WHEN the sun glares down on the city, New Yorkers of means flee for the beach. Matt Kaye, a bar manager and D.J. who lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was such a refugee.

He sat outside Rippers, a new grass-fed-burger shack that opened over the Memorial Day weekend, sipping an iced coffee. In the distance, a pod of surfers bobbed in the water, waiting for waves. An inked-up pal from Brooklyn, carrying a beach umbrella, wandered by to chat about swimming conditions. “The water’s too cold,” said Mr. Kaye, who wore a faded Spuds MacKenzie T-shirt and 10-day stubble. "But you know I had to get in for a minute."

It was a vision of summertime idyll that plays out every weekend in the beach towns around New York. But this was not the Hamptons, Fire Island or even Jones Beach. It was the Rockaways in Queens — the sliver of dilapidated bungalows, drug-riddled public housing and W.P.A.-era boardwalk at the end point of the A train.

Over the last few summers, this sandy and pockmarked peninsula has become an unlikely hangout for young, artsy types who make their home in Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan. Arriving by single-gear bicycle, Zipcar and the occasional skateboard, they’ve turned the once- neglected beach community into an anti-Hamptons, where polo games and Champagne galas have been replaced by bungalow barbecues and piña coladas at old Irish pubs. “The boardwalk is the new Bedford Avenue,” said Mr. Kaye, 34, referring to the cafe-clogged commercial spine of Williamsburg.