Dan's Papers - August 1, 2008

I think it is fair to say that the village of Montauk has just gone through a complete summertime cultural transformation. It is now a surfing town. Indeed, it is probably the premiere surfing town in the Northeast, if you can believe what these kids tell you. All through the community now there are surf shops, smoothie stands, health food markets, exercise studios and surfer clothing stores. Probably one in six of the retail establishments downtown - and that community has grown by half again in the last three years - is now primarily a surf-related establishment.

It is a gloriously wonderful transformation, it seems to me. It is colorful, healthy, fun and full of an energy not seen in the town since the heyday of the motel era in the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s.

This is not to say that other activities don't dominate other parts of the peninsula. Hang gliders now pretty much dominate Napeague Harbor, where the wind whips over the water between the cliffs of Amagansett and Hither Hills.

Out at Lake Montauk, in the fishing village of Montauk Harbor, fishing boats and pleasure craft dominate the scene. Montauk Harbor has, for 50 years, held the title of "Fishing Capital of the World" with more rod-and-reel world records than any other community on earth.

And out toward Montauk Lighthouse, the cattle ranches dominate, with the cowboys and chuck wagons and cattle and horses.

Indeed, if you put it all together, what you come up with is that Montauk has transformed itself into a sports town. It's competitive, straightforward, unassuming and healthy. Who could have guessed it would come to this?

In many ways, the Montauk Chamber of Commerce, in particular, encourages all this activity. They've even enhanced it. When the sports are over during the day, there comes evening, and the Chamber now offers a wide variety of evening activities. Two weeks ago, about 2,000 people were downtown enjoying a rock concert by the Nancy Atlas Project right on the town green. Montauk has re-invented itself.

As with any occasion where you see a dramatic new turn of events, however, you get growing pains. One that seems to be particularly obvious in Montauk is medical help. There needs to be more of it. When you get people banging around like this, you're going to need medical care. And at the present time, this consists of the downtown medical office of Dr. Knott, and a can-do paramedical corps that gets quickly to any scene where there is an injury.

This summer, however, these groups have been overwhelmed. Last Sunday out there, an ambulance had to be called twice to Ditch Plains, the Mecca for surfing in Montauk, where people with injuries had to be transported to Southampton Hospital. It seems there is an injury in need of attention just about every week, usually on the weekend. Things are getting taken care of, but barely. The lifeguards are brave, but there are limits to what they can do. It is something to be looked into.

It is not just a 15-minute ride to the Southampton Hospital from Montauk, as it is from elsewhere in the Hamptons. It is, with traffic, nearly an hour ride from Montauk. And this is not good.

Meanwhile, Dr. Knott's office is overwhelmed. You no longer can get an appointment there. You just come in and wait. And sometimes it is a very long wait. They are open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. On Saturday you have to get there before they close at 12:30 p.m. And on Thursday and Sunday they are not open at all. As the big need for medical care in Montauk is on weekends, having a doctor there only four hours on Saturday and then not at all on Sunday is not a good situation.

I think it would be a good idea for the powers that be in Montauk to wrap their minds around the fact that the place is now largely a sports town. There aren't too many of them in America. But if you go to Aspen or Vail, or to Lake Placid or to the North Shore of Oahu, you will find medical help not far away. In Montauk, there could be a small paramedic facility downtown, or in a medical trailer out at Ditch, or maybe in a room at the Playhouse or firehouse.

I read last week that a killer shark was spotted off Edgartown, in Martha's Vineyard. Three beaches were evacuated. A chopper was sent out to try to find the beast, but failed. The book Jaws was set in a beach town on Long Island "between East Hampton and Amagansett," and the movie made from that book was filmed in the Vineyard. The shark in the movie was not real. This one was. Montauk should be prepared for anything.