Dan's Papers - January 16, 2009

There are no billboards in the Hamptons. Well, yes there are. There are two. There are two billboards that are on County Road 39 in Southampton advertising in a very menacing manner for everybody to slow down to 35 miles an hour on that road. They were put up this spring, in violation of all local laws that prohibit putting up billboards, and there was a tremendous protest about them. Not only are they not supposed to be there, they are also ugly and unfriendly. And so four weeks ago, Suffolk County, which put them up and did so because this is on COUNTY Road 39, so their laws apply on their road and that meant you could have billboards, agreed to take them down.

Well, three weeks later, they are still there. The wheels are, apparently, turning to get them taken down - but not very quickly.

And so, the two billboards, 10 feet high and 30 feet wide, remain. They depict a fat policeman in a bulletproof vest, popping up from behind his police car to point a gun at you. The sign reads "SPEED LIMIT 35 MILES AN HOUR STRICTLY ENFORCED."

Motorists may be excused if they think New York is the only state in the country that inflicts the death penalty for speeding, but the gun the fat officer is holding, it turns out, is a radar gun. Or so they say.

Well, three times during the summer, these signs were vandalized, and when the protests came from as high up as the Southampton Town Supervisor, Linda Kabot, the County finally agreed to take them down. But they are still up, terrorizing motorists. A nice welcome to the Hamptons it surely isn't. Visit Montauk Lighthouse if you can make it to Montauk without getting shot is one interpretation.

I wondered, though, why the signs are not down. I've done research on why not. There are not any clear answers. So here is my fantasy.

The phone rings in the office of County Supervisor Steve Levy. Levy answers it.

"What? The signs are still up? I told you last week and the week before, get those damn signs down. Everybody is all over me about this. I said I would do it. I look like a fool. Do it!"

"We're trying, sir," says the head of the Highway Department, who is on the line.

"Then why are they still there?"

"You got so angry two weeks ago. We sent out a crew at high speed to get the job done. And they never came back."

"We found them by the side of the road. Shot dead."

"Then last week, you got even angrier. So we sent out another crew."

"Who would do such a thing?"

"The police say they were clocked at 75 miles an hour."

"The killers were clocked at 75?"

"You have another crew?"

"We're hiring. But so far, when they hear about what happened to the earlier crew, there have been no takers."