Issue #39, December 22, 2006

Yipe!

A Morning in the Surf at Cooper’s Beach in Southampton

By David Lion Rattiner

An interesting thing about our society out here in the Hamptons is that it is filled with a lot of people that are just a tad bit nuts. And nothing displays that characteristic more than the annual Polar Bear Plunge in Southampton. Last week, the “nuts” came out of their shells and made sure that this event was more outrageous than ever.

I was not too thrilled when I was assigned this Daredevil. After all, jumping into 47 degree water without a wetsuit just seems, well for lack of a better word, dumb. But for some reason, when a lot of people show up to do a relatively simple and out of the ordinary thing, it’s pretty cool indeed.

I showed up at Coopers Beach in Southampton last Saturday with a hooded sweatshirt, a cup of hot coffee and a no fear attitude. The parking lot looked as if it were Memorial Day weekend. Over a thousand people showed up for this event and over 600 people jumped in the water. There was a tremendous, glorious energy in the air, the just-got-out-for-summer-vacation, just-landed-in-Orlando,just-woke-up-Christmas-morning, just-got-a-new-surfboard feeling. There were grown men walking around shirtless (it was about 50 degrees), there were people dressed up as Christmas trees and Santa Claus. The police and Fire Department were there to control the crowds. Children wore ear-to-ear smiles, an announcer could be heard in the background telling people water temperatures and start times. There were Revolutionary War actors, setup on a dune, loading a giant cannon that was perched upward on the top of the sand dune. People were eating free bagels and coffee and debating whether or not they were going to wimp out and put on a wetsuit, or just go for it and jump in.

I, personally, was fascinated by the sheer numbers of people. It was like a Rolling Stones concert at the beach. I didn’t get nervous until I heard the ten-minute announcement. “Get down to the beach everyone, we’ve got just ten minutes until the cannon goes off.”

Oh my God, I’m really going to go through with this.

A group of Irishmen started jumping up and down in a circle yelling, “This is my life! This is my life!”

A young boy looked out at the sea, as if he were about to face a dragon. A wife was giving her husband a pep talk, warning him not to stay in too long. Are there seriously this many people willing to jump into the freezing cold ocean in the middle of December? I guess so.

BOOM!

All I remember was a massive sprint to the ocean and screams of terror, or maybe joy, I’m not really sure what the difference is. The beach was shaking from the number of people that were running. You could see the amazement in the eyes of the lifeguards who were stationed out on their long boards. I could just imagine a shark or a seal in the sea watching all of this take place and thinking, what the hell are these humans doing now?

It’s Southampton in the wintertime, we get a little bored this time of year and you know what? We miss the ocean.

After a full dunk into the ocean, I felt myself go into a panic. Get the $@#% out of this water was the only message my brain was sending to my body. As I turned to run out, I noticed a fat, hairy-chested man floating on his back, “Aren’t you going to stay in for a little longer? The water is not so bad.”

I was cold, my feet were not feet anymore as I walked on the beach. They were these lumps of frozen chicken meat flopping into the sand, somehow carrying my body. I’ve got to get to my car, I thought. I made sure to get the video I needed for the www.danshamptons.com website blog, took a couple of photos and then I got the hell out of there.

The Polar Bear Plunge is a special event, designed for the true believers in life and also a great charity, supporting Human Resource, a community agency that provides services for the needy. A lot of people donated, and by a lot, I mean just about everybody that signed the waiver that basically says, if you freeze to death, it’s not the Town of Southampton’s fault.

I’d do this again. It put things in perspective.