What is this “changing clothes” of which folks speak?
IME/IMO: Your suit plus a coverup of some sort is what you wear to drive / ride to the beach. And back. In effect your swim gear substitutes for your normal underwear.
Cape Town has two beaches with colorful huts, surprisingly free to use, but you can tip a local volunteer security guard to watch your hut while you swim.
Really? I know some beaches have them around Melbourne. I have never seen them anywhere else. Where else has them?
Fair enough, I only knew of the Melbourne ones, but assumed it was widespread. I can’t see any reason why they wouldn’t, so that surprises me.
Though also, whenever I refer to anything in Melbourne, I often say “Australia” generally because most people don’t care how specific I am. Americans love to say their local area and assume we know what they’re talking about, but I try to be general to not confuse them. They aren’t going to know what Fitzroy or Geelong are, but they assume I know where Portland is.
To the beach, possibly. But after you have come out of the freezing cold water you need to shed your freezing cold wet swimming togs and get dry fairly quickly and into some warm dry clothes.
Aah, yes. The difference between cold weather beaches and tropical beaches. I forgot about that part.
Portland, Oregon or Portland, Maine?
Or the two Portlands in Colorado, the one in Connecticut, etc. There’s also two in Australia. One in Victoria & one in New South Wales. The damned things are everywhere.
The one with Fred Armisen in it.
Melbourne has more English traditions, and colder weather. As you can see from the posts from for example @LSLGuy and @hibernicus, there is a major difference in beachgoing traditions and practicalities between warm and cold climes.
The changing poncho is the greatest beach innovation of the 21st Century. It’s a sad reflection on the intelligence of surfers that it takes so long to adopt the most obvious solutions to problems (also see: wetsuits and leashes).
This one promises to keep you warm, too.
We have one in England, on the south coast. It’s a not quite island.