The beach is clothing-optional by long custom if not by official designation, a fact that the National Park Service acknowledges approximately by not posting signs about it. On a clear day the bridge overhead throws its shadow across the water in the afternoon, and container ships move through the Gate close enough that you could wave at the crew. The sand runs maybe two hundred feet at low tide, narrowing to almost nothing when the surf comes in.

What's changed recently is the trail itself. A section above the beach was regraded and reinforced with new timber steps sometime in the last year, and a stretch that used to require three-point contact on loose rock now has a proper railing. The regulars seem divided on whether this constitutes improvement. "It was a little more of an adventure before," said one man who had been coming down here since the nineties, spreading a towel in the sun with the practiced efficiency of someone who has done this exact thing hundreds of times.

The beach has no concessions, no lifeguard, and almost no signage once you're on the sand. It attracts a particular kind of visitor — not tourists who stumbled off the Muni bus, but people who looked it up and made a decision.

Anyone walking the overlook trail tomorrow would see the new timber steps, the railing, and — if they chose to keep going — whatever small city of towels and windbreaks has assembled itself at the bottom.