The Mast-Head: Piss Hampton
Jayma Cardoso, the owner of the Surf Lodge bar and restaurant in Montauk, went online last week and disputed a photograph that appeared on The Star’s website that showed several men urinating into Fort Pond. “All I see is a group of friends standing knee deep in the water,” she told our friends over at the always entertaining Curbed Hamptons. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I figured I should check it out. So I talked for a second or third time to the staff member who brought us the photo in the first place.
She said that the source (whom it turned out I know and trust) wanted to remain anonymous due to his position in the community. He had observed the men begin to relieve themselves against the Surf Lodge bulkhead from the Industrial Road causeway and then grabbed his phone to record the moment. I have every reason to believe his account rather than the self-serving nonsense offered by the person most directly responsible — other than the pissers themselves.
But sometimes I think that the Surf Lodge is blamed too much for Montauk’s problems with bonkers nightlife — and public urination. Consider that on two separate Saturday mornings at about 6:30 I have gaped at organized bicycle outings of perhaps 20 riders stopping for a pee break at Georgica Beach. The problem there is that the restrooms do not open until 9 a.m.
It is quite a sight, watching four, five, or more men emerge, pulling up their Spandex short fronts from behind the old Coast Guard building, where, presumably (I did not check this out) they’ve just let it flow into the grass. Making this more annoying, it is less than three miles from Georgica to the village’s privy in the Reutershan parking lot off Main Street; you would have thought these bonnie captains of industry could have held it until 7 a.m. when it opens.
The other morning when a friend and I were pulling into the lot at Georgica to check the surf, we saw one guy not even bothering to get off his bike peeing without a care in the world into the weeds and pine at the edge of the bicycle rack area. I had told my friend to expect this; he was not disappointed.
“You’re kidding me, man!” he exclaimed as we passed the dude.
It’s interesting how the story of the summer has been the summer itself. And it’s interesting how so many people, not just the Montauk nightlife knuckleheads of the sort most of us once avoided in high school, treat this place like their own personal bathroom. Um, excuse me, I have to step outside now.