NAUSET BEACH — Remember when going to the beach was … simple? You’d grab a couple of towels and maybe some chairs, although those were for mom and dad only.
But now? Call the decorator! All summer long I’ve been hearing about how elaborate beach setups have become. On the Cape. Martha’s Vineyard. Old Orchard Beach.
Elaborate? I wondered. How? It’s only the beach.
Last week I got my answer. I rose before the traffic, drove to Orleans, handed over $32.50 to the parking attendant, trekked across the upper lot, and, finally, sweating, crested Nauset Beach.
But wait. The beach. Where was it? I scanned the vista, but there was no ocean. No sand. What was I even looking at? As far as the eye could see, there were only cabanas and tents and canopies and umbrellas, and more cabanas and tents and canopies and umbrellas, and more and more, until it all began to feel kind of depressing in a strange and colorful way, like suburban sprawl had finally reached its inevitable destination: the shore itself.
Some of the shade systems were striped and so big a Manhattan renter would kill for the square footage. Or they were a gorgeous ethereal blue, and futuristic looking, as if stylish aliens had landed and were doing a week at the Cape. There were canopies anchored at two points only, flapping in the wind, like free spirits providing a moving bit of shade.
In beach chic circles, their brand names are well-known: CoolCabanas, Shibumi, Neso. They can cost hundreds of dollars and have such serious SPF ratings (50) that it makes you forget that people once went to the beach for the sun.
By noon the Shade Mahals were threatening to overwhelm the old-school umbrellas, and it felt as if the sand itself was being gentrified. That vibe was enhanced by the fact that the shade structures were marring the view.
That was true even for the lifeguard, Adam Legg. Sitting in his tall chair, he said the tents set up on the berm were making it harder to see 20 feet of shoreline.
“They cover the whole beach,” retired fire chief Anthony Pike said as he stood at the base of the lifeguard chair.
Pike, now the town’s beach safety director, scanned the beach — or rather the pop-up city of shade — and noted with a mix of amazement and resignation that in decades of patrolling this beach, he’s never seen it like this.
Some of the structures provide more than 120 square feet of coverage. Between the space and the amenities — people stock them with luxury beach mats, tables, sound systems, and coolers with built-in blenders — it now seems possible to be at the beach without having to interact with the sand, the birds, the snack bar, the water, or, god forbid, other people or the sun, now that it’s gone into beast mode.
“They’re like living rooms,” said Bob Bronson, a WROR host and a judgmental witness of shadezillas he’s observed at Wingaersheek and Hampton beaches.
“What’s going on inside is crazy,” he said. “I’ve seen blow-up couches and easy chairs, and [full-size] fans. The Bluetooth speakers have gotten out of control.”
The day I went to Nauset, it was nearly 90 degrees and the sun was punishing, but no matter. The only people who actually had to deal with it were the dads (and somehow they were all dads).
Wherever you looked, there was a man wearing an enormous backpack cooler — the $325 Yeti Hopper holds 22 pounds of ice — and sweating as he pulled a heavy and expensive beach wagon, no doubt highly rated on Amazon, that was somehow not quite gliding over the sand.
“I’m a mule,” Peter Wanamaker, a vacationer from Buffalo, said cheerfully, pointing to the enormous and overflowing cart he’d schlepped across the sand. His family was ensconced in a Kennedy-style compound, with not one but two large tents joined by an umbrella.
Alas, as pleasant as a day at the beach can be, the regular rules of life and real estate are still in play, and many people sitting under seemingly ideal tents or cabanas are in fact eyeing better setups.
“I’m a little envious,” Margaret Johnson, of Bethesda, Md., said as she looked over at a CoolCabana that appeared to be larger than the one she was in, which her sister had bought.
“You’re a freeloader,” her sister, Kathie Johnson, said, mock-offended.
On the Vineyard over the July Fourth weekend, one group was facing an even more extreme challenge.
Liza Cohen, an emerging jewelry designer from New York City, was visiting her boyfriend’s family, and while his mom had thought of every possible amenity for inside the house, including specially selected pillows for each guest, she is not a “beach person” and hence didn’t realize that the game had been upped.
The first day of the trip, they hit the beach with towels only, and even though the dad was immediately sent to town to buy a CoolCabana, there was none to be found.
That meant they all had to spend the entire long weekend as if it were 1970. No shade. No gourmet meals. No blended drinks. Considering the arms race a day at the beach has turned into, the outcome was almost shocking.
“It was amazing,” Cohen said. “We had the best time.”
Beth Teitell can be reached at beth.teitell@globe.com. Follow her @bethteitell.