| Issue #30, October 20, 2006 |
Bonfires
Activities at the Beach and Those Who Have to Look at Them
By Dan Rattiner
Every once in a while, a person with an oceanfront home makes an embarrassment of himself by doing something to try to shoo people off the beach in front of his house. The logic is in the word “Oceanfront.” He didn’t buy “Beachfront” He bought oceanfront and everybody out there on his beach better get used to it.
Unfortunately, the beach belongs to everybody. And when a man runs out there threatening to call the cops to have some strollers arrested for walking along his beach, the higher likelihood is that if he calls the cops — which has been known to happen — he is the one who gets arrested, usually on charges of harassment, getting apoplectic and purple in the face for no good reason and for generally making an ass out of himself.
Some years ago, there was a discussion in East Hampton Town Hall about whether dogs should be allowed on the beach. The idea was, just possibly, that it was unsanitary and unsafe allowing dogs on any beach. They might, god forbid, poop. Like the birds and bees and others do. And the dog owners might not clean it up. Or the dogs might bite people.
I remember one gentleman in Amagansett who stood up at a Town Board meeting to say that he had seen dogs out in front of his house trotting along on his beach in great packs, nipping and biting and barking and pooping as they went. The smell was simply awful.
In the end, dogs were banished from a few recreational areas for certain hours of the day where there are public bathrooms, snack bars and lifeguard stands.
In Southampton, some homeowners who had just built homes facing Picnic Beach out on Meadow Lane in that town objected to all the picnics that people were having out there. This beach, reserved for this activity for maybe the last century, was now blocking their view. It was noisy. There were children running around, there were fishermen out there in their trucks, there were people drinking beer, surfing, fishing and playing volleyball and Frisbee. It was a great problem as far as they were concerned.
The Town responded by saying that there had never been a problem there until these newcomers built their homes there, and that was the end of it. Until six months later when the oceanfront homeowners sued. And then lost that.
Now there is somebody in East Hampton coming to Town Hall meetings trying to get bonfires banned, throughout the town, if possible, but in particular, in front of the beachfront house he owns in Napeague. He held up a piece of charred firewood that he had found on the beach at a town hall meeting. There were rusty nails sticking out the bottom of it. He had the evidence. The perpetrators could not be far away. And then he said the bonfires had gotten so bad in front of his home out there at the beach that on frequent occasions, the smoke alarms in his house had gone off. They didn’t used to do that.
The Town at this particular moment is pondering the state of affairs regarding bonfires. They have put together a proposal that would give the police the right to stop a bonfire if it has been built too close to the beach grass, if the bonfire owners do not have buckets of water or the equivalent thereof to put it out when they are done, if they don’t have flashlights and garbage bags for cleanup or if they are letting the bonfire go on when everybody ought to be in bed, which is defined as past midnight. I don’t think anybody could object to these rules. And the police can enforce them. As for a total ban on bonfires, I hope that never happens.
Who hasn’t got a memory of a wonderful bonfire that they have attended? The sparks and flames, the warmth on your front side and the cold on your back, the music, the eats, the drinks, the friendship, and the beautiful flickering glow. Also the marshmallows, the sandcastles, the hot dogs, the need to move when the wind shifts and the smoke gets in your face, and the people who go missing for awhile for some reason have wandered out, hand in hand, into the darkness.
There are sixty unobstructed miles of oceanfront beach in the Hamptons from Fire Island to Montauk. Those that rate such things say that this beach is one of the ten most beautiful in the world.
(One year our beach will be ranked #3. Another year #5. What happened? Somebody get paid off? Packs of wild pooping dogs?)
What I think is all these people with oceanfront homes who complain about everybody else should be forced to live next to one another. Then they can have huge fights with one another, and this can go on and on until there is just one man standing.
And it will be his beach. As for the rest of us, we better watch out.
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