Dan's Papers - August 17, 2007 - The Sheltered Islander

Once every summer, all Shelter Island locals go to Sunset Beach to watch the tourists. For us, it's like going to the zoo.

I went on Saturday. Two huge yachts with gigantic radar screens and spheres atop them that had four levels showing above the water were anchored out in front. Even though there were anchored out probably a quarter-mile, they looked close enough that you'd swear you could see in the tinted windows. Each had little boats, called 'tenders', that ran to and from Sunset Beach, fetching overpriced food and drink items.

The beach was thick with people, mostly young with near-perfect bodies. It looked like the background scene from a modern beach movie, set on the East Coast.

I took up a strategic spot on the perimeter of this sandy circus, where the stands would be, if there were stands. The first thing I noticed this year was that everyone was covering their ears with some kind of device. Everyone was wearing either iPod ear buds or a phone. The very cool people had an ear bud in one ear AND phone in the other.

People talking on cell phones tend to talk loud, so it's always fun to listen in. It's not snooping. If you're twenty feet from me and I can still hear you, you are not talking, you are broadcasting. And not only will I listen in, I will often volunteer a response for you.

"I said, WHERE were you last night? Yeah? Well I was there till 1 a.m. and I never saw you."

"He's a liar! Dump the bum!"

"Wait a minute, some stupid lady is yelling at me. Hey lady, this is a private conversation!"

"Not if I can hear you over here it's not. Dump the bum!"

"He's not a bum and mind your own business!"

If the tourist had neither a cell phone or an iPod, they brought a car with a sound system that drowns out all other sounds within 200 yards. You know the kind, where the ground beneath you vibrates as they drive by and you always think to yourself, "How can they stand the volume INSIDE the car if I can hardly stand it outside the car?"

While I was there, two of those boom boxes with wheels showed up, playing different kinds of music, so each turned up the volume to drown out the other. In truth, I think people who drive those mobile boom boxes and infuse their music into our ears have raised rudeness to an art form. It was bad enough with the one, blasting rap music so loud everyone was shouting to talk on their phone, but when the second one entered the mix with some kind of heavy metal, it was bedlam. People started to scramble further down the beach, making it harder for me to track what they were doing and listen in on their conversations. Finally, one drove away and I wondered if the Bush administration had ever thought of this double boom box method as a form of effective torture. I'd tell you anything after two minutes.

I wondered how people talking on phones, listening to iPods, or listening to boom box cars could possibly enjoy the sounds the beach -- the lapping waves, seagulls, echoes from kids running along the water's edge. Then it hit me...these people HATE beach sounds. That's why they do everything to block it! I get it! Ambient beach noise makes them as nuts as beach noise pollution makes me!

So it's back to Wades Beach for me. I prefer hearing the waves and faint voices of people cursing the beach sand that got in their sandwich, listening to Moms warn little ones to get back from the water, the sporadic two beeps from car horns pulling up to pick up a group and the chime of the ice cream bells bringing joy and Roasted Almond into my world.