The Mast-Head: Beginning of the End

Every year at about this time, people get to saying that they have never seen it so bad. What they mean mostly is that the number of cars on the road and people on the beaches seem greater than ever. 

Heading west on East Hampton Main Street on Tuesday after hearing Carlos Lama’s David Bowie tribute band, I was squeezed out of my lane by someone in a Tesla, which swerved, then slowed for a distance, and floated at an odd angle off Woods Lane toward Baiting Hollow without signaling. The driver did not seem drunk, exactly, more likely distracted by her passengers or talking on the phone. It was hard to know.

Summertime hassles are nothing new. I was looking at a copy of The Star from July 1967 the other day and was amused by the lead story about the then-increasingly popular pastime of surfing, particularly at Ditch Plain. In an effort to keep boards and maybe reprobate surfers away from ordinary bathers, the town board authorized $5 permits, with metal tags issued by the town clerk that presumably surfers would have to wear. The ordinance also limited the hours surfing would be allowed.

A young Chip Duryea spoke for the Montauk Association for the Preservation of Surfing, or MAPS, in opposition to the metal tag and the location of the only area at Ditch designated for boards. “Hot-heads, dope addicts, or those with half a load on” were not surfing anyway, Mr. Duryea said.

The July 6, 1967, story went on to describe “chaotic and unbelievable” parking conditions at Atlantic Avenue in Amagansett, as well as “filth and debris on the beach” and cases of indecent exposure. 

One woman told the town board that the beach had become a “ ‘filthy hole,’ with groups of ‘L.S.D. hippies’ sleeping on mattresses.” And to think that today we complain about people sipping rosé at the Surf Lodge and think that’s a problem.

The summer of 1967 was, it turned out, the beginning of the end of free parking and free love at town beaches; a system of permit stickers for town residents came along shortly. All others would have to find another way to get to the beach, hot-heads, dope addicts, or LSD hippies, or not.