Berkeley Carroll School Athletic Center

The pool and locker rooms are in the basement of a private school. Times available for community use are fairly limited and reservations are booked via the Mindbody website. I went on a weekday evening at 5:15 and had a lane to myself. Even though it was after-hours, there were plenty of kids in the locker room and pool (and therefore accompanying noise). Not the most relaxing experience. Everything is fairly new and well-maintained, but I did feel strands of hair in the pool and saw some debris floating around.

The locker room is very small, with three bathroom stalls, two showers, and two changing booths. There is no suit spinner. The lockers are also tiny and have a combination that you can set. I prefer the Dodge YMCA.

This facility is made available to the public in the spare margins around its core use - as a part of a school sports centre. If you are stopping in or around Park Slope for any length of time and the fairly restricted lap swim hours suit, it is well worth considering a 20 swim subscription to Berkeley Carroll. The lanes are not speed differentiated, so you will need to observe the pace of others already in the water and judge where you will best fit in - not a difficult task because the facility is not heavily used: the dozen or so present when I visited were all well-disciplined. The lockers in the men's locker room are amongst the smallest that I've ever encountered. If you've got a lot of stuff with you, take two padlocks along so that you can use two of them.

This is a great facility that I checked out because there was no review. It's right off the R train in Brooklyn. Lap swim hours are short but convenient, early morning or evening. Very clean locker rooms. Four well-spaced lanes with diving blocks at the deep end. There are pace clocks at each end of the pool, as well. The water is a tad warm but not overly so. I never shared a lane with more than one swimmer - very polite and attentive to swim etiquette.The showers and lockers are squeaky clean and it's in a private school, so everything is very by the book.

A swim pass is for 20 swims, but that's not bad if you are in NYC for more than a week, and there is no expiry on the pass if you talk to them. They have a Masters swim on Tuesday and Thursday in the morning and there are only two lanes available but, again, I never shared with more than one swimmer. The staff is very nice.