Montauk, NY
(Photo by Julie Kim)
Flying a kite along a crowded beach, even on a fairly windy day, isn’t as easy as you’d think. I could say that the trick is releasing as much of the string as quickly as you can — just set that sucker way up into the wild blue yonder before the fickle wind closer to the ground sends your poor kite thundering back down to the sand dunes. I could say that, but I’d be bullshitting you. Truth is, I really don’t know the secret to keeping a kite aloft. But I do firmly believe that if you’re gonna soar, soar high.
I’m in Montauk, on the easternmost tip (the South Fork) of New York’s fabled Long Island. This unseasonably warm and beautiful weekend just happens to include my birthday (April 25), and the trip comes courtesy of my girlfriend, Julie, who knows the secret to sending my heart newly aflutter is getting away from the jackhammers and jackasses of The Big City.
Modern-day Montauk sprang up from a small fishing village around Fort Pond Bay in the early 1900s. (The area’s history goes back much further than this, of course. For example, the oldest surviving building was built in 1797.) Unlike the Hamptons, those snooty neighbors to the west, Montauk has remained something of a working-class oasis. The hotels, one or two floors, are modest (think: beadboard walls); the beaches are not raked clean every morning. I suspect there aren’t many hip-hop moguls with summer compounds here.
We arrived in town on Friday night after an interminably long ride on the Long Island Rail Road. After a heated argument over the contents of a salad, of all things — a tragic misunderstanding blown atmospherically out of proportion — we set out yesterday at noon for lunch, our appetites kicked into overdrive.
At Duryea’s Lobster Deck you can look out over a misty Fort Pond Bay as you crack open lobster likely plucked from the very same waters. Duryea’s is the kind of joint where you step up to the counter to place your order, take a seat at one of the tables outside, sip from your can of Mug root beer and wait till a pager signals that lunch is served. We got a half-dozen oysters (sandy and not exactly the best we’ve ever had, if you know what I mean) and a 1 1/4-pound lobster each, which came split open for easy handling, drawn butter for dipping and flanked by a baked potato and cole slaw.
We were stuffed. But that didn’t stop me, when we got back into town, from picking up a double-scoop waffle cone of homemade “mint Oreo” ice cream from John’s Drive In. And meanwhile, Julie snuck off to Montauk Bake Shoppe to select a couple of extra-sugary birthday surprises: a giant cupcake and a chocolate mousse cake. My belly wasn’t used to this star treatment. Two Pepto Bismol capsules later, I felt well enough to walk to the beach, where a trio of gulls were sorting through a small pile of garbage as the sun began to set. Not exactly what I’d call an unspoiled beach; yet it was a sight for sore eyes considering I was watching a snowfall two weeks ago.
For dinner we chose Hewitt’s Shagwong Tavern on the main strip. A sign in the window pleaded: “Piano player wanted. Must have knowledge of opening clams.” We were led to a darkened booth where the walls were peppered with black-and-white photographs of ships, airplanes, horses and chairs, and where nonthreatening 1980s pop music whispered forth from the speakers overhead. Julie chose a clam chowder to start and, incredibly, her second lobster of the day (this one weighing in at 1 1/2 pounds). Fries, cole slaw and a string bean/carrot mix — and another container of drawn butter — rounded out her feast. “I feel like I’m sweating butter right now!” she would exclaim later. As for myself, to kick things off I had an order of clams cooked in their shells in a spicy beer broth with sausage. And I followed that with the “Seafood Trio”: broiled flounder, salmon and swordfish served with a mound of mashed potatoes and the string bean/carrot combo. It was all very tasty. But I did realize later that I had six different kinds of seafood stuck between my teeth!
This morning we got up at the crack of 11 a.m. for more gluttonous punishment, pancake and eggs at the Plaza Diner. It’s Sunday, our last day here, and we briefly contemplated renting bicycles so we could ride out to see the famed Montauk lighthouse (oldest in New York State), but we abandoned that idea in favor of soaking up WAY too much more sun at the beach. And so here we are, facing the Atlantic Ocean, sun in our eyes, and I’m wondering: just how high can this kite go?
I finally get this blue plastic bird soaring with every inch of string let out, and I stand amazed at the powerful feeling it gives me. I place the spool in the hands of a snaggle-toothed 5-year-old girl from New Jersey, shortly before the kite begins a fatal nosedive onto the roof of the Ocean Beach hotel. It’s not long before five more kites are aloft from the hands of various other beachgoers intrigued by the aeronautical challenge.
Keep soaring.
