Dan's Shorts: Record Kite Fly, Congestion Fees, Lake Agawam & More

RECORD KITE FLY

The 53rd annual Dan’s Papers Kite Fly took place at Sagg Main Beach in August.  It was the quickest kite fly on record. A few kites got launched at 5 p.m., and by 5:30 p.m., when the judging began, there were more than 50 in the sky. It would end at 6 p.m. when 10 prizes would be awarded for such things as Highest-Flying Kite, Most Newsworthy Kite, Youngest Kite Flier, etc. The Jim Turner Band, set up at the back of the beach, began serenading the kite fliers as the judging proceeded. But at 5:35 the sky darkened, a wind blew in, huge waves began crashing on the beach and suddenly, at 5:38, the gods unleashed a torrential downpour.  The band immediately stopped playing, and Turner and his associates rushed to put the instruments into their cases to keep them from getting ruined. At the control tower, a bridge table across from the bandstand, the prizes and the accompanying paperwork swirled around and flew off this way and that with the chief judge racing around after it.

“Head for the hills!!” I now announced over the bullhorn.

“What do I do?” shouted chief judge Ben Stephens, a young Dan’s Papers intern who volunteered to run the event.

“Just give them out to anybody,” I shouted through the rain.  “Get out there!  One each.”

And off he ran, back into the crowd, handing out damp, crumpled paper and wet toys to whoever wanted them.

The downpour continued as everyone raced to the parking lot to pack children, umbrellas and kites into their cars.

In 52 years, we’ve never had this happen.   The quickest kite fly on record.  Eight minutes and 12 seconds.   In the record books.

CONGESTION FEES AGAIN?

The Hampton Town Council, after overseeing the congestion pricing program that automatically charged motorists a fee for driving into the Hamptons over Labor Day Weekend ($5 to $300 per time depending on car’s value), met last week to study the results of the program.   Will they bring congestion pricing back for the next big traffic situation, Columbus Day Weekend?

They also approved a plan to truck 45,000 deer from upstate New York to the Hamptons during the first week of November.

While congestion pricing raises money for the Hamptons, the deer program will slow down the traffic. No motorist wants to hit a deer on the roads here. By tripling the number of deer, all will have arrived by Thanksgiving – it’s expected that traffic will slow down from its current 38 miles an hour average to a more cautious 19 miles an hour.

It was also decided to shut down the Donald Trump Deer University at its campus in Bridgehampton. There, for the last four years, deer have been reprogrammed to stay off the roads, resulting in traffic speeding up. And who can forget their postgraduate program that taught deer to trot alongside cars and lick bugs off the windshields

Anyway, the town sent a SWAT team to shut the university down last Thursday morning only to find that the owners had already done so. An accountant for the owners had cleaned out the university’s bank accounts, and then voluntarily allowed himself to be sentenced and jailed so Trump would not have to go.

As for the deer-trucking plan, it is to be financed by Joe Biden’s $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The result will be more jobs at auto factories building the special trucks needed to carry the deer.  And more jobs for herders driving the deer onto the trucks for the trip south. Some 86,400 new jobs will result, a welcome boost for New York State’s economy.

AVOIDING CONGESTION FEES

Also, the Hampton Town Board offered up a new printed pamphlet at the meeting which explains how to avoid having to pay congestion fees. Since you’re reading about this in Dan’s Papers, you’re already, apparently, here. There’s no charge to drive out of the Hamptons. Just never come back.

LAKE AGAWAM

In November, residents of Southampton will vote on whether to place a pollution-extracting machine on the shoreline near the headwaters at Agawam Park.    Lake Agawam is terribly polluted.   It’s also been proposed that the water in this lake be let out into the sea as part of the effort.    Such activity, with fresh seawater quickly let back in, helps keep Georgica and Sagg Pond clean. That should also work at Lake Agawam.

Why not just let all the water out and sell off the lake bottom as 10-acre building lots for the wealthy?   $12 billion could be raised that way.

LUDDITES AND LONG WHARF   

A Luddite is someone who violently opposes technological change. I’m one, sort of. And Luddites should never park on Long Wharf in Sag Harbor, even though its legal.

Parking there requires you to use a smartphone to take a photograph of a hashtag on a yellow sign.   The first hour is free.  A second hour costs $6. But Luddites know nothing about hashtags.

If you fail to do this, you get a ticket that costs $75 for even one minute over the hour. And you cannot pay it over the phone with a credit card. Instead, you pay online. Luddites, who think of online as, like, waiting your turn, can pay using an envelope with a stamp on it, but beforehand you’ll have to go to a bank to get a cashier’s check, a certified check or a money order and if the letter doesn’t get there in 30 days the fine becomes $150.  After that?  The firing squad.

MY NEW BATHROOM SCALE

Besides weight it tells you your body fat, heart rate and reflex health.  Step on it, then off it, then on again to activate it. I tried.  But I’m clumsy.  Failed twice.  Then it said, with the male New Zealand accent I had selected, “If you step incorrectly a third time, you will be locked out.”

Help.

HURRICANES?

As I write this it’s September 11, the hurricane season is almost over, and still no hurricane has hit us.  We used to get them year after year.  But not anymore.

Still, the weather bureau predicts eight or more every year. Today’s hurricanes  start in the Atlantic as usual but then swerve off and clobber the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a global warming change, I think. Get with the program, weather people.

Our current problem is tornadoes.

Read more of Dan Rattiner’s Stories.