Dans Papers - May 25, 2007 - Whatever You Call It, It's The Group

Last week, the environmental group called Group for the South Fork, located in Bridgehampton, announced that it was changing its name. The new name is to be the Group for the East End. They are now doing lots of work saving land on the North Fork. And so, as the East End consists of the North Fork and the South Fork, they need to have a more all-encompassing name.

Cynics say that as our inevitable march toward a saturated and stabilized population continues -- the world is scheduled to be all maxed out in 2020 -- the battle to preserve land on the more populous South Fork is on its way to being lost as everything continues to be developed. So the shift is more naturally to the North Fork, where there is still open space to battle over. Soon, perhaps, they will close their Bridgehampton office and move to the North Fork, forced out by a staggering quadrupling of the rent by the landlord as a result of the clamor for space from shops like Tiffany, Cartier, and Elie Tahari.

I am not a cynic and prefer to think that their fight here has been a rousing success and that, in the fashion of Batman or the Lone Ranger, they stand in a manly way, arms folded, cape flapping in the wind, to announce that everything has been saved that can be saved and "now our work is done. And so, we move on."

Well, they've had their successes. And they've had their failures. Some farms have been saved. Others have become McMansion enclaves.

Of further interest is the fact that this is not the first time that the Group for the South Fork (now East End) has changed its name.

The Group was originally founded here in Bridgehampton in 1974 as the Group for America's South Fork. The first director was Ian Marceau, an Australian environmentalist with a heavy "put another shrimp on the Barby" accent. So at the time, I thought, well, maybe there was a South Fork in Australia. So this is the Group for AMERICA'S South Fork.

Around 1990, with Ian tarred and feathered and long gone from the community pursued by angry real estate developers, the new directors came to the conclusion that having the word AMERICA in there was confusing.

Weren't there South Forks, and East Forks and West and North Forks, in LOTS of places around the country? Forget Australia. Look at the North Fork Bank. A big hit. How would people know we mean THIS particular South Fork?

A plan was put in place to get rid of that word AMERICA'S, but just before it went into effect, the South Fork -- our South Fork -- got included by the Nature Conservancy, a national organization, as one of the five last great places in America. As the other four places were not named South Fork, this caused them to hesitate. But then, finally, after much discussion, they concluded that this designation actually was a REASON to remove AMERICA'S. If the South Fork was THAT famous now, with this designation among environmentalists, perhaps everybody now KNEW that it was THIS South Fork. And so they proceeded with the dropping of the word AMERICA'S.

And now, they have dropped SOUTH FORK and made it EAST END.

I do wonder if the Group -- I hope they don't mind if I call them that from here on -- has thought of the fact that there is an extra bonus in having the new name be Group for the East End.

As the Group for the South Fork, the part of the world that they were focusing on logically extended from the Shinnecock Canal to Montauk, a formidable 40-mile stretch. Now, with the North Fork, there is this added 30-mile stretch from Aquebogue to Orient.

But by changing the name to the Group for the East End, they now are entitled to include what used to be called the "root" of the two forks. To understand this, consider that the forks are attached to the main part of Long Island by an actual part of Long Island that is not on a fork. Call that the root. It includes Westhampton, Riverhead, Calverton, Wading River -- even Brookhaven, the Moriches and Manorville, if you want to dig deep.

As a matter of fact, what most people consider the East End includes five towns -- East Hampton, Southampton, Shelter Island, Southold and Riverhead. Together, they comprise what many believe should be a group of like-minded towns that secede from Suffolk County to form an East End county called Peconic. They've in fact TRIED to form this county in the past -- they even mustered an actual flag for the county, which I reprint here -- but bureaucracy, red tape and rules up in Albany have prevented it from happening.

The thing is, Peconic County, or the East End, includes much of the root. This root, larger in land mass than the North and South Forks combined, thus becomes the big bonus for the Group for the South, er, East End.

What does the future hold? Well, I suppose it depends upon the ambitions of the Group. If they think grandly, they could expand to become the Group for Long Island, then the Group for the East Coast, then the Group for North America. Some day, they could be the Group for the Solar System.

On the other hand, following the slogan "Think Globally, Act Locally," they might go the other way.

Perhaps, someday, they will be the Group for Aquebogue.

In any case, the Group, whichever one it is, is holding a fundraiser at the Woelffer Estate Vineyard on Saturday, June 16, at 6:30 p.m. with cocktails, a silent auction, dinner and dancing. Nicole Miller, Anne Hearst McInerney and Jay McInerney will be attending the party. See you there?