New York in summer: beaches, free concerts and how to survive the heat
Hot, humid and the best free season of the year: three beaches on the subway, free concerts in two parks, outdoor markets every weekend, and the rules for doing any of it without melting — the case for summer, and how to do it.
Season: Summer
New York in summer is hot — properly, humidly hot from late June through August, with the subway platforms hotter than the street — and it is the best free season the city has. The beaches are open and on the subway. Two of the city's great parks run free concert seasons. The outdoor food markets are every weekend. The High Line and the parks are full of people until dark, which comes late.
The rule for summer is timing. Do the outdoor things early — before ten — or after five, and do something indoors or underground in the middle of the day: a museum, the galleries, a long lunch in Flushing. Carry water. The subway cars are air-conditioned and the platforms are not, so do not linger. And the beaches: weekday mornings are a different place from Saturday afternoons.
This page is the citywide list; each borough hub has its own summer note in the season strip, with the neighborhoods that are best in the heat.
The list
Coney IslandFree
Coney Island · Brooklyn
The summer beach: free sand, the boardwalk, the Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel, and free fireworks on Friday nights. Four subway lines end here. Go on a weekday; walk fifteen minutes east to Brighton Beach for the food and a quieter stretch of sand.
Rockaway BeachFree
Rockaway Beach · Queens
The surf beach, seven miles of Atlantic at the end of the A train — seventy-five minutes from Midtown, which is why it is emptier — with the best boardwalk food of any beach in the city. The ferry from Wall Street is the nicer way out and costs more. Weekday mornings.
Orchard BeachFree
Pelham Bay · The Bronx
The Bronx's beach on Pelham Bay, calm water, almost no visitors from outside the borough, and City Island's seafood next door. The 6 to the end and the Bx12, which runs often in summer and hardly at all the rest of the year — this is a summer-only page for a reason.
Prospect ParkFree
Park Slope / Prospect Heights / Flatbush · Brooklyn
The free concert series at the bandshell runs through the summer, and it is the best free evening in Brooklyn: bring food from the neighborhood, sit on the lawn, stay until the end. The park itself is the place to be in the evening when the day has been too hot for anything.
Brooklyn Bridge ParkFree
DUMBO / Brooklyn Heights · Brooklyn
Free programming all summer — outdoor films on the piers, kayaking, concerts — and the breeze off the river that the rest of the city does not have. Evenings, with the skyline lighting up across the water. The bridge walk above it should be done at eight in the morning, not at two.
Queens Night MarketUnder $25
Corona · Queens
Saturday evenings in Flushing Meadows, a hundred vendors from dozens of countries under a price ceiling, and the right way to spend a hot Saturday: arrive as the sun goes down and eat your way round. The 7 to 111th Street; it runs late.
SmorgasburgUnder $25
Williamsburg / Prospect Park · Brooklyn
Weekends on the Williamsburg waterfront and in Prospect Park, outdoors, a hundred vendors — the summer lunch. Arrive early, before noon, when there is shade and no queue; by two on a hot Saturday it is a slow shuffle between stalls.
Governors IslandUnder $25
New York Harbor · Manhattan
A car-free island in the harbor with a breeze, hills for the view, hammocks, and a cheap ferry from Lower Manhattan — the summer day out that feels furthest from the city for the least effort. Weekday morning ferries have traditionally been free; check.
Bryant ParkFree
Midtown · Manhattan
Free films on the lawn on summer evenings, free games and chairs in the shade in the afternoon, and the only block in Midtown where sitting down costs nothing. The place to wait out the worst hour of a hot day between two other things.
HarlemFree
Harlem · Manhattan
HARLEM WEEK, every August, is a two-week festival that is largely free — music, food, block events — and the best reason to be in upper Manhattan in the hottest month. The brownstone blocks are a good evening walk in any summer week.
The Staten Island FerryFree
St. George / Whitehall · Staten Island
The free answer to a hot evening: twenty-five minutes on the water each way, a breeze the whole time, the statue going out and the skyline lit up coming back. Runs all night. Every other item on this page is hotter than this one.
Common questions
- Which beach should I go to?
Coney Island for the boardwalk, the rides and the atmosphere; Rockaway for real surf and the best food, if you can take the seventy-five minutes each way; Orchard Beach for calm water, no crowds and City Island's seafood next door. All three are a subway fare. On a summer weekend all three are busy near the station — walk ten minutes along the sand and they are not.
- How hot is it, really?
Daytime highs in the upper eighties Fahrenheit — around thirty to thirty-two Celsius — through July and August, with humidity that makes it feel hotter, and several days each summer over ninety. The subway platforms are hotter than the street. Mornings and evenings are fine; the middle of the day is for indoors, shade or water. June and the first half of September are warm without being punishing.
- What's free in summer that isn't free the rest of the year?
The concerts — Prospect Park's bandshell series and Brooklyn Bridge Park's films and programming — and the two outdoor markets, which are free to enter and run only in the warm months. HARLEM WEEK in August. Coney Island's Friday fireworks. The beaches are free year-round but are only beaches in summer. Everything else on this site is free in every season.
Who should skip this
Anyone who cannot do heat and humidity — August in New York is hard on people who are not used to it, and the same trip in September or May is the same city at two-thirds the temperature.