Codger Column: ShelHampton
Who are we going to blame, now that most of the summer scapegoats are gone, for texting while jogging, cutting the ferry line, abandoning dog poop, screaming all day in the pool, walking three abreast down West Neck Road and annoying the hardware clerk formerly known as Mean Jean?
Codger is concerned that we will meet the offenders and find they are us.
Codger is particularly worried these days by the current discussion among some locals — stimulated by an upcoming election — over whether Shelter Island is a Hampton-in-Waiting.
Will there be a surge of bigger houses, buses from the city filled with weekend beer tasters, flocks of seaplanes, skinny trophy wives and their porky Hedge hogs?
Will Donald Trump step up his political aspirations and lobby to replace the retiring Ed Brown on the Town Council?
These may all be just rumors to keep us tuned in, like scary weather reports, and Codger is spreading them only to expose the dreadful Hamptonian thinking that seems to be gaining currency around here: The end is near, people are shouting, the Baldwins are coming, Fresh Pond will be filled with champagne.
Let’s get the silliest rumor out of the way first. Codger never believed that Trump, before he settled for the nightly news every night, was angling to become the star of Channel 22 with a plan to buy St. Gabriel’s and develop a combination Indian casino and high-end private mental health facility for those with gambling addictions, including day trading.
The 24-acre Donald Harbor would have vaulted the Rock over every other South Fork hamlet, village and town that was lumped into the Balkans of the East End.
But there are other, more subtle, ways of becoming ShelHampton, such as raising the minimum size of new houses: No building permits — much less certificates of occupancy — will be issued unless plans call for enough bathrooms and bedrooms-with-wet-bars to accommodate group houses, Airbnb, fraternity reunions or the Clintons.
Bigger houses mean bigger people. With a little friendly zoning, Martha Stewart might be enticed to live here instead of just using the Island as her north-south limo ramp. What fun to watch her squeeze melons at the green markets of Sylvester Manor and the Historical Society, to see what she eats at the Presbyterian Church Dinner Bell and Fire Department food fests!
To make us over into ShelHampton, townspeople and their elected officials would need to lighten up on their environmental and water use concerns (actually, alas, some may already have). Does it seem to them ridiculous to worry about “fragile zones” when we are surrounded by water? Hey, just build desalinization plants and levees!
Are they concerned lest tough talk about wetlands conservation, salted wells, groundwater polluting septic systems, wall-to-wall lawns (with continuous irrigation sprinklers) and pools (with constant re-filling) will scare off an invasion of Sagaponack wannabes? Is anyone at Town Hall scouting out coves where the better yachts can flush their tanks?
With Klenawicus Airstrip so active lately, it would be simple for the ShelHampton Aviation Administration (SHAA) to make a sweetheart deal with the East Hampton Coalition for Crowded and Noisy Skies for that Uber-ish helicopter service to be available day and night for the American Express black credit card set. (It would be very neighborly, however, if it could omit from the flight plans such local fragile zones as the Perlman Music Program, the Friends of Music, the Dory’s Jazz Festival, Tim Purtell’s DJ turns, all school dances and whenever Tom and Lisa Hashagen are practicing bluegrass at home.)
In return, Wall Street blade bangers will be allowed to fly over the proposed dormitories, probably located in Mashomack, for the hordes of ShelHampton help brought in to service the new residents.
They won’t be getting much sleep anyway, especially the waitstaff at the Montauk-style bars on what used to be the golf course on Goat Hill.
Codger hopes that the town’s 2016 officialdom will be sensitive to Klenawicus Airstrip’s current status as a senior center. The optics of three different octogenarian pilots dropping out of the sky in the past six months could deter Martha-level traffic. How about lowering the age requirements so rich 70-year-olds can crash land their private jets?
There will be those, of course, who will resist change, who want Shelter Island to retain its determined unHampton-ness, who will defy the Trumpish developers and their real estate henchpeople, perhaps even to suggest building an immigration wall to keep out those bad actors and white collar criminals who have turned the farming and sea-faring communities of the South Fork into the cesspools of Eden.
More power to those people! Let’s encourage them, spread the word on Codger’s favorite underground Facebook page, where the former Mean Jean (now Jean of Ace) and others so gleefully nail those nuts and bolters. Let’s leaven those pictures of outlanders walking, parking, shopping and chattering badly with inspiring pictures of those us who are still here acting in the best interests of what we want to keep.
