Now for the Family-Friendly Side
The Montauk Chamber of Commerce has released a short video highlighting the traditional pleasures of the hamlet, even as party-hearty summer hordes continue to provide fodder for tabloids and other metro-area media eager to focus on Hamptons stories this time of year.
Shot at various sites around town, including Deep Hollow Ranch, the Lighthouse, and Gosman’s Dock, it depicts surfers, families fishing and sailing, yoga on the beach, and so on, and includes views of the shore, the business district, trails, and ponds, shot using an aerial drone. It was directed by James Katsipis.
Another Montauk-focused film, “Reel Montauk,” which documents the hamlet throughout history and today, including old footage and interviews with longtime local residents, is being shown at local venues, including the Hampton Library in Bridgehampton, where it screened on Tuesday. John Barrett was the filmmaker.
While the Montauk Chamber is seeking to put a positive spin on things, one resident is hoping to enlist at least 1,000 members of the community in a new group called Montauk United, which with the power of numbers, he says, can work with town officials and others to implement changes.
They are needed, according to a full-page ad in this issue of The Star, to address “problems such as public drunkenness, crime, outrageously bad behavior, and generally intolerable mayhem that has been foisted on our community through greed, indifference, and the contempt and abuse of the legal and moral values that are Montauk’s social foundation.”
Tom Bogdan is seeking members and donations for Montauk United, described as a “nonpartisan, apolitical citizen action group.”
By banding together, Mr. Bogdan explains in the ad and in a letter to the editor published here last week, Montaukers will gain “strength and power” vis-a-vis the powers-that-be whose cooperation is needed to address “serious problems and issues that are negatively affecting our community.”
The group will further define its goals at initial meetings, Mr. Bogdan said Monday, but will seek to “support and assist” the town board in what the ad says are “their greatly appreciated, and hoped-for continuous efforts,” and to interact with county and state agencies to “demand action when and where necessary.”
The Montauk group can look to oth er communities in the United States, Mr. Bogdan said, that have successfully wrestled with an influx of problematic visitors, such as Fort Lauderdale, Fla., a spring break destination, and Sturgis, S.D., where bikers throng for an annual motorcycle rally.
“Let us face these problems together as one united positive force for our community, our Montauk. Only through joining together can we have the will, strength and power to prevail,” says his ad.
In other news of the easternmost hamlet, a restaurant there that had far exceeded its maximum legal occupancy and was welcoming a nightclub crowd, according to East Hampton Town officials, fought back this week against a July 15 court order constraining it from exceeding its 68-person occupancy limit, and from operating as a nightclub.
Since May, officials have issued multiple citations for overcrowding to the restaurant, which opened earlier this year as the Harbor Raw Bar and Lounge, but which, according to its publicists in an email this week, is now called simply Harbor.
Acting Supreme Court Justice Denise F. Molia set a temporary restraining order in place until today, when both sides are expected to return for a court conference. In the meantime, however, the restaurant owners asked that it be stayed. According to town officials, Acting Supreme Court Justice James C. Hudson on Friday left the bulk of the court order in place, but agreed to lift it against Robert Hirsch, one of Harbor’s owners. While the occupancy limit and order against becoming a nightclub remains, Mr. Hirsch cannot be charged personally should violations occur, town officials said.
In a press release last week, Harbor said that “Montauk’s newest restaurant and lounge” remains open for business “despite the Town of East Hampton’s selective actions” against it, adding that it plans to introduce a Sunday movie night with “family-friendly films.”
The business, according to the release, will “remain good corporate citizens” while continuing its summer program of nightly D.J.s, live music, charity events, and daytime bocce ball, and operating a takeout food stand on the site.
Meanwhile, the increased presence since the July Fourth weekend of police and code enforcement officers has seemed, according to reports, to have tamped down the noise and chaos somewhat.