Good luck finding a beach chair this summer

By | July 8, 2020

Forget beach bod envy. This summer is all about beach chair envy.

“You can’t find a beach chair anywhere,” Brooklyn-based mom Dawn Mark told The Post. She said she scoured the Web for three days before she finally scored one — for $ 90.

“It was really overpriced, but I had no choice,” said the 41-year-old, who wanted to sun herself in her backyard while watching her 5-year-old play. To add insult to injury, she got an e-mail days later that the delivery was pushed back — to Jan. 5. “What am I going to do with a beach chair in January? It’s laughable.”

Beach chairs are this summer’s hot seat now that socially distant hangouts — in backyards, on beaches and in parks or even in parking lots — are the only way to play. And prices are getting jacked up due to demand from desperate beachgoers.

“Someone offered me $ 500 for a beach chair,” said Butch Yamali, owner of Malibu Shore Club in Lido Beach, LI. “I don’t even have any to give! People try to take the chairs from the pool area to the beach. They’ll do anything.” Plus, due to the coronavirus pandemic, having your own chair is essential: The idea of stretching out on a surface touched by someone else’s sun-blocked bum is so last year. “No one wants to share anymore,” Yamali said.

Mark, who also hit up her local hardware store, Home Depot, Ace Hardware and Costco to no avail, said she’s witnessed price gouging for beach chairs: A friend shelled out $ 180 for a secondhand piece on eBay.

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“One site listed a basic plastic beach chair for $ 300. Last year, these chairs were 40 bucks,” she said. “Everything is either out of stock or ridiculously overpriced.”

Beach chairs aren’t the only white-whale product of the summer. Above-ground pools have been hard to come by now that people are hunkered down at home with few options. The Post recently reported that retailers can barely keep up with demand now that most kids’ camps are canceled for safety reasons and entertainment needs to be available at home.

“We paid around $ 300 more than the recommended retail price, because I couldn’t buy it anywhere else,” said one Westchester mom, who asked to remain anonymous. “We thought it was worth it for our 7-year-old twins, who had a blast splashing around in it over Memorial Day weekend.”

With all the drama around finding the season’s hottest item, Mark has a new strategy: Think ahead.

“I’m going to order my salt for winter now, just in case,” she said.

Living | New York Post