Going for liquid gold

Swimmers are silent types. Go to a pool during lap hours, and the only sounds are usually the slap of arms on water and the rush of drowsy ripples left in the wake of an even kick. As a sport, even the superstars are inscrutable: The sculpted elite is thrust into the public only every four years for the Olympics. Day to day, we’re private, we’re loners, and probably the only sure way to spot us is that, more often than most, we’re wet.

We don’t need to swim, we have to. By terrible irony, the great L.A. status symbol, the backyard pool, is no good to us. Too small. They’re for cannonballs and drunken dips at midnight. We need a minimum of 25 yards to develop a decent pace. We live our lives in constant search for the right lap pool. Name one to a swimmer, and chances are that he or she will have tested it. To understand the response, one needs to understand a swimmer’s preferences. Warm: bad. Crowded: bad. Kids: bad. Water walkers: the worst. Cool: good. Empty: good. Quiet as a church: perfect.

When we travel, the first thing we do is find a lap pool. Ask me where I’ve been and I can name a pool. Kensington New Pools in London. The Freyberg pool in Wellington, New Zealand. The YWCA in Des Moines.

The search for a navigable patch of water is so compelling that it forced the North Carolina-based accountant Bill Haverland and his partner, Tom Saunders, from their watery anonymity. In the early 1990s, they began compiling a nationwide directory of swimming pools. By 1995, they had 3,200 entries and had published “Swimmers Guide: Directory of Pools for Fitness Swimmers.”

The book sold out, and rather than produce another edition, they turned it into a website, and the area covered expanded to international listings from Andorra to Zimbabwe.

“I know the word for ‘indoor swimming pool’ in 23 languages. I can even do a search in Cyrillic,” says Haverland. After doing the bulk of research themselves, he and Saunders set it up as a sort of online Zagat guide for swimmers. Log on to www.swimmersguide.com and there are funny, argumentative and, in my experience, largely accurate entries. There is even a self-appointed fusspot attempting to systematize an elaborate system of lane etiquette.

Having stumbled on the site, the first thing I did was check “Los Angeles.” It came as a shock to see how badly I’d limited myself by concentrating on YMCAs and gyms. It took Swimmers Guide to awaken me to the sheer size, and scope, of Southern California’s public pools.

A wide range

We are not the best pool metropolis in the country, says Haverland (that’s Chicago). We are not the best pool country in the world (that’s Australia). But there it was: evidence of a sweeping range of more than 100 public pools across the region, from a paddling pool sandwiched alongside a freeway to a bona-fide Olympic swim stadium. Moreover, there were recommendations for many from lap swimmers, with the tantalizing terms “cool,” “clear,” “empty.”

It turns out that many of our public pools are much like our public schools: old. More than 60% of the pools run by the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks are more than 40 years old, says Lydia Ritzman, the agency’s aquatics director. This is not the heyday of the 1960s, she admits, but she also hastens to point out that the pools are undergoing steady refurbishment. The E.G. Roberts pool at Pico and San Vicente is to open soon. An Olympic-size pool in Van Nuys reopened in June. Last year, the jewel in the crown, the refurbished site of the 1932 Olympics, the John C. Argue Swim Stadium, reopened in Exposition Park.

After speaking to Ritzman, I had only one worry: the water. YMCAs are bad enough after school groups have been through. Is the water in public pools equal parts pee and chlorine? Ritzman put me in touch with the city’s pool chemist, Mike Clouse.

It turns out that monitoring pool water is much like making sausages: You don’t want to know what goes into it. However, the upshot was heartening. A pool chemist can control the “total dissolved solids” that a pool absorbs -- sunscreen, hair conditioner, deodorant -- with filtration, water at the right pH and chlorine, Clouse says. The chlorine oxidizes and disinfects, burning out contaminants by chemical reaction. The remaining particles are caught in the filter.

The surest sign of a clean pool is the most obvious, he says. “Look to see how clear it is.” (A slight milkiness is less than ideal; green means the pool should be drained.) His vote for clearest, cleanest water of the L.A. city pools is Griffith Park (he redesigned the filter).

One sign that a pool’s chlorine has been overwhelmed is, oddly enough, a high smell of chlorine, says Clouse. While a chlorinated vapor hanging over an indoor pool is normal, the smell rising from your skin in bathwater the night after a swim is not. If that happens, or your skin burns or itches, the pool may be dirty.

Armed with Clouse’s tips, I selected a range of public pools from Laguna to Calabasas, from Long Beach to Pasadena. They had to be open to the public, and they had to serve lap swimmers. Hopefully they were clear, in the cool cherry zone of 79 to 81 degrees and not too crowded. However, there was only one essential: They had to have that boxy serenity. Perhaps only lap swimmers understand beautiful blue futility. Lap swimming is a search for peace in a watery cage. We go nowhere to find ourselves.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Rating the pools

Key:

* ****outstanding

**** good

*** adequate

** better than nothing

* time to dry off

Burbank: Verdugo Pool, 3201 W. Verdugo Ave. (818) 238 5391.

***

The Brady Bunch doesn’t swim here, but it could. The pool is set in the Valley-est patch of the Valley, in a perfectly groomed park faced by a succession of perfectly dinky ranch homes. Staff members are sweet, freckled and friendly. Admission is for the honest: You pay on an honor system.

Once at the poolside, don’t be fooled by the Olympic length: This is not technically a lap pool. The 2-foot depth of the shallow end means that your arms drag and somersault turns are impossible. The glare during midday hours makes the backstroke impossible, and the water is warmer than ideal. That said, it draws a dedicated and reverent crowd. The screams of play groups give way promptly at 11.45 a.m., and adult swimmers arrive, silent, serious, ready for water’s answer to yoga. For an hour, all around are lulled by the sound of steady swimmers and the lapping of the water on the rim of this surprisingly pleasant pool.

Temperature: 80-82 degrees

Water quality: Clear

Size: 50 by 18 meters

Swim lanes: 7

Depth: 2.5 feet to 8 feet; diving well 12 feet.

Lap swim: 11:50 a.m.-12:50 p.m., 6-7:30 p.m. weekdays; 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. weekends.

Admission: $5 residents, $7 nonresidents; monthly passes $45-$55.

Calabasas: Calabasas Tennis and Swim Center, 23400 Park Sorrento. (818) 222-2782

***

This is a park that wants to be a country club. A small but newly replastered and tiled pool is surrounded by an art gallery, community room, sports center and a snack bar with tiki thatching and a decent chicken Caesar for $6. The dominant view is through a high fence at an empty (private) park with man-made lake.

The warm pool water can seem cloudy -- management says this is caused by bubbles from the basket filter. Lap lanes are divided up by speed. A slowly breaststroking old man, sneering at younger swimmers through sunglasses and a brimmed hat, doesn’t care: He’s the snapping turtle of the fast lane. Sharing lanes might be necessary. The number of lap lanes changes according to other activities, but there are always at least two open.

For lap swimmers in search of an anonymous hour in a cool pool, this place is a bad fit. Rather, it’s about families and summer in the suburbs. Teenage girls parade the latest department store acquisitions. The boys they hope to impress squint skeptical eyes that seem to say, “Is this it?” Mothers swing infants in swim diapers. Middle-aged men thrashing in lap lanes refuse to slow down despite reddening faces.

Temperature: 83 degrees

Water quality: Slightly cloudy

Size: 25 by 20 yards

Swim lanes: 4 to 6, depending on lessons

Depth: 3.5 feet to 12 feet

Lap swim: weekdays 6 a.m.-noon; 2 lanes after 1 p.m. until 9:30 p.m. (8:30 in winter); 8 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday and 8 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday.

Admission: $2 adults, $1 children.

Central Los Angeles: John C. Argue Swim Stadium, 3980 S. Menlo Ave. (213) 763 0125.

**

After years of disrepair, L.A.’s 1932 swim stadium reopened last year in the shadow of the Coliseum in Exposition Park. The Deco-style, palm-lined site is nothing short of thrilling. Emerging onto the pool deck makes even an office worker feel like Mark Spitz. There is a 50-meter racing pool and a large, separate U-shaped children’s pool.

There is only one hitch, and it’s a doozie. The Department of Recreation and Parks has, wittingly or inadvertently, adopted the management style from the Department of Motor Vehicles. Lines for tickets are so long, families who arrive on time for morning swim lessons routinely miss half of them as they wait in the hallway.

Do not make the mistake of trying to buy a ticket without a driver’s license or California ID: You will be sent to your car and to the rear of that long, long line. Get a ticket, even get to the pool’s edge and a guard still might announce, “Sorry, pool’s closed.”

That happened to me, but by that point, I refused to leave the place dry. The reward was one of the best swims I’ve had in L.A. The pool was warm -- unnecessarily warm given the separate wading pool -- but clean and almost empty. The heroic setting played tricks on my mood: It made me feel thinner, faster, stronger. The 20-minute wait for a ticket, the hassle for ID, the last-minute attempted ejection all were forgiven.

But when I tried to go back, the “we’re open, open, open, sorry closed” trick was played yet again. Later, it took seven phone calls just to get the pool’s opening hours without being disconnected.

Given the scale and history of the place, this swim stadium should be one of the great magnets for inner-city Angelenos. However, it is so whimsically run, the mystery isn’t that so few people know about it but that anyone does.

Temperature: 83 degrees

Water quality: Clear

Size: Two pools; laps in Olympic 50-meter lap pool divided into two 25-by-25-meter legs.

Swim lanes: 5-7 lanes during lap swim hours

Depth: 4.5 feet to 16 feet

Lap swim: 10 a.m.-1 p.m. and 5-7 p.m. weekdays; noon-2 p.m. and 5-6 p.m. weekends.

Admission: $1.50 adults, children free.

Culver City: Culver City Plunge, 4175 Overland Ave. (310) 253-6680.

*

I can hear the protests rise on the Westside: Don’t be mean to this nice old pool! Hah. This nice old pool may have friendly staff, watchful guards and, to judge by a proud banner, a champion swim team in Culver City High, but it could still make a mermaid a landlubber. The problem? It stages lap swim at the same time as swim-team practices. Without warning, lap swimmers are jammed as heavily as four to a lane in short-course swimming rotations. No effort is made by guards to organize circle swims by speed. The resulting formations make the worst day at LAX seem like clear flying.

The ticket-taker wasn’t sure when the various swim teams practice, so there was no advice as to how to avoid them. “Wednesday’s the worst,” she said.

This report is from a Wednesday.

Temperature: 82 degrees

Water quality: Slightly cloudy

Size: 50 by 25 meters

Lap lanes: Long course 8 lanes; short course 10-20.

Depth: 4 feet at each end, 13 feet in center diving well.

Lap swim: 6-8:45 a.m. and 11 a.m.-noon weekdays; 7:45-9 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday; 5:30-9 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday; 7-9 a.m. Saturday and 12:15-3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Admission: $3 adults, $2 children.

Laguna: Laguna Beach Community / High School Pool, 625 Park Ave. (949) 376-9818.

****

Trust this art colony to have produced a heartbreakingly lovely little pool. The setup is nothing special -- if you don’t count the view of the Pacific from one corner of the swimyard. The charm is the presiding vibe: This pool is about lap swimming. Yes, eek, there are children. Kids splash at a far end, horrid little rich girls scream for their maids, but most of all, it is given over to silent strokes of lap swimmers. The bracing sea air and azure skies of Orange County make its moneyed remoteness all the more a torment.

Temperature: 80.9 degrees

Water quality: Clear

Size: 25 meters by 25 yards

Lap lanes: 10, depending on lessons

Depth: 6.5 feet to 11 feet

Lap swim: 6 a.m.-12.30 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday; 9 a.m.-12.30 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Friday; 7-8.30 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 5-8 p.m. Friday; 7-10:15 a.m. Saturday; no lap swim Sunday.

Admission: $2 adults; infants free.

Long Beach: California State University, 1250 Bellflower Blvd. (562) 985-4674.

(Rating withheld -- kicked out before full immersion)

To find the pools at the back of this labyrinthine campus before lap swim ends at 1 p.m. sharp, give yourself an hour to be lost. First step: By all means accept the map from the security office at the entrance, but don’t trust it. It will deliver you to a modular trailer in a sea of asphalt. When you bang on enough doors of enough unmarked trailers to find staff and ask for directions to the pool, don’t ask for the pool -- nobody will know where that is -- ask for Parking Lot 10.

Once you get there, the pool, actually two pools, is a bare-bones spread, but clean and presentable. It’s a good idea to bring earplugs. Swimming is done to the roar of engines, perhaps pool pumps, perhaps air conditioners, definitely loud engines.

Staff accommodate lost and late lap swimmers with a toe-dip. It felt warmer than the advertised 80, but nice. This isn’t a pool worth a trip, but for Long Beach residents, it’s a nice place for a workout.

Temperature: 80 degrees

Water quality: Clear

Two pools: 50 meters by 25 yards; 25 meters by 25 yards

Swim lanes: Varies

Depth: 50-meter pool, 6 to 12 feet; 25-meter pool, 4 to 7 feet

Lap swim: weekdays only, 6:30-8 a.m. and noon-1 p.m. Monday-Friday; also 7-8 p.m. Monday-Thursday.

Admission: $1, adults only.

Malibu: Malibu High School Pool, 30215 Morning View Drive (310) 589-1933.

****

It is perhaps unfair that a school a quarter mile up a hill from Zuma Beach should have a pool too. As if embarrassed by its riches, the high school hides the pool up a hill and behind the classrooms, off a large yard of baking asphalt. Once you find it, chances are good that high school girls will be sunbathing around the ticket takers in a gossipy little clutch and the pool itself will be close to empty. According to the one lap swimmer I found working out, this divine emptiness was “normal.” The low traffic may account for the clean, relatively cool water.

Laps are done short-form, across the 25-yard distance. A brisk ocean breeze whips overhead, hawks circle.

Second thought, it’s not so unfair that this is wasted on an elite school by the ocean. It’s summer. Many of us go to Zuma. Few things are nicer than a pool swim after a day at the beach. This pool means that for two bucks and a day pass, it can be yours.

Temperature: 82 degrees

Water quality: Clear

Pool size: 50 meters by 25 yards

Lap lanes: 13

Depth: 3 feet to 13 feet

Lap swim: 9:30 a.m.-7 p.m. weekdays; 11 a.m.-3 p.m. weekends. Lap hours 5-8 p.m. weekdays during school year.

Admission: $2 day pass or monthly pass for $30, family pass for $60.

Pasadena: Amateur Athletic Foundation Rose Bowl Aquatic Center, 36 N. Arroyo Blvd. (626) 564-0330.

***

When “sky-cam” traffic helicopters tire of photographing traffic for the morning news, they swing over to show this spectacular 1990 swim stadium, lap swimmers already coursing the Olympic-length lap pool in dawn light. As heat picks up, the management shoots great jets of water over lap lanes, with all the drama of a New York tugboat heralding the arrival of the QE2.

Yet pay the $8 admittance fee, change in a crowded locker room and insinuate yourself into a crowded lane, and the swimmer’s-eye view face down in the pool is altogether less splendid. This lap pool has more than its share of floating Band-Aids.

I’m told timing is everything. Regular morning lap swimmers who live in Pasadena swear by the place. This is, evidently, a facility for locals, who can take out the more affordable long-term memberships, get to know the low traffic hours and take comfort in the likelihood that although there will still be floating Band-Aids, they’re probably theirs.

Temperature: 79 degrees

Water quality: Slightly cloudy

Lap pool size: 50 meters by 25 yards

Lap lanes: 10

Depth: 6 feet, 7 inches

Lap swim: 5.30 a.m.-9 p.m. weekdays; 6 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday; 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday.

Admission: $8 day pass for adults; various monthly membership rates.

Santa Monica: Santa Monica College / Municipal Pool, 2225 16th St. (310) 458-8700.

*****

Parking is so Darwinian around the Santa Monica College campus that when you phone this pool, a recorded announcement tells you to ride a bus or a bike. That’s hard to do from downtown L.A., but I might just start, because this 2-year-old facility is my choice for best pool of Southern California. Or pools. There is a separate pool for children and families and warm-water splashers of all ages.

In the lap or “fitness pool,” there are no less than 19 lanes by day. The water is brilliantly clear and refreshingly cool. Flags draped across the width of the pool snap smartly in the sea breezes that cut the high August sun. Swimmers are arranged by speed, and slow swimmers here actually seem content to stay in slow lanes. There is a kids’ section next to the slow lane, but it is not a paddling pool. Only kids who swim are allowed, and they pass their time trailing the lap swimmers, diving and making silly faces at them.

Funny: What would be annoying above water is somehow endearing below.

Perhaps the greatest feat of this pool is the way it matches heroic scale with civic intent. Children and water walkers have their warm pool, we lap swimmers have a cool one. If only the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks would send the staff of its newly refurbished Olympic showpiece pool to train here, the inner city might also have the kind of showcase facility the residents deserve.

Temperature: 79 degrees (fitness pool)

Water quality: Clear

Fitness pool: 50 meters by 25 yards

Lap lanes: 19 short course; 8 long course

Depth: 6.7 feet to 13 feet

Lap swim: every day, 10:30 a.m.-7 p.m., early swims from 5.30 a.m. weekdays only; varies long course and short course.

Admission: $2.50 residents, $5 nonresidents; $1 children of residents, $2 nonresidents.

*

Pool guides

www.swimmersguide.com: An international Zagat guide for swimmers. If you need a pool, go to “country,” then “city.” You’ll find a lap swimmer’s selection, including length, temperature and cost, and often mini-reviews.

www.laparks.com: Lists L.A. city pools by season, year-round and summer only.

parks.co.la.ca.us: Check here for pools and lakes, but before going, call to confirm that the facility is open and that a lifeguard is on duty.