In her debut book, The Palms Shore Club: A Brooklyn Legacy By The Bay author Danielle Berfond tells the story of a Sheepshead Bay cabana club through the lens of family, nostalgia and Brooklyn community.
Berfond’s grandparents opened the club in the summer of 1962, creating a social hub for Italian and Jewish middle-class families for nearly four decades. The beloved family-owned institution offered swimming pools, catering, games, and nightlife until 1998. Berfond was only 11-years-old when her grandparents closed their life’s work.
“It was fun to be able to engage the whole family on something that meant so much to all of us and was so grounding in our Berfond family DNA,” Berfond told BK Reader.
The photo-filled book reads like an intimate historical narrative of what it looked like to live in Brooklyn at the time when a family vacation was to another neighborhood. From mahjong games to disco fever to lasting marriages of old lifeguards, Berfond structured the book topically to capture the different people, eras and social dynamics the club hosted.
Throughout the book, Berfond weaves personal memories and family anecdotes with interviews, newspaper clippings, photographs and old club mementos to offer a fuller narrative to the topical history.
“Mainly I feel like I tried to make this about people's memories and stories,” Berfond said.
Before the pandemic, Berfond’s family began reflecting more on the club and sharing stories, leading her to record the conversations to document the oral history while exploring the idea of writing a book.
“It did feel like a kind of family effort, like certainly an effort of a community because I have so many voices in here,” Berfond said. “But also just my family, it felt like our project that I was shepherding. “
Berfond expects the audience to be older New Yorkers who attended the Palms Shore Club who want to reminisce about their iconic poolside community.
“It's meant to be about what that legacy and community was and felt like more so than the detailed story of it,” Berfond said.
Like a time capsule, the personal narrative highlights the importance of documenting oral histories to immortalize the nostalgia when a community scene changes, and how one place can be the root of many different memories. According to Berfond, many people reached out to her after the book came out in March to share more memories.
With changing neighborhoods, families and habits, Berfond captures the feeling of something special slipping away, left only with fond stories and the ability to reflect with others who share them.
“[It is] a look back at how a single place can be a community at a time when community meant everything,” Berfond said.
