John Jay Pool and Recreation

This pool has so much potential, but the ridiculously strict rules and staff make for a very unpleasant experience.
The pool itself is quite nice and clean. But there is a large lack of chairs. Expect to have to lay on the concrete.
First, you cannot even enter the pool without a lock because you are not allowed to bring any bags to the pool area. On top of that you cannot bring cell phones to the pool area. I’m not sure why they just can’t post a sign saying they’re not liable for lost/​stolen possessions because it is a massive pain to be for to lock up all your stuff, including your cell phone.
As I tried to enter the pool area, I was told I could not even enter wearing my shirt because it was orange. Their reasoning? It would throw off chlorine levels, so only white shirts allowed. This makes no sense, what if my bathing suit was orange? On top of that, I clearly was not going to wear my shirt in the pool. What if I need a shirt because I sunburn easily?
Other insensible rules like having to have a lining in your bathing suit (instead of shorts and boxers) also apply. I guess they don’t realize that a lining won’t stop a little kid from peeing in the pool.
All of this combined, along with very unfriendly staff who enforce these rules as if their life depended it made me feel like I was at a prison rather than a public pool. I will not return.

This pool is quite, clean and nicely staffed. It was my go to pool before i left the city 10 years ago and it was still great.
It doesn’t have a kiddie pool which mean I couldn’t take the smallest nephew but for calm afternoons reading a book while tanning and dipping this is the perfect location.

I chose to return to John Jay Pool on the hottest July day in 2015. Arriving around 4:30 resulted in a wait of close to 45 min. People were cutting in line or joining someone they knew which kept the whole experience to not feel like a first come first serve situation. Loosey goosey patrolling led to people entering the pool in shorts & underwear they had been wearing & without showering — meaning that we were dealing with pool water that I’m sure had high levels of fecal contamination. Didn’t make a big difference though because there was no way to swim laps with all the hub-​bub.
I’d say the racial mix was around 85% hispanic & black. DIve pool out of commission with broken diving board — so kids were all cannon-​balling amongst everyone else.
Lounge chairs were being hogged with those not using them.
My most recent pool experience was at Astoria which rated higher even though I saw toddlers in diapers there being put in the same water everyone had to share — so public pools in general are kinda messed up. There really is a basic lack of public pool education & enforcement that needs to be addressed better. Kinda sucks to subject yourself to conditions that could make you sick & have to tolerate so much sloppiness & ignorance.

So I wanted to have a pool day and I finally found a great public pool in the city after a long search on Unilocal!I was trying to decide between John Jay Pool or Asser Levy pool on 23^rd… John Jay pool was the clear favorite!
I came here, with my boyfriend, for the first session; we arrived around 10:47 am and the line was nice and organized, and it was not long at all. We actually would have been a couple spots closer, had we not been lost and walked around the whole block trying to find the entrance… HAHAHA! It was our first time coming here, and not the last! As soon as it hit 11 am, they started letting people in… Once inside, we set up our little towel area :) and enjoyed our time at the pool.
Really fun, refreshing, clean and friendly staff. Good times… good times.

Tucked away in John Jay Park, overlooking the East River, this public pool is a hidden gem on the Upper East Side! Free admission is a plus, too. There are rules you need to be aware of before you go (and it will make your experience that much better):
The pool is open from 11:00am-3:00pm and then again from 4:00pm-7:00pm. On a hot, busy Saturday, you should get there at 10:00am to wait in line. They stop letting people in when the pool is at capacity. Frustrating if you are late, but so nice not to be sitting on top of other pool goers. To get there, you can take the 6 to 77 and Lex and walk down. It’s a block past York and if you continue down the dead end street into the park, you’ll see the pool. You can’t enter from the 78 St. side, so don’t even bother.
Bring a combination lock. They will not let you in without one. You can only bring a handful of items onto the pool deck (sunscreen, sunglasses, towels, shoes, goggles, swimming caps, other swim gear and WHITE t-​shirts or hats). Not much else. Yes, that means you have to lock your phone and all your other belongings in the locker. Hence the lock ;)
The staff is professional (borderlining on rude), but follow the rules and you’ll be okay. Rinse off in the showers before you go into the pool area. Shake out your towel to prove you aren’t smuggling in contraband (yes, I know). And then enjoy!
There’s a pool big enough for laps (obviously not on a crowded day) and a smattering of lounge chairs, but those go quickly. There are benches and plenty of places to set up a towel and hang out. There’s also a diving board and diving pool. Really nice experience for kids and family alike.

a public pool in the UES overlooking the east river — this did the trick for me! a
few key things to know:
— there are two sessions a day with a break from 3 – 4 where everyone must clear out
— you have to bring a lock — make sure it is a larger lock or they wont let you in
— there are a few lounge chairs but you have to get in line early to get these
— there is a line to get in at the beginning of each session + sometimes throughout the session depending on if they have reach capacity

I’ll keep this quick:
1) Free!
2) If it’s hot as heck, get here early. Like no less than 30 mins before session starts. The line gets LONG.
3) Look up the rules on the NYC Parks site, and follow them. If you know what the rules are, there will be no problems. They are not playing about the combo locks. Bring one.
4) There’s not enough room for laps on hot days. Duh. But there is enough room for you to relax w/​o being bugged.
5) There’s a diving tank, with small diving board. Good times.

Wait time was awful. So was the staff and locker facilities.
Pool itself is surprisingly nice for a free public pool.
Go cautiously depending on wait. I literally waited an hr and 25 minutes but only got in for 1 hour being the session was over.
Will go again depending on the line.

I decided to swim my way through as many pools as possible in NYC, and this was pool #3.
Pros: this pool is freeeeee, gorgeous, a decent size, and there is a separate diving pool off to the side.
Cons: since it’s a free public pool, it gets crowded, and there are 9 million rules as you can see from the other reviews –there are even locker room attendants to make sure you take a shower before going to the pool area, and then someone sitting outside the makes you shake your towel so they can see you’re not hiding contraband. But if you read all the rules ahead of time, you’re prepared and it’s not so bad.
I swam nice long laps around the people, treating it like an obstacle course, and managed to only accidentally kick people 3 – 4 times. I’m looking forward to making it back during the rare lap swim times, because it would be great to swim uninterrupted laps down the long lanes.

Good to go and see how NYC runs its public pools. They nearly provide a safe and clean environment. The problem is there are no real lanes, and if you actually swim, you get some strange looks from the people lounging around, trying to stay cool in the summer heat.

I moved to NY three days ago from Philadelphia, and finally having a day off I badly wanted to go to the pool. I had been warned about some of the rules by a friend, so I thought I came prepared with nothing but my swimsuit on, shorts/​t shirt and a magazine. As I was about to enter the building where the showers are, some woman who was apparently staff starts screaming at me from about 20 feet away, where she was lounging on a bench with her co-​staff. She was rude, sarcastic, and condescending. I explained that I was new, and that I thought I was following the rules, as they weren’t clearly posted anywhere, and it would be great it she could tell me. She didn’t. She just kept yelling at me for having on CLOTHES over my bathing suit. What, was I supposed to walk across the neighborhood half naked? I finally understood I had to have a lock to lock up my shorts/​t shirt, but if course I didn’t have one, so I left. I was humiliated anyway by how she was yelling at me in front of so many people.
I’ll go back to try the lap swim, during which, if I understand, you are allowed to bring your things on deck. But we’ll see.
Welcome to New York.
Update:
Lap swim not bad. Different staff that were MUCH nicer. You can bring your stuff on to the deck. You have to register to get a swim card but it’s free, and you can do it when you go. A little crowded, but ok. I think I’ll stick to the lap swim.

Firstly, there were no local residents to be found, no families from the crowd who visits the adjacent playground.
The first –and last– time I went there, had to wait on line to get in for some 40 minutes. While doing so, we saw a Mom standing behind us slap her toddler and yell at her for accidentally dropping a bottle of water on the floor. Nobody seemed to care, I thought I’d better mind my business.
The guard didn’t allow us to bring my home keys and mobile phone to the pool area so I asked my friend to hold them while I went inside to check it out and relax for a few minutes. Beware of the many rules.
There were young kids jumping in the water in their underwear, some even wearing cotton T-​shirts. I heard some foul language here and there, and some display of negative manners but having said that, it’s clean and free and public.

The down ass friend who’s gone with me on just about every other beach/​pool adventure this summer was super tired this past Saturday, and I was in the same boat. Still unable to bear the thought of squandering a full weekend day without taking advantage of the city’s summer facilities, we took a jaunt to the John Jay Pool, close to both of our homes.
Approached by several avenue blocks from the 77^th Street stop off the 6 train, the pool was located in a little park looking out over the East River. The area we were in, Yorkville, presented a clash of socioeconomic strata, generations, and eras. The tree-​shaded residential blocks grew progressively quiet as the street dead-​ended in a row of European-​looking buildings with old fashioned French windows facing out towards the water. On the ground beneath such classy dwellings were unbecoming trails of trash water leaking from heaps of black plastic bags. Pigeons picked at random debris, while flies buzzed over spots of dog crap left behind after pooper scoopers. In the park itself, little brown children chased each other all around, threading through stationary Jewish elders.
I tried to go straight to the pool (closer to 78^th than 77^th), but arrived at a pedestrian bridge over the highway instead. So if you go here, enter the park gates right away at the end of East 77^th Street.
The guard to the locker room demanded to see our locks and bathingsuits, but we were used to this (what we weren’t used to was when a lifeguard demanded to look under the towel my friend had wrapped around her. She complied like a flasher, and the guard’s suspicions were finally laid to rest.). The ladies’ locker room was located half a staircase up; a white-​tiled affair with skylights letting in plenty of natural light… too bad the floor was a mess, despite one woman’s cranky attempts to mop up every dirty footprint and streak of water. The five or so showerheads were concentrated in one small stall-​like area that was bottlenecked with big bottomed women and their numerous children. The toilets had no lids or seats… I actually thought that was a clever way to eliminate more wet mess in the place.
The pool was quite long (just shy of 50 yards at 145 feet) but narrow (49 feet). Noting this, I’m glad I chose to start counting my laps at Lasker pool. On a Saturday, of course, there were no lap lanes set up whatsoever. The four feet of water was asplash with teenagers, nasty couples ready to have intercourse in the water, shrieking children, overzealous parents, and even a man with Turrets and a motor control problem — we actually preferred to stay by him, because wherever he went, there was about a five foot radius clearing around him because people were afraid of the poor guy… what they were NOT afraid of, however, was getting in everyone else’s personal space whenever they damn well pleased. Everywhere we looked, there was total mayhem.
There was a measure of relaxation, though, afforded by the supreme coolness of the water. We even shivered a bit as a strong breeze blew some crispy brown leaves into the water — will it be an early fall? Every now and then, a gigantic barge would float by on the river parallel to the pool. Quite a sight.
This is a fine place for people watching, too… everyone from the dolphin-​bodied lifeguards in their Ninja Turtle colored orange-​and-​green speedos to a little girl wearing a bikini top shaped like lady bugs offered endless entertainment.
At 3 p.m., the end of the first session was abruptly called, and resumed at 4 p. m…we took this into stride and sat out in the park on benches under the protective shade of a tree. We were surprised to see a long line forming as early as twenty minutes before four, but they let everyone inside immediately once the second session began. Thank goodness, because a cluster of creepy dudes who looked like they were high started asking us our names. They bugged off before I asserted myself, though.
At 5 p.m., they randomly opened a wildly popular 9-​foot deep diving pool adjacent to the swimming pool. Open-​mouthed, we stared as a wild assortment of people nonchalantly did the sketchiest self-​taught flips and turns off of a low diving borad with their t-​shirts, chains, and sometimes even their shoes on. I got the urge to do a flip, but chickened out.
My last impressions of this place were of a lifeguard blatantly sleeping up in his chair with all his limbs splayed out… and back in the locker room, the woman with the mop shouting at a young girl to twist her wet bathing suit over a drain in the floor rather than the floor itself. Ah, New York public pool wouldn’t be the same without such distinctions, now would it.
P. S. People are right about the sketchy locker closures. Choose a locker that’s not falling apart, and obviously don’t bring anything valuable or nice to this place.

ok yes, yes, I did it; I actually went to a public NYC pool, on a Sunday no less. so after doing some research I decided to ck out the outdoor John Jay Pool. got there about 1pm and there was actually a line to get in. wtf? I didn’t know there would be lines to get into public pools so I was a little taken aback but the lady in front of me said this was normal and it was usually longer. Thankfully I did not wait that long, prob about 10−15mins before they let more people in a little at a time depending on when folks left.
So I finally got into the women’s locker room and it’s pretty raggedy but I didn’t expect much. the thing I wasn’t expecting was that you could not bring anything out to the pool; nothing electronic, no food, NOTHING, not even your shorts and tank you came there w/​, bathing suits only though I did see some kids wearing white t shirts but I think they allowed it bc it was to protect them from the sun, definitely remember to bring a lock for the locker bc you will not be allowed in. The only things you could bring in were: a towel, bottled water, a book or magazine, sunglasses, and suntan/​sun block. Also note there are no chairs or grass to lay your towel on, pretty much you’re lying on the ground but whatever, it wasn’t as uncomfortable as I thought it would be.
The pool itself seemed ok to me though I only wanted to take a quick dip just to cool off from the sun so it was fine and I really liked that the pool had a second ledge around the whole pool where you could sit and be in the water w/​out being submerged in.
All in all, it wasn’t so bad, I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t listen to music and pass out but I needed to catch up on summer reading anyway. One thing that suked though I can understand why, is that apparently they have 2 sessions to allow more people to have access to the pool and not have people lounge all day. The 1^st is from 11am-​3pm and 3pm-​7pm. Next time, I would plan to get there earlier to get a good spot to lay my towel down, as it can get a bit cramped.