Dan's Papers - September 26, 2008

There was a report last week that persons unknown had removed nearly 30 protest signs that had been placed in strategic locations in Bridgehampton near to a former farm that has just been approved to become a subdivision. The signs had three different messages. Ten read STOP OVERDEVELOPMENT. Ten read SAVE ENDANGERED SPECIES. And 10 read PRESERVE OUR ENVIRONMENT. These signs had been put up by the owners of homes in the adjacent Hampton Farms sub-development, who got together and ponied up about $700 to create the 30 signs. Apparently, they felt enough was enough, and since they got their housing development, they wanted the barn door locked behind them.

In any case, the 30 signs are gone. Poof. Vanished in one night by a perp or some perps or many perps going by in cars and picking these signs off trees and telephone poles and squirreling them into the backseats before driving off. The signs stood one-and-a-half feet high by two-feet wide. You may have seen them if you were up on Scuttlehole Road or the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike recently. But not now.

Who done it? It's a mystery. Some swear it was either William Koral or Dennis Suskind, who are the developers promoting the new 37-lot Vintage Vines subdivision now before the town board.

(Vintage Vines. Hampton Farms. Why do developments get named for what they destroy? Who knows.)

But those who know these two developers say they cannot imagine either of these two gentlemen - honorable men both - stooping to such shenanigans.

Maybe it's a mole, suggested someone to this reporter. What kind of mole? A mole inside the Hampton Farms Homeowners Association who attended the meeting and did not agree with this strategy.

Or maybe it was someone from the highway department who thought that placing one in front of a big yellow sign that read NO RIGHT TURN was so dumb he'd just take them all down.

Or maybe it was somebody from a beautification project, or an anti-littering project. Maybe it was a right-wing Republican up to no good.

It does bring to mind another mystery on our streets and sidewalks, which is - who the hell was it that drip-painted a thin white line all the way from Hampton Bays to the front door of the seven-story Montauk Residential Tower on the plaza in the center of downtown Montauk?

The line is a wavy little thing, as if it had been dripped from the bottom of a bottle that was attached to the side of a bicycle as it got pedaled along.

Where there are sidewalks, it is on the sidewalks, and where there aren't it crosses the street or goes down the street alongside the gutter, moving smartly along.

It's about an eighth of an inch thick, and has the consistency of taffy, but the strength of a highway department white line. It will be there for years, I suspect, unless there is some sustained effort to remove it. (It doesn't pull off. I tried.)

You'll find it on County Road 39. You'll find it on the sidewalk on the north side of the highway going through Water Mill and Bridgehampton. It's on the north side in East Hampton and Amagansett, and it goes out to Napeague to Montauk. And where were the police when this somebody was doing this?

This is a lot of paint. It extends 30 miles. Given the thickness and the size of it, it would have to come from a container that got replaced or refilled at least every quarter-mile. This could not have been a one-man job.

A reporter for one of our local newspapers went out and asked people who would have seen it - if it ran in front of their store, for example - who they thought did this and why. Oddly, the answers seemed to come from the point of view of whomever got asked.

A librarian in East Hampton suggested that it must have been done by someone with a lot of time on their hands.

A village police officer wondered if the reporter was referring to the one that went from one end of the village to the other - that was as far as he knew because that was as far as he went.

A kid thought it was gum until he tried to pick it up.

The owner of an art gallery noted that the appearance of the line coincided with the birthday of Jackson Pollock, the famous drip painter who worked and lived in these parts.

An employee of a local hardware store said he knew for a fact it was paint.

An environmentalist said that the white line should be checked to make sure it was not radioactive. Maybe it was a nut.

But why is there no message anywhere about this? It's really weird. We have the media. It lacks a message. There's no anonymous phone call saying that this white line signifies man's disregard for global warming, or is a protest against the white-bread presidential campaign of John McCain or is intended to unify people all over the world. Nothing.

I guess nothing is the message.

Then last week, I was on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn walking along, on my way to meet somebody at a bakery café, and there it was again. The white line. Going right down the sidewalk. This is SERIOUS. Who knows how far this white line goes?

And so I've been on the lookout.

Two days ago, I came upon a man in street clothes who was using a little wheeled device that you see highway department people using when they mean to paint a line in the street. He was painting the street. I asked him about it.

"I work for the highway department," he said. He was making little elbow markings that would show locations for surveyors. And he was using orange paint.

"Where's your hard hat? Where's your highway department vest?"

Today, in Wainscott, I saw a slender man with a full beard and a hammer, standing next to a car parked by the side of the road, banging an orange wooden sign to a telephone pole. The sign read EVERY 22 SECONDS SOMEONE DIES OF HUNGER.

I thought - this is it.

I asked, "Are you the guy who painted the long white line down the sidewalk through the Hamptons?"

"No," he said. "I've been wondering who did that, too."

He got the orange sign up and stepped back to admire his work. I had bad news for him.

"No one dies of hunger," I said. "People die of malnutrition. It's factually inaccurate."

He blinked but didn't say anything. Then, without saying another word, he got into his car, where I suspected he had hundreds of other such badly thought out signs, and drove off.