DAN'S PAPERS, June 4, 2010 Page 28 www.danshamptons.com (continued from page 13)
Lane and Main Street are Polo, Tiffany, Brooks Brothers, Cartier, Calypso, you name it. For the last 18 months, however, and right up until two weeks ago, the town was a sorry sight with almost as many empty stores as open ones. It was still rich, but it was raggedy. At one point, it was suggested that the local artists display their wares in the closed-up shop windows. It was never done, but it would have been quite a display. Also, during these last 18 months, as if it were the good old days, you could drive into town and park right in front of the store. The difference was that if you were an ordinary person, you probably wouldn’t want to. Most of what was for sale was at the high
end. But if you were in the mood for a $1,500 throw pillow, you could find it in a shop maybe two empty storefronts down. When I came into town this past Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend, however, I was totally shocked. It was 10 a.m. I was expecting the town to be packed with people. It was packed even worse than it had been before the recession. It took me 20 minutes to find a place to park, and then the sign said I could only be there for one hour. But by that time, it was 10:30 a.m. I intended to only be there until 11:30 a.m. Every store on both main streets were all up and running now. Surprise! The rich boutiques had come out from nowhere. The curtain had risen. East Hampton was its old self
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again. Or was it? About a dozen people came to hear me read. The story I read mostly involved the world premiere of the movie Jaws which had taken place down the street, and the panic that gripped the town involving the killer shark. I have a microphone, a battery-driven 5-watt combination amplifier and speaker. I could be heard over the traffic. But it was not too loud. After I read, people bought books and I signed them. I returned everything to the car. (And thank you Margaret Bodkin for all your help). Though my time in the parking spot was a few minutes past an hour, I was hungry and thought I ought to go to one of the restaurants nearby for something to eat. There were lots of traffic officers around in their yellow vests. As a matter of fact, where Main Street and Newtown Lane come together, there were six of them, two at each of the three crosswalks, and one directly under the traffic light. I figured, correctly, they would be too busy directing the crowds of people and cars to worry about little old me for another half hour, and, as it turned out, I was correct about that. I figured I’d grab a bite either at the Golden Pear or at Babette’s up across from Waldbaums, but an astonishing thing was in abundance as I walked up the Lane. Food. On both sides of the street, the doors to all the stores—mostly clothing stores—were open and in many of them, perhaps as many as half of them, there were tables set out with good things to eat on them absolutely for free. I never made it to Babette’s. (As a matter of fact, both Babette’s and Golden Pear had lines of patrons at them leading back out the front door.) So for lunch? I ate in the clothing stores. I’d go in, nod hello, pretend to look at the merchandise for a moment and then make a beeline for the tables and ate. I had apple cider, donuts, fresh baked cookies, cakes and muffins. It was wonderful stuff. Not good for you, but wonderful and very filling. (Don’t tell my wife.) I have never seen anything like this before in this town. In the past, the rule has always been don’t bring your ice cream cones, dogs or food in because you’ll damage the merchandise. Now the rule was, come on in, eat, and maybe buy something. This was amazing. I say it was amazing because of something that happened in the summer of 2008. In that year, the East Hampton Village Police arrested the owner of an art gallery, Ruth Vered, and hauled her off in handcuffs for serving wine and cheese at her first-of-thesummer art opening. For all the 50 years I have been involved with this newspaper, art galleries have ALWAYS had wine and cheese at gallery openings and nobody had bothered them. The openings are traditionally 5 to 7 p.m., every other Friday. Turned out that during the winter of 2007(continued on page 34)