I was just down the shore from the North Avenue beach house, getting my ass thrashed but good and enjoying it perhaps a little too much.
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Nevertheless it felt good to be sitting in the sun, to be distracted by the occasional big wave splashing over the revetment that runs north from Oak Street Beach, and to be playing chess again, even if I was losing $3 on the game. It helped that the opposition was a nice guy, though he showed no mercy on the board.
The pavilion has been the place to find a decent game in decent weather for 50 years. It was built in 1957, paid for with a $90,000 donation from Laurens Hammond, of the Hammond Organ Company. It was designed by Maurice Webster, and it’s made of limestone and enhanced with matching sculptures of a king and queen by Boris Gilbertson. The statues are a little worse for wear, thanks to their water’s-edge exposure to winter, but the pavilion offers shade and shelter and boards set into concrete–though most serious players bring their own plastic roll-up boards.
