Dan's Papers - March 14, 2008 - North Fork Vanishes

I was driving around up on the North Fork the other day. It is such a peaceful place, just a few cars on the road this time of year. I turned onto the one-block-long main street of Mattituck known as Love Lane. A car was moving slowly in front of me, and then, right in the middle of the block, it stopped. There was no reason it should have stopped. But then I saw there was some lady walking along on the sidewalk who had also stopped, smiled, and now walked out into the street to chat for a few minutes with the driver. She was leaning on the driver's open window, sharing a bit of gossip. I waited. This is the North Fork.

Or is it the North Fork? All through the North Fork on this Friday, March 7 there is something very strange going on at all the branches of the North Fork Bank. This bank is the dominant bank in this community, founded there and developed into a very large regional banking firm with more than 100 branches by a local fellow named John Adam Kanas.

People are proud of the North Fork Bank and the fact that the name of this place is being spread far and wide. But on this day, Friday, I was up there to notice that the signs out front of each of the branches that I passed - and there are ten of them - all had canvas coverings over them. On the canvas, which was white, there was the familiar green logo and name NORTH FORK BANK. But under it, I knew, was a new name. All the North Fork Bank branches will have these canvases cut away and carted off early next Monday morning before the start of business to reveal to all the good folks on the North Fork that the branches are no longer North Fork Banks, but Capital One Banks. The North Fork has been purchased by Capital One. Mr. Kanas has retired. And the new name, out front on at least 20 signs on ten bank branches along this twenty-mile long peninsula, will that morning say Capital One Bank in blue and white, rather than North Fork Bank in green and yellow. Capitol One is the new North Fork.

I think this has got to be a pretty traumatic experience for these folks.

The reason is that the name North Fork Bank is the only prominent identifying signage on this thirty-mile long peninsula to declare that this place is the North Fork. Suddenly, that morning, poof. No more North Fork.

Think about it. There is no North Fork Harbor or North Fork Highway. No North Fork Lake or North Fork River. There isn't even a town called North Fork, or North Fork Beach or East North Fork.

Imagine what this would feel like here in the Hamptons - there is so much identifying us as Hamptons - and you wake up one morning and every bit of everything no longer had the word Hampton in it. There might be East Verizon or Verizon Road, there would be SouthVerizon College and Verizon Bays. You'd go down to your club and it would be named the Bridge Verizon Golf Club. Or the Bridge Verizon Bath and Tennis Club. Verizon had god damn bought the Hamptons. What a disaster.

So take pity on those poor stunned folks from Aquebogue, Mattituck, Laurel, Cutchogue, Southold, Peconic, East Marion, Jamesport, Northville, New Suffolk, Greenport and Orient. They meant well. But now everything has been jerked out from under them.

Maybe we should take pity and invite them for a vacation down here in the, uh, you know.