An ice cold plunge, from fear to well-being.

I've been told a bunch of people would be swimming in the ocean and that they call themselves the Polar Bear Club. I've never heard about them, though they have existed since 1903, but I'm a European, and New York, the self-contained world, well, was new to me. A day after New Year's Eve, I set off on a journey from East 100th and 1st Avenue to Coney Island. As I was walking from the Coney Island and Stillwell Avenue station through the empty Luna Park, the steel frames, like dinosaur bones that long forgotten the joys of summer, offered no hope - I must be on the wrong path - until I sniffed a bigger party. It's true in Eastern Europe and apparently in New York, too, that the grilled food is where the party is. If the travel from the Upper East Side to Coney Island felt like a journey through the whole world, then my destination seemed to be a fantasy land mixed with the ordinary. When I crossed paths with a few Vikings, some ocean gods, and a captain flag, I was wondering if it's time to take my camera out of the bag, but small groups dancing to loud music, and people in gradually skimpy clothes were assuring me I was getting to the center of action.

"YEAH BABY….yeah !" An overweight man screams. He’s wearing Speedos, black sunglasses - those that tightly wrap around the face as if made to withstand great speeds - and a trapper hat, as if to preserve the mind that could be lost in the ice-cold water. On the beach, people divide into two clubs: the I’m only looking club and the Yeah baby! Yeah!, the animators club. The first is wearing winter clothes, dull with New York’s patina smeared all around, and the latter, well, mostly naked. But no matter how many clothes people are wearing, the hat seems to be a sign; a horned helmet, an unicorn's horn, a rain deer's tiny red horns, a purple octopus that is consuming its carrier, Santa Claus' red cone, a mermaid's blue-died long hair, and, obviously, the US flags wrapped around heads. The more unfit, inappropriate as the run towards the freezing cold sea, the more the person wearing it belongs.

The Yeah baby! Yeah! club is jogging in place, limbs flying around, the spirits go higher, and they are ready to run against their lives towards the ocean.

3,2,1, the feverish spectacle, GOOO... the crowd yells.

When they hit the water, they instantly grasp for air, and realise their bodies will take over from now on; it's exhilarating and sometimes terrifying, as to control that natural reaction is impossible, like trying to control heartbeat and its own feral life.
"This isn’t just a little gasp, like the kind you’d experience if somebody jumped out of a closet and scared you. It’s a huge gasp that totally fills your lungs," warns Moulton Avery, the founder of the National Centre for Cold Water Safety. "If your head is underwater, when you gasp, you will immediately drown, and without the support of a PFD, you will head straight for the bottom.” Sudden Disappearance Syndrome is how they used to call it in the last century, before scientists agreed on the phrase the Cold Shock Response.