Swimply, and the Public/Private Pool Divide

Pool access has been a surprising linchpin of some of America’s most significant cultural moments. What does it mean that you can now rent your neighbor’s watery paradise?

It was September 2022 and Lexi Pandell, a 33-year-old East Bay native living in nearby Danville, California, was trying to figure out if she should have a bachelorette party. The state was experiencing a heat wave—"the hottest and longest on record" for the month of September, the governor noted. All across the West, more than a thousand heat records were broken. There was only one idea that made any kind of sense: a pool.

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Alana Hope Levinson
The Trend Times columnist. Exploring design fads in the age of doomscrolling.

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