About Wilshire Pool:
Wilshire pool is a private members only swimming club that has been operating since 1955. We have two pools, two baby pools, high and low diving boards, 3 shaded acres of grounds, swimming and diving teams, basketball and volleyball courts, a pavilion, and a snack bar. We are open from Memorial Day weekend until Labor Day weekend, but we’ve been known to open a bit early and extend the fun into September if the weather works in our favor.
We do not allow day swimmers. All guest must be signed in by a member.
Updates:
- Thunderstorms (6/3/21)! The pool is closed.
Storms rolled in and will be around for the next few hours. The pool is closed for the rest of the day.
- The 2021 Pool Season Starts Today At 12:30
The air is warm, the sun is shining, the pools are full, and today our 2021 season starts at 12:30. The snack bar is open and as always the high dive is ready for action. See you soon.
- 5/30 The Fall Like Cold Blast Continues
The cold rain filled air is giving us one more day of this business. The pool is closed again today. Tomorrow is looking like it will be dry and sunny. On the plus side, you have one more day to do some Sweatin to the Oldies to get that summer pool body ready.
We’re going to cut the grass on Monday morning. Ladies, if you want to get your husband, boyfriend, or kid out of the house after all this rain – send them over to help cut grass. Guys, if you want to get away from your wife, girlfriend, or kids – come on over and help us cut grass. Our mowers do have can holders on them.
- 5/29 – Opening Day is Rained Out
After a week of July like weather, nature is toying with us today. The pool temps are in the 60’s and the air temperature will struggle to crack 50ºF with on and off rain. It’s just not a pool day today. Let’s hope for better weather tomorrow. The pool is closed today.
Creative Commons Licensed Image provided by: Eric Havir - The Upgraded Playground
We’ve talked about and shown off a lot of work this spring, but the one thing we didn’t talk much about was the playground. Last year the playground was closed, this year it’s open for business and better than ever. We had a big load of playground mulch donated, we’ve put up some new swings, we’ve added some new play toys, and tetherball and box hockey are back. Everything we’ve done this off season is for the kids – from making the upper pool floor smooth, to sucking up all the acorns, and getting all the clover and weeds out of the grass so there won’t be any bee stings. A few years ago we told you that we were going to turn around Wilshire Pool, not only returning to its former glory but we were going to make it the premier private swim club in Berks County. There were people who doubted us. That doubt has been erased.
All of this was made possible by a dedicated team of volunteers who worked year round painting, cutting grass, shoveling snow, spreading mulch, fixing everything old man winter broke for us, but we can’t forget the members who come out to help when we put out the call for work party help. We also can’t forget the members who have donated tools, fertilizer, mulch, radios, money, and more to the pool. We really do have the best members of any pool.
Are we done yet? Heck no! There will be some more surprises coming in the next week and throughout the season. Get ready for a season like no other.
- Membership, Moonlights Swims, And More
As we get ready to kick off the season, here are a few things that went out in email yesterday.
Membership
Membership applications are not available nor will they be accepted at the pool office, the guards in the office will not be accepting dues money either. New and returning members must complete the process on the website. New members do require sponsorship of an existing member and are subject to membership committee approval.Moonlight Swims
Our first moonlight swim will be on June 4th from 8-10pm with DJ Nick Talarico. $5 for members and $7 for guests. Then on June 9th we’ll go to our usual Wednesday night schedule.Rules and Regulations
We’re a pretty laidback bunch, but we do have some health and safety rules in place. They are posted here on the website, check them out and go over them with your kids. Hard balls in the pool are a hard No, because that leads to stitches and broken noses. If you’re coming in with a cooler, the guards will ask to see inside and all they’re looking for are glass bottles. Glass bottles are not allowed inside the fence. Broken glass is nearly impossible to see if it gets in the pool and we’d have to call in our own Scuba Steve sweep the bottom of the pool. Glass in the grass would having us renting the yard vacuum again to try and get it all out – and all that clean up work would have the pool closed until it’s completed. No one wants cut feet or closed pool. Bluetooth speakers or radios or other similar devices should be left at home, if you want to bring your own music use headphones.Lap Swimming
We will be running lap swimming as we did last year. We have a group that is there from 5am-6am. If you’re an early lap swimmer, let us know and we will connect you with the member who runs the early shift. Beginning Monday, June 7th we will have open lap swimming to anyone 18 and over from 11:30-1:30pm. At 1:30pm, the guard will go on the chair and the pool will be open to everyone. We will keep two lanes available for lap swimming at that time. In the evenings, Wednesday we have water polo at 6pm so the lower pool is closed. Mondays, if we have a home swim meet it will be closed. All the other nights, if you are over 18 you can use the pool for lap swimming. Please review our rules as later at night if there are under a certain number of people, we will close early. Weekends, we are looking for someone to volunteer and come in before we open, say 9-11am to be there to open for lap swimming. At this time, the weekend schedule is the same as the pool’s schedule (12:30-8pm), but subject to change if we find someone willing to be there in the mornings.Swim Lessons
We’ve had a lot of people ask. We will be offering lessons. Please keep a watch on our Facebook and on our bulletin board at the pool as we will be announcing the start in the next week or so. As in the past, our senior guard will be in charge and you will contact them directly to schedule, not the pool. - Some New Tunes For The Pool
Over the last few years, the sound quality of our PA and music system has been getting worse and worse. The old amplifier was new back when Mötley Crüe was topping the charts and your mullet was flapping in the summer breeze. Yesterday we replaced the amplifier and the FM tuner. Instead of being fixed to listening to the same 12 Bruno Mars, Pink, and Taylor Swift songs on Y-102 we’ll have far more options and none of it will sound like music being played through a fast food drive up window speaker. We also fixed all those drooping speaker wires that were running from pole to pole. We’re pretty sure those drooping wires annoyed everyone in some way.
One of our regular volunteers also donated a wireless microphone that works from the infield and lower pool. Pool events will be a little more fun not being tethered to the corded office microphone. Joining the microphone in the donation are 6 radios to keep the guards, office, and snack shack in communication. These radios will cut down on the running around trying to track people down and will easily allow the guards in the chairs to get more help if they need it.
Opening day is tomorrow, after the last 10 days being in the 90s, it’s looking like maybe 53ºF and rain. We’ll still be there working on stuff, if you want to get out of the house you can come on over and help us work around the buildings and grounds. Summer 2021 kick off in just about 24 hours.
- Now less than one week until opening day
We’re now just a week from opening day. All pools are filled and being warmed by the preseason sun, so we won’t have 58ºF pools on opening day. Today we vacuumed the grass and picked up 40lbs of acorns and other stuff that never feels good on the feet. The infield is free of dandelions and clover so we shouldn’t see any bee stings on little feet. Most importantly we still have the highest and now only high dive in Berks County. Our professional tester tried it out this week and gave it the two thumbs up for summer fun. Pretty much every night this week we’ll be working at the pool, if you can stop by and help out for an hour or two that would be great – plus the pools are able to be used by those helping before opening day. All the need to do stuff has been finished so now we’re working on doing the fun stuff that just makes the pool that much better.
Two thumbs up for the high dive.
- The pool opens in just over two weeks. Membership dues are due.
Our late fee will go into effect on Tuesday, May 18th. All membership plans will go up by 10%. To avoid the late fee, all checks must be postmarked by Monday, May17th.
- Less than 30 days until the summer of 2021 swimming season starts
A lot has being going on at the pool this spring. Wait, a whole lot has been going on. The upper pool has been refinished, gone is that cheese grater like floor that was roughing up feet. Both pools have been repainted with high quality pool paint that will last for years. The bathrooms are being redone now and will have a whole new look to them.
But today I write about my pet project, the infield grass. For years the infield was treated like a dumping ground for those old half used bags of seed, weed, and feed that can be found hidden in the back of every suburban shed or garage. In the end, we ended up with an infield made up of 5 different types of grass, but mostly it was 27 different types of weeds. Well, the lawn rehab started last fall with 80 lbs of tall fescue seed, and was reseeded again this spring with 80lbs of tall fescue. Tall fescue makes a nice lawn as it’s resistant to drought, tolerates full sun, and withstands high traffic. Also this spring we treated the infield with Tenacity, a post emergent weed control. Tenacity got the weeds killed off while still letting the grass grow. This year the infield will be free of clover, creeping Charlie, crabgrass, and dandelions. There should be far fewer bees and bee stings on bare feet, I took seven stings last year. There was one last grass project finished up tonight and that was to rehab the mud spots that appeared under some of the trees, those spots sure were popular last year. By opening day those spot should be full of grass. We do still have more projects to do. It you have 2-3 hours to help out, we’d certainly appreciate it. Members helping with the spring opening, the summer grass cutting, and the fall close down help control our costs and keeps our dues in check and our food prices low. We have one more surprise for the infield and we’ll post about that soon. We don’t want to give it away just yet, but it’s something no other pool has or will be doing this year.
The fresh cut infield looking better than it’s looked in years. Compare that to what it looked like just 30 days ago.
Another view of that sweet looking infield
The area under the trees that’s being rehabbed. It was hand seeded today and covered with peat moss to keep in the moisture. In eight days we should start to see it getting green, in two weeks it will be looking like a lawn, and by opening day it should be full and thick.
The lower pool swim lane lines being repainted. It takes 360 yards of painters tape to tap off all the lines.
