'The mosquitos can be fierce, but the views of Manhattan are great, you can grill on your own campfire and it's $50 for three nights," said John Daskalakis as he strolled into a large grassy clearing edged by cottonwood trees. Dressed in khaki shorts, Daskalakis is not your regular New York concierge, and the campground at Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field, where he works as a ranger, is about the weirdest accommodation you can book in the city.
But anyone tempted by a cheap flight to New York who has an accommodation budget to match can do worse than look at Bennett Field (+1 718 338 3799; nps.gov) - or a handful of other campsites known only to New Yorkers.
Hidden at the far end of Brooklyn's Flatbush Avenue, where the borough meets the Ocean, Bennett Field is an abandoned airstrip squeezed between Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge and the Russian enclave of Brighton Beach.
Now managed by the US National Park Service, Bennett Field offers kayaking, fishing and trekking but had its glory years in the 30s, when it was New York's first municipal airport and 25,000 people came to see Howard Hughes land after circling the globe, a scene recreated in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator.
Today, its 1,400 acres still buzz with activity. NYPD helicopters practise their touch-and-goes and one hangar hosts an ice-skating rink and Hasidic weddings. In another, a group of retired mechanics lovingly restore old Dakotas and US navy jets between chats with visitors. "There's a long waiting list for our allotments - and the Jamaicans in Brooklyn come down to use the cricket pitch," said Daskalakis.
At a quiet end of the field, near the lapping waters of Jamaica Bay, are four huge grassy clearings for camping, concealed in a copse of pines, cottonwoods, honeysuckle and wild rose, reachable on foot down a path from the cafe by the ice rink.
"People look at me like I've got two heads when I say I am going camping in Brooklyn," said Karl Knoop, 28, a manager at the Brooklyn Brewery and a Bennett Field regular. "But this is a little-known treasure. You feel very secluded, apart from the occasional racket from the police helicopters."
Despite one local jokingly advising campers to bring a log splitter to ward off muggers, Knoop said he feels safe here. "Just watch out for the bugs. September onwards is the best time to avoid them."
From here it is a short bus ride to the beach on Rockaway Peninsula or a 15-minute trip the other way, past tyre shops, Christian bookstores and burger joints, to Flatbush Avenue station, from where the subway will deliver you to Manhattan in 35 minutes.
After the hike in from Bennett Field, no camping spot in the city feels more central than Central Park's Great Hill. Hidden atop granite bluffs that rear up over Central Park West around 107th street, the hill is accessed via narrow paths through thick woodland to a quiet lawn, where twice a year rangers put up tents for 20 lucky campers.
A marshmallow roast, a night hike, supper and tents are all laid on free - the catch is it's one night only, and prized spots are handed out through a popular online lottery (nyc.gov/parks/rangers/register). Rangers say the events are aimed at families, but they will also take unaccompanied adults.
To camp for more than a one-night stand - and with hot showers, something Bennett Field lacks - New Yorkers load their tents on to the Long Island Railroad at Penn Station on Friday afternoons for the 90-minute ride to Patchogue. Here they connect with the half-hour ferry to Fire Island, a 32-mile, car-free strip of tangled greenery and sand that has smart holiday homes at its western end but peters out into wilderness at Watch Hill, a tiny marina and restaurant where the ferry docks and boardwalks head off through the scrub. One leads to clearings for tents, another to a stunning sandy beach pounded by Atlantic rollers, where bathers are disturbed only by occasional helicopters ferrying Wall Street bankers further down Long Island to their beach homes in the Hamptons.
"Like most New Yorkers we don't have a car, let alone a helicopter, so getting the train out here is perfect, and the beach is amazing," said Jacqui Warner, 34, who had decamped from Brooklyn for the weekend.
Managed by women and with a tradition for hosting single women campers, the Watch Hill campsite is booked solid for summer weekends by January, but the 26 spots hidden in the greenery are mostly empty during the week (+1 631 567 6664; watchhillfi.com/camping.html; $20 a night). Intrepid campers who arrive with the Friday throng can march up the beach and pitch on the dunes beyond the campsite, a mile from the showers and the cold beer at the marina.
What you miss out on at Watch Hill, and at Bennett Field, is the experience of a big American state or national park campsite, where spots can be booked online, large families pour out of campervans the size of Routemasters and beer coolers are so big they come on wheels, but peace and quiet are guaranteed thanks to the enormous pitches hidden in the trees.
If you know where to look, Long Island has just such a slice of Americana on offer. Rent a hire car and drive the 73 miles from Manhattan to Wildwood (nysparks.state.ny.us/parks; $15 a night) on the island's North Fork.
Warm pretzels and churros are on sale at the camp store, a reminder you're within driving distance of New York, and at the site's pristine beach is the perfect Coney Island touch - a shack serving hot dogs.
