Dan's Papers - September 21, 2007

If you walk down Main Street in Sag Harbor from one end to the other, a stroll that takes about fifteen minutes each way, you can begin to understand why the residents of this town are so unanimously opposed to the pending arrival of a big department store called CVS.

I did that last Saturday afternoon although I had gone to Sag Harbor on that day for an entirely different reason than to consider CVS. I had gone there because last Saturday was the second day of the three-day weekend celebrating the 300th anniversary of that town. And I thought it might be nice to just stroll around and get a sense of what was going on.

We had long delays getting started from our home in East Hampton. And so we arrived there around 4 p.m. I figured we'd spend three hours there, have a sunset dinner and then go home. And that's what we did.

People seemed to be packing up from the day's festivities when we arrived. There was lots of parking. And we wound up parking in the gravel lot of the Methodist Church on Division Street about 100 yards from the Il Cappuccino Restaurant. Tall elms sheltered the lot. The stained glass windows on the side rose up three stories toward a gable and steeple.

At Il Cappuccino, some people had gathered outside, apparently waiting for a table inside. Seemed like an odd time for that.

Have you ever wondered why the entrance to Il Cappuccino is along the alley on the side farthest from the church and not on the front facing the street? There's a Sag Harbor law that says you can't have the front door of a restaurant where alcohol is served within 150 feet of a church. Only at that alley wall the entrance exceed that distance. It is 151 feet away.

Here's what we noticed as we walked down to the Long Wharf at the far end of Main Street. We passed a white picket fence and a statue honoring the men who fought against the Confederacy, where Madison Street and Main Street meet. We crossed the street to the little Fisher's Furniture Store on the west side of the corner. Some wealthy types were inside shopping for a table. They were measuring it.

We passed the big eighty-year-old bank building on the opposite corner, now occupied by Apple Bank, then strolled down past the Paradise Café, which had a poster for an art show on its second floor. We passed the little Sag Harbor Pharmacy run by Barry Marcus and Stan Weiss and the Ideal Stationery Store run by Gary and Terry Sanders, where you can get publications, greeting cards and school supplies. Then we went past the 5 and 10 - when is the last time you have been in a 5 and 10? - which had posters in the window advertising Halloween costumes. Out front, a four-year-old boy, monitored by his father, was sitting on a wooden toy bucking horse. His father put a quarter in. The horse bucked, the kid whooped, and he hung on. Meanwhile, from somewhere, a tinny rendition of the William Tell Overture played. He was the Lone Ranger.

We passed a few art galleries and Marty's Barber Shop, and then the Sag Harbor Theatre with its big neon sign out front. This is no multiplex. Inside, there is one big old theatre, restored from the 1930s when it was built, and just past the original ticket gate, you can watch art films and indies, such as, this weekend, Hairspray, starring John Travolta.

There were lots of mothers pushing baby carriages, fathers holding the hands of six-year-old kids, lovers holding hands and two old men sitting on a park bench on the street next to the Emporium Hardware Store. The hardware store was all decked out in festive red white and blue bunting, the first indication we could find, at that hour, that a celebration had taken place. Some people walking by talked about the parade, originally scheduled for ten that morning, which finally got started at noon, and how fun it was.

Further down, we walked past the fish restaurant Mumbo Gumbo and then Schiavoni's Meat Market, a bicycle shop, The Lee Gallery, then the Island Surf Shop.

Finally, we were right in front of Long Wharf at the end of Main Street, where five streets meet up and the local and state officials have not figured out what to do about it. There's lots of traffic and stop signs and arrows and everybody just comes to a halt for a while, rubbernecks every which way, notes the policeman at the crosswalk and then moves on at 3 miles an hour weaving through everything.

To get to the wharf across this intersection, we walked past the Cigar Bar, the La Superica Mexican Restaurant, then across the street to the Chamber of Commerce's fake windmill and beach with some whaleboats turned upside down on the shore. There was a Styrofoam twenty-foot long fake whale floating out in the harbor there. There was supposed to be a whaleboat race that morning, but in the Chamber windmill we were told it had been postponed until 7 p.m. because it had rained in the morning before it cleared up and there were, uh, rough seas.

The Wharf itself was bustling with activity, as it always is. You can drive all the way out to the end of it if you want, but it is really more fun if you walk. On Saturday, booths were set up selling baked goods, clothing, vegetables, hot dogs and so forth and so on. There were police officers and people with dogs on leashes and people with dogs in canvas bags if they were small enough. We passed three of the big 200-foot-long yachts parked there that day. As it happened, we know the owners of two of them. And as we passed the first, we hollered up to a mate polishing some brass to ask if so and so was on board, and he shouted down that he was not supposed to say. So we gave up on that. I thought we might try the cell phone. My significant other said nah, we were just on this stroll.

At the end of the wharf we watched a small open cockpit launch from the Sag Harbor Yacht Club with a captain and five passengers on board slowly make its way toward a dock somewhere. The launch had its own metal and wood vertical gangway ladder bolted to the bow. Anywhere it came ashore, you could walk straight up and off. I'd never seen anything so cumbersome yet so practical.

We went into the dockhouse on Long Wharf and looked at the $30 a pound lobster salad in the case and the sandwiches written on the chalkboard behind the counter. Then we went to B. Smith's Restaurant, asking for her and watching people sitting at their tables overlooking outside drinking cocktails or beer. Some nicely dressed girls at the bar were watching the Yankees vs. Red Sox game on an overhead TV. The score was one to one.

We walked past the little shopping mall on the wharf that Pat Malloy owns and where you can get smoothies and malteds, and then walked past Bay Street Theatre. In the alley leading up to the entrance, they displayed posters of what was on that night. It was a film called East of Eden.

We crossed the street, walked past the little entrance to the Style Bar Day Spa and the Provisions Health Food Store, then doubled back and heard a cheer ring out from the Corner Bar, the hamburger joint and sports bar, where somebody had done something - hit a home run or crossed a goal line - on one of the TVs over the bar.

A few doors down was the Ice Cream Club with a line of kids and grownups waiting happily to get a sugar rush. After that, we passed the Sen Japanese Restaurant, all wood-paneled, dimly lit and chic inside. Then past a few more shops and the historic American Hotel, all gingerbread-style and lanterned with its white coated waiters and well-dressed diners on the ground floor and Ted Conklin himself at the counter right inside the door. We waved.

Further down, the firehouse had its garage doors up so you could see all the gleaming red trucks inside. And there was a bridge table set up outside, right by the sidewalk, where two older firemen sat selling raffle tickets to those who strolled by. They've been there almost every time I've ever passed by.

The sun had sunk low in the west at this point, but it still shone on this most easterly side of Main Street. Further up we passed the offices of the Sag Harbor Express newspaper, the oldest continuously run newspaper in the state of New York. It had two big cardboard posters by its front door, displaying the 300th Anniversary schedule hour-by-hour and day-by-day in big letters. We passed the Sandbar Restaurant, the Conco DOro Italian Pizza Parlor, the Winter Tree Art Gallery and the Kites of the Harbor Store and several more clothing stores and then the historic Gingerbread House, set back from the Main Street, which had a broker's "for sale" sign out front. We passed a man pushing an elderly woman in a traveling chair. We passed a young couple walking a German Shepherd and we passed a young woman sitting on a park bench talking on her cell phone where, next to her, there was the most beautiful white, full-sized poodle I think I have ever seen, perfectly groomed and sitting and waiting for his mistress to finish.

And finally, we returned to our car parked in the church lot on Division Street, and now I got this idea that we should have dinner on the rear outdoor garden porch at the Paradise Café, which at this hour, I believed, would be bathed in sunlight. It was only five o'clock. And my significant other said she thought this was a good idea but it was a bit early, so how about we shop for a while now that our stroll was over and then go there.

"I have another idea," I said, "I'll sit out there on the porch for an hour writing on my laptop, you shop and then at about 6:15 you join me." She knows I hate shopping.

"Sounds good," she said.

Just to make sure this was possible, I called the Paradise Café. I figured there would be very few people there at that hour. I was right.

"In fact," he said, "we're not even open yet. We're just setting up and the front door is locked, but just knock and I'll let you in. We'd be happy to oblige you."

And so here I am, writing this. And now you know why the people of Sag Harbor, en masse, oppose CVS. It is a chain store, and they have an option on an 18,000 square foot building just a stone's throw from Long Wharf that is currently occupied by six small, locally owned shops and three local professional offices. They want everybody out.

Just what Sag Harbor does not need is a discount chain store selling all the same stuff you find in every other town in the country where there is a CVS.

Long Wharf was once the third largest whaling port in America, teeming with people from every part of the world. Herman Melville was here. James Fenimore Cooper wrote his leather stocking Tales at the American Hotel. Betty Friedan started the women's movement from here. John Steinbeck lived here.

Sag Harbor is a classic old whaling village, now a happy, charming and quirky tourist destination, with a fascinating history, a whole lot of culture, beer joints, classy restaurants, chic shops, ice cream parlors, school kids, artists and writers, churches, pizza parlors, coffee shops, babies, art galleries dogs, retired people, rich people and poor people, bicyclists and teenagers. It's one of the most unique small towns in America.