Dan's Papers - August 15, 2008

The police raided Sagg Main Beach last Monday evening, on August 4. They rounded up about 500 people who were doing absolutely nothing other than playing music, singing and dancing as they have done every Monday night for years, and in violation of all their First Amendment rights and other civil rights, gave them tickets, hauled them off in buses and otherwise abused them, although, to be fair, no billy-clubs and tear gas were involved.

This is what people who called me at Dan's Papers the next day said happened.

On the other hand, here is what the police reported happened. Fifteen hundred people, drinking beer and wine, singing and dancing to bongo music and otherwise causing a very loud and frightening commotion, were told by police officers to disperse because they were parking illegally, blocking access and egress and in violation of the Sagaponack civil assembly laws that say if more than 50 people assemble in one spot then they had to have purchased a permit to do so ahead of time and that would cost $100. No arrests were made. Nobody got ticketed. Everybody left, although a few gave the police an argument.

"What are you going to do when you get to 51 people next Monday night?" somebody asked after being explained the law. "Close down the beach?"

"I'll be back next Monday drumming here," said Richard Siegler, the founder of a Brazilian drumming group. "I just dare them to lay a hand on me and say I have to stop drumming."

Every Monday there is drumming and celebrating the sunset down at Sagg Main Beach. Sometimes 10 people come. Sometimes 50 people come. If you happened to be nearby on Monday nights for the last few years - and there were people having barbecues, surfcasting, walking and strolling along, collecting seashells and clamming in Sagg Pond - you know this story.

I was down there, too, on Monday nights quite often, by myself, sitting in a beach chair writing stories for this newspaper, watching the sun set. I would wave to the drummers. It was all right with me.

Jay Schneiderman was one of the drummers, a friend of mine and a regular on the beach on Monday nights. He plays the bongos. He's also our County Legislator. Before that he was the East Hampton Town Supervisor. He's a nice guy.

"You ought to come join us," he often told me.

But no, I preferred them in the background, a nice thumping accompaniment to my writing. As the sun would set, it would make me think of savages and cavemen and other primitive people. Meanwhile, I'd enjoy the smell of burgers cooking over grills as people had beach parties nearby. And I'd enjoy the surfers, and I'd enjoy the surfcasters who often came down after six in their pickup trucks to throw lines in the ocean for stripers and blues. It was a nice scene.

Remember the famous saying from Yogi Berra? Nobody goes there anymore because it's too crowded? That is pretty much what happened to drumming at Sagg on a Monday night. It got mobbed.

I think everybody involved with the drumming meant well. But the word had gotten out. Way out. On the second Monday in July of this year there were maybe 100 people down there. On the third Monday in July there were 200. And now there was some Brazilian drumming group that had hooked up with Jay & Company. And the drumming went on and on. It no longer just went on at sunset. Sunset now meant "light the torches." And now the event had a name. Samba Boom.

You see where this is going.

On the third Monday in July, I went down there to write and watch the sunset and from one end to the other it looked like the big top at the Cole Brothers Circus to the Stars. I turned around and went out on Peter's Pond Beach, the dirt-road beach to the east. I could still hear them, three miles away, from down there. And I still enjoyed it. Though I did think that others, between here and there, might not.

On the third Wednesday in July we had our regular editorial meeting for the following week's issue of Dan's Papers.

"Have you seen what is going on down at Sagg?" somebody asked. "We ought to write a story about it."

"If we write a story about it," I said, "there will be a thousand people down there next Monday night. That will be the end of it."

So we didn't write about it.

The fourth Monday in July I didn't go down there at all. But I had a pretty good idea of what went on. Incidentally, by this time, snow fencing had been set up at the entrances to the beach by environmentalists, announcing that piping plovers were nesting on the beach there, so please be careful, and please be quiet. They are an endangered species. They are probably an endangered species with a permanent ringing in their ears today.

The thing is that if the drumming people wanted to do this on one particular Monday night during the summer, as a single event, with 300 or 400 people, or even a thousand people, I bet it wouldn't be a problem, if they were done by 9 p.m. But every Monday night?

Once a summer between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon, Dan's Papers has a big kite fly on Sagg Beach. Sometimes we get 500 people. And we have fun. But that's it. And in recent years, as with everybody, we have to get a permit to do this. This year the kite fly is August 17.

There's just too damn many people in the world is what it is, if you ask me. When I was born there were two billion. Now we've got six billion. And it's just a little more than half a century later.

It's true we have to put them somewhere, but here? Come on. I'm here. We don't need anybody else now that I'm here. But who pays attention to me anyway?

You wouldn't expect to see 500 people marching up Fifth Avenue drumming, singing and dancing, would you? Not without a permit.

And an argument made at the scene to the police - that this was impromptu and it just happened that all these people showed up so who is it that would sign a permit application - really is besides the point. A thousand people (cutting the difference in half) is a thousand people. And if they make a lot of noise or block access, that's it.

That Monday, the cars for the drummers and their friends completely filled the 200-car lot at Sagg Main and then spilled over onto Sagg Main Street for a half a mile and completely down and around the dead-end road of Sandune Court. Had emergency vehicles been needed to get through they would have not been able to, according to the fire marshal, who also showed up. And so that was that. The police tried to be nice about it. It was nice they let it go on for as long as they did. But what could you do.

Here's a thought. On earlier evenings at Sagg Main, I bet there were as many as 300 people out on the beach enjoying perhaps 10 different activities. Should no more than 50 be allowed without a permit? No. It's no more than 50 in any one group. There could be six permits for the beach, each for a different crowd of 50. So others can have fun, too.

Personally, I love fun. And I think that what ought to be done is that this whole lot of drumming should be divided up into groups of up to 49 people. Sagg Main is just one among hundreds of beaches up and down the Hamptons. Going east from Sagg Main is Fowler's Beach, then Peter's Pond Beach, then Town Line Beach, then Beach Lane Beach in Wainscott, and so forth and so on. To the west we have Sagg Inlet West Beach, then Ocean Road Beach, then Mecox Beach, then Cameron Beach, and so forth and so on.

What everybody should do on a Monday night at 5:30 p.m. is assemble at the Bridgehampton High School parking lot. There should be wooden poles with the names of the beaches within 10 miles in each direction on them, and people should assemble, up to the required 49, under each of the signs, and then they should all head off to those beaches.

Before summer is out, we could have 2,000 people at 40 different beaches, all with torches and drums and beer and bonfire makers, and at most 49 to a beach and boy, could this place rock. Legally. I'd come. And I do believe, God would hear us.