r=0

Sunday is “split day,” or payday, for Matt Goldman and his crew of cabana boys at the Silver Gull Beach Club.

“We call it split day because the members tip us on Sunday for the week, and we all pool it together with tips we already made during the week, and split it between us,” said Mr. Goldman, 21, one of five cabana workers — two in high school and three in college — who tend to a section of this oceanfront summer colony of cabanas near the western tip of the Rockaway peninsula in Queens.

At the Silver Gull, one of the last oceanfront clubs in New York City, Sunday is no day of rest. On the contrary, it means hours spent carrying supplies from newly arrived cars to the cabanas, then lugging beach gear out to the sand and running food and drinks to members by one of the pools or on the beach.

The sweet reward comes around 5 p.m., when the five staff members repair to an empty cabana, close the doors and pull thick wads of bills from their pockets and pile them all on a table — often over $2,000 in small bills — to be divvied up.

“We close the doors for privacy because we don’t want the members to think we’re rich,” said Justin Sheredos, 16, another cabana worker in the group. “That and the wind.”

Last Sunday, each staff member walked away with about $400 each for a five-day, 40-hour workweek. In addition, each also earns an hourly wage, and may keep personal tips that members specify as theirs alone.

“Like, if one of us helps you push your car out of the sand, you might get tipped personally for that,” Mr. 

Goldman said. And then there are the traditional Labor Day tips handed out at the end of the summer.

Add it all up and Mr. Goldman said he made $8,000 last summer at the Silver Gull, which The New York Times is visiting this summer to chronicle a season of its enduring traditions, which have persisted since the club opened in 1963.

“For guys like us, you can’t really get a summer job making better money,” said Mr. Goldman, who lives in the Bergen Beach section of Brooklyn. He said the tips were helping him pay his way through Hunter College in Manhattan.

His four years of cabana service at the club make him the senior man in this small crew, whose base is a patch of sandy pavement at the edge of the club’s parking lot.

From here they can gaze past the paddleball courts and see, off in the hazy distance, One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, a visual reminder that this beach resort is a short drive from Wall Street.

But this crew’s financial district is 100 or so cabanas that mostly extend over the beach in double-decker rows. Each morning, they open these modest rooms that serve as miniature beach houses and set up the patio furniture out front to suit each member’s preference.

Then they wait for the arrival of the members, mostly middle-class families from southern Brooklyn, a short drive away, who pull up in cars loaded with beach chairs, coolers, bodyboards and bags of supplies.

With a mere glimpse of the vehicle, the crew shouts out the member’s last name, or more frequently, their cabana number. Then a cabana “boy” springs — or shuffles over, depending on the previous night’s activities — to help carry items that frequently include treats from old-school Brooklyn institutions such as L&B Spumoni Gardens in Bensonhurst or Roll-N-Roaster in Sheepshead Bay.

“That’s LB-2 — I’ll get them,” yelled Mr. Goldman as a silver Toyota arrived one recent Sunday. He was the picture of a cool, beachy service provider: shorts, flip-flops and sunglasses with heart-shaped frames. His hair was immaculately feathered and short on the sides. Only his blue “CABANA” shirt, already soaked with sweat, showed all the hustling he had done this morning.

Next to arrive were the Ganapolskys, in a car packed with supplies. Mr. Goldman grabbed an old Key Food shopping cart, kept on hand for loads like this. He wheeled the items to a hallway and carried them up a staircase and packed them away in the cabana.

He pocketed a $10 tip and returned to the parking lot to resume his prolonged wrestling match with a nylon beach tent that a member had asked him to pack into its compact carrying case.

As one of about 15 sweaty, sandy-sneakered valets — including three girls — who serve the Silver Gull’s 2,300 members and tend a total of 457 cabanas, Mr. Goldman is determined to be regarded as the most conscientious cabana worker, and the top earner.

To that end, he has tried to overcome his lack of size — he is 5 feet, 5 inches tall, and weighs 125 pounds — which initially left him with a disadvantage at the vital task of carrying large quantities of beach chairs. He now boasts that he can carry a dozen chairs, hung on both outstretched arms and strapped to his back.

“You learn the ways of the beach chair, and how it sits properly on your arm, and you just get better,” Mr. Goldman said.

On a recent weekday, Mr. Goldman wove his way along rows of cabanas, stepping past mah-jongg games and members lying on the cushioned lounge chairs that are set in front of each cabana.

One member handed him $10 and asked him to fetch her beach chairs.

“Her husband gave me and Corey 100 bucks apiece to carry an air conditioner from their car to the cabana,” said Mr. Goldman, referring to a co-worker, Corey Rich, 21.

One man yelled for Mr. Goldman to bring beach gear out for his family.

“Which one’s my wife’s chair?” the man asked.

Mr. Goldman picked the correct lounge chair and headed to the beach, floating as usual above the cranky complaints and petty requests on a cushion of cheery detachment.

His happy-go-lucky nonchalance recalls the cabana boy portrayed by Matt Dillon in the 1984 film “The Flamingo Kid.” The film was shot at the Silver Gull and touches upon the scenario of a cabana boy servicing certain female members in less official ways, behind closed cabana doors.

 Mr. Goldman said some women there have jokingly flirted with him. Last week, as he walked along asking members, “Is there anything I can do for you?” one woman shot another a mischievous glance and said, “Well, that’s an open-ended question.”

They all laughed, and Mr. Goldman moved on, checking the garbage pails inside cabanas.

“Honestly, their husbands scare me,” he said. “So do the fathers.”

He recalled an instance when he offered to fetch drinks for a group of members, which included a teenage girl who later told her father.

“He said, ‘Matt, I’m a butcher, and my friend here crushes cars for a living — believe me, we can make you disappear,’” Mr. Goldman recalled. “He was kidding. At least I hope he was.”

The crew members are well aware that theirs is an iconic toil at the Silver Gull, and they enjoy keeping the stories alive. There was the cabana boy decades ago who collected cash bets around the club for a fixed horse race, and the recently retired staff member whose socializing and drinking with club members on the job did little to impede his performance as the top tip-earner.

The other day, a shiny black pickup drove up to where the workers were gathered. At the wheel was a member known as Big John. He asked Matt Brady, who is headed to Fordham University, to park the truck.

And if Mr. Brady took an extra loop around the lot, to show off the fact that he was driving Big John’s truck, who was the wiser?

Big John is a big tipper, said Mr. Goldman, who recalled an evening when Big John called for more drinks for his group after the club’s tiki bar had closed. The ever-resourceful Mr. Goldman happened to have a half-bottle of vodka stashed in his car. He rushed it over to Big John.

“He showed his gratitude,” Mr. Goldman said.

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