Dan's Papers - August 21, 2009

The 13 Trustees of the Southampton Historical Society posed nude (or almost nude) around their treasured Rogers Mansion last week for photographer Eric Stiffler to create a dramatic fundraising event. Their efforts will be published as a hot, hot, hot Southampton Historical Society calendar for the 12 months of 2010 in a blatant attempt to raise money. The women are all in their 30s, 40s and 50s. The public should lap them up.

Of course, if the Historical Society takes this dramatic step toward calendarhood, it will have admitted it has broken the law and will be subject to arrest.

The photographs consist of one woman up on the widow's walk looking longingly through her binoculars for her husband, who she ahopes to see coming through the jetties in faraway Sag Harbor home from a whaling trip. Another shot is of two women in the privet hedge, gossiping nude. Probably not illegal are nude photographs of a woman in the master bedroom of the mansion looking through her jewelry, or of another woman in a hot pink apron and stilettos, using an old iron press to do tablecloths in the laundry of the mansion. These are indoors. It's not illegal to walk around nude, or almost nude indoors in Southampton, but it certainly is illegal to do so outdoors.

I am, of course, referring to the Southampton Dress Code Ordinance. Everybody knows about it. Its existence is posted on signs at the entryways to the Village of Southampton, on North Main Street, North Sea Road and Hampton Road. A photograph of one of these signs is above.

The law says, basically, that no person in the Village of Southampton shall walk around in public without being covered by clothes that extend from just above the aureole to halfway between the knee and the hip. You may not know what an aureole is, so I will tell you, but I assure you that the police department is quite familiar with this part of the body in their law enforcement activities that encompass it. It is the part of the nipple surrounding the teat and is generally a darker color than the rest of a person's skin.

There is an exception to this rule. If you are on the beach, or within 100 yards of the beach, you are exempt from this rule. The reason is obvious. You have got to get to your car. And that is it.

The fine for the display of skin between the aureole and midway between the hip and the thigh is $150. So, unless you want to take your chances, do not walk around Southampton in a bikini. I might note that this ordinance, which was created nearly 100 years ago, does not differentiate between a male or a female. Keep your shirt on.

Not many people remember what Southamptons was like during the first half of the 20th century-in fact through right about to 1970.

Southampton in the summertime was a hotbed of ice cold, iron willed WASPS. Their culture, which was churchgoing and formal, was the order of the day down at the ocean beach, in the "estate" section of town and throughout the downtown. The Incorporated Village, where this modesty law is in effect, does not extend into Shinnecock, Water Mill nor North Sea. Those were outlying areas. You were welcome to do what you wanted there. But the Village, as strictly defined by its boundaries-and where the signs are warning you to behave-was the center of this world, and this world was controlled by the wealthy summerpeople from Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The word they used to describe people walking around in bathing suits was "shocking." And they did not want it in their town.

I might note that the one sin allowed by this community back then-in fact it was a sin celebrated-was drinking. Drinking began as soon as you woke up and put on your sports jacket. It was usually a morning Scotch. There was more at 10 a.m., still more at lunch and it went on and on extending far into the night. The Southampton Press back then had a slogan at the top of its front page that read "Southampton-the Queen of America's Watering Places." It was not referring to the ocean.

I might add that although most people might not remember the early days of this, most people WILL remember a woman named Nina Murray. She owned a clothing shop on Jobs Lane, and right through to the 1990s, when she finally died, objected in letters to the editor of various newspapers about all sorts of "shocking" behavior that she was forced to endure at her shop, from camera toting tourists shouting to one another, to women in bikinis, to people in bathing suits "without even the thinnest of wraps," to people, mostly parents and children, eating on the street. She was quite a gal, Nina Murray was. I sold advertising to her - or tried to. She put me in a dilemma once when she gave me a stern lecture about a proposed new restaurant that was coming to Jobs Lane. "There should be NO restaurants on Jobs Lane," she said. "There aren't any now. We don't need to have crowds of restaurant customers ballyhooing all through the night here. It will change the character of Jobs Lane. It's already bad enough just having all these people walking up and down, completely ignoring decency and decorum. This is a lane for peace and quiet."

The restaurant being approved, the first Jobs Lane restaurant, was midway down the lane, just past the Parrish. It was called The Sherlock Holmes. And it had already bought a schedule of advertising in Dan's Papers. It is where The Le Chef is today.

And so, today, we eagerly await the calendar of the Southampton Historical Society. If it had all been done indoors at the Rogers Mansion, which it was not, then it would be entirely legal. Even WASPS can get naked or almost naked in their homes. They did bathe, for example, and frequently.

But another thought looms. I have seen rock stars talk about their drug use, even show pictures of themselves sniffing drugs, so there is no doubt about it. But arrest them for photographs? Rock stars do not get arrested over a photograph. Photographs can be doctored.

Will Southampton Village honor that concept? We will just have to wait and see.

In the meantime, support the Southampton Historical Museum. Its main campus is on Meetinghouse Lane, just 100 yards from the corner of Jobs Lane and Main Street. It owns five properties, which include the Pelletreau Shop on Main Street, the newly purchased White House on Jagger Lane, the 1738 Sayres barn, which is in need of repair, and the 1630 Halsey House, which is also in need of repair-thus the nude calendar to raise the money.

On the weekend of August 22-24, come to the Shecky's Girl's Day Fair where about 60 vendors sell their jewelry, clothing and other items to raise money for the Museum. And next May, 2010, the museum trustees will hold for the first time in a long time a Historic House Tour. They are planning for it now. With their clothes on.