On a crude platform that jetties onto a stretch of sea, slabs of concrete create long shadows from a strong overhead sun, contrasting with bright whites, blues, and lemon yellows. In the background, tall abandoned buildings and a defunct ferris wheel loom and glitter.
This is not the description of a de Chirico landscape, though Beirut’s Sporting Club bares resemblance to the Italian painter’s surrealist compositions.
The beach front and Beirut's urban skyline.
Sporting Club basking in evening sun.
Established in 1953, The Sporting Club is a bathing institution in Beirut’s city center - a stone’s throw from the famed Pigeon Rock formations off the coast of the Raouché neighborhood.
Sporting is a stone’s throw from the famed Pigeon Rock formations.
Named and modeled after the Sporting D’eté Club in Monte-Carlo, Beirut’s Sporting was the first of its kind in the Middle East. Originally a members-only locale, the founders carefully selected members that matched the open-minded ethos of the institution. Here, businessmen came to swim laps and sun-tan on their lunch breaks. One might find young ladies bathing topless in the French style, and in the evening lively parties were thrown that earned Sporting a reputation of hosting radicals and jet-setters.
Backgammon and conversation. Photograph by Rasha Kahil.
Today, the Sporting Club is open to all, and everyone comes to Sporting - politicians from different parties, teenagers from Muslim and Christian neighborhoods, fishermen, and fashionable elites. The urban mix is emblematic of Beirut’s blended society. On an afternoon at Sporting one hears Arabic, French and English, being chattered over spirited games of Backgammon (you can rent boards from the club).
The Sporting Club is open to all, and everyone comes to Sporting - politicians from different parties, teenagers from Muslim and Christian neighborhoods, fishermen, and fashionable elites.
A Beirut bather packing up for the day.
Rugged rock formations jet out by Sporting.
Clients chattering over backgammon.
Clients sip on the famous iced lemonades and, as Beirut natives will tell you, the club gets sun year-round. All winter long, bathers flock to the beach club — even when temperatures in the city drop, the white clay platforms reflect sun and magically emanate heat. At Sporting Club it feels eternally summer.
At Sporting Club it feels eternally summer.
Geometries of the Sporting Club.
Concrete slabs in white cut across the landscape.
Sporting Club’s world of contrasts also lends a mystical quality to the space. The shapes of Sporting are hard and geometric; a sky blue Olympic size swimming pool clashes with bright white surfaces, sharp clay stairways reflect light and cast long shadows, airplanes flying over-head in continuum play against the rough and natural beauty of the Mediterranean Sea, the rugged rock formations in the distance tumble into the city’s packed urban sky-line. The feeling is at once nostalgic and futuristic, elemental and industrial.
LEVANT recommends :
1. Leave your towel at home and purchase one from the gift shop. In bright red, yellow, and blue with Sporting’s signature 1980’s signage, it's an off-beat memento.
Sporting Club’s signature signage.
2. Lunch at Sporting is wonderful - fried fish tossed with lemon juice, Lebanese classics like hummus and falafel. But if you do decide to forego the restaurant, do order the hamburger and pomme-frites (a local favorite) from the club’s beachside bar.
A Lebanese feast, for lunch at Sporting.
3. Even in December you can find sun at Sporting, so if you find yourself in Beirut during the winter months, you may still be able to lie out like a lizard - and it’s certainly worth a try.
Sun salutations at Sporting Club is a year long activity. Photograph by Rasha Kahil.
