A skinny dipper.

The Right to Swim Naked

Southampton Woman, No Longer in the Buff, Sues the Village

By Dan Rattiner

Well, at least one local person is not taking the march of the McMansions lying down. I speak, of course, of Ms. Evelyn Conrad of Southampton, whose family has lived in a modest house on a modest street called Rosko Drive for the last thirty years. Rosko Drive was divided into half-acre lots in the 1950s and is part of a section of Southampton that has several such streets in it.

Last year, a developer assembled five modest houses on Leo's Lane, which runs parallel to Rosko. And he proposed to knock down all five modest houses to replace them with houses roughly double the size of Ms. Conrad's, each tall enough for people inside to peer down at what was going on in the backyards of Rosko Lane.

"I have made a habit of skinny dipping in the pool in my yard," Ms. Conrad said. "I can't do that anymore."

Now, there are a lot of things you can't do in your backyard if what you do can be seen by your immediate neighbors. And if you're building a city, well, that is just too bad for the poor folks with little places who now get loomed over.

But Ms. Conrad's lawsuit says that what is taking place on Leo's Lane is because of the recent takeover of the Village Board, Planning Board and the Architectural Review Board by many people in the real estate and construction businesses. You can argue that today practically everybody, in one way or another, is in the real estate or construction businesses. And if the idea is to wipe away the old rural character of the village and replace it with a bunch of McMansions, well, maybe they can do that. Or maybe they can't. Village Boards are charged with protecting the way of life of their community out here. In the Southampton Village Code of Ethics, specifically, it says that no person who is in the construction or real estate business shall sit on the Planning Board or Village Board because how he or she might deal with zoning matters would be considered a conflict of interest. This code was written and subsequently enforced until just two years ago by the various dentists, farmers, merchants and schoolteachers that previously served on those boards.

But two years ago, a sort of critical mass was reached in the Village. And when election time came, a whole lot of people with building and real estate connections were elected. And at that time, the five house Leo's Lane development was proposed.

The elections had not influenced the Architectural Review Board at that particular time because the Architectural Board was not an elected board but an appointed board with a certain number of years as terms of service.

The Architectural Review Board looked at this proposal, which consisted of tearing down the little houses and replacing them with these five McMansions with their attendant garages and pools and so forth, all on just one half an acre, and they said they were disturbed by this. It did seem to fly in the face of what zoning was supposed to do, which was protect the character of the community. The community was small houses on half-acre lots.

In other parts of the villages and towns, McMansions are built where farms used to be - that's another story - but the zoning usually has them set in the center of at least four acres. And this brings us to Mrs. Conrad's lawsuit.

Pretty much what happened in Southampton Village after the Architectural Review Board noted their objections to this, is that the Planning Board and the Village Board simply replaced the members of the Architectural Review Board with people in the construction and the real estate businesses. Then the project rolled forward with the various stamps and approvals.

This newspaper among others, did point out this election swept into power people who are positioned to profit from the real estate business, and this was bad. Many people wrote letters to that effect, and in response, the Mayor of the Village, Mark Epley, promised to look into the matter and make changes to reign in the zoning changes that had immediately been made, which would allow such McMansion projects in half-acre neighborhoods. So a whole lot of changes did get made, which it turns out, are a lot of hot air and no substance.

For example, the McMansion proposed for just outside the backyard of Ms. Conrad's home, must now be two feet shorter than the 32-feet-tall structure it was originally proposed to be. Presumably, this will allow enough reduction in height so that people looking out the back window of the McMansion will now no longer be able to see the naked Ms. Conrad from the waist up, but just from the shoulders up. Well, I don't think so.

Another change is that they lowered the bridge but they raised the water. The total square footage of this McMansion, which was originally approved at 3,987 feet had to include the square footage of the garage. Now, however, under all this pressure it is down to 3,851 square feet, but it doesn't include the square footage of the garage, because with the new rules a garage can be discounted if it is "detached." So it could be four feet from the house now, with a breezeway into the kitchen, and so you get the idea.

Skinny dipping is one of the major activities by locals in the Hamptons. I skinny dip often at my house, in my pool. My property does not have any neighbor's houses that loom.

A woman skinny dipped and flounced around naked in a hot tub on the back of a truck being hauled through downtown Montauk on a float in the St. Patty's Day parade a few years ago. The parade route went from one end of town to the other. Many spectators along the route were shocked, but they were all Manhattanites with second homes here, unfamiliar with the rituals of the locals. Surfing and surfcasting, rollerblading and seal riding are some of the other activities enjoyed by the locals. Locals also sunbathe topless at numerous beaches but I'm not going to tell which ones they are.

One time at a dinner party hosted by some friends who own a large McMansion on five acres, I was told the following story over coffee and dessert by our host. There were about ten of us sitting around the table in the dining room at that time. The sun had set. The dining room looked out, through French doors, at the pool.

"My wife and I were right here at this table, having dinner with the Austrian Ambassador to the United Nations. We only came out on weekends at that time. But Herr Zamat and his wife had bought a house in the estate section not far away. So this was our neighborly welcoming dinner. But it had gotten postponed. It was supposed to be on a Sunday. Herr Zamat asked if we could do it the next day, as he was staying out an extra day because of some Austrian Holiday. So we stayed out an extra day. It was just about this time, over dessert and coffee that it happened. Way down at the end of our driveway, I could see the headlights of a car coming up our way. Who could it be? They got closer and closer. I figured they'd ring the front doorbell. They didn't. The car, a big minivan, arrived right up alongside the pool. Nine people got out, threw off all their clothes and jumped into the pool naked, yipping and having a wonderful time. And I knew exactly who they were."

"Who?" asked one of the guests at our table.

"They were some of the locals we knew. I had told them they were welcome to come over and use our pool anytime as long as it was not on a weekend. I was being friendly. I started to try to explain this to our guests, but they didn't want to hear it. So my wife got up and closed the drapes."

"How did it go?"

"We moved into the living room after awhile. It was pretty awkward. But that's the way it goes."

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