Dumpster Diving

Instant swimming pool, Brooklyn style.

Some New Yorkers stuck in small apartments on a hot summer day have a new option: swimming in huge bins that once held trash. The idea for the unlikely urban club came from David Belt, president of Macro Sea, a Manhattan design firm. A contractor loaned him the three big metal bins and they were cleaned, lined with plastic and filled with water. Belt then rented an abandoned Brooklyn lot through the end of August. And suddenly, he had himself three swimming pools, surrounded with lounge chairs, grills and a few cabanas.

The Bronx offers the Floating Pool Lady, a seven-lane pool made out of an old barge. That one is moored at Baretto Point Park.