I try not to dwell on just how little time I've had for exploring Long Island and The City. A few days ago, around 11 AM, I decided to do two things: 1) scream, 2) drive to Sea Cliff, a little sea-side village on Long Island's northern shore, a village reputed to be a still-lovely bit of funk-tastic Victoriana.But first let me explain the screaming; it's the same thing I'm always howling about, that is the simple lack of free time in a domestic engineer's life. After I've taken care of everybody, washed their clothes and made the beds and shopped and chopped and walked the dogs, and found some time to either go to the gym for a spins class or the state park for a bike ride, there's no time for anything else. So, nine months after we first moved in, half the windows are still covered with paper or sheets or are just left bare. I could, of course, start sewing in the evenings after dinner, but I'm just too damn tired!
On this particular day, I was to have a full 3 hours to work on curtains. But the day had hardly started when the list of phone calls I needed to make began to grow as did the Little List of Perpetual Errands. Screw it, I thought. If you can't win, then do your best to lose. I may as well check off another item on my "To be Explored" list.
Oh, but before I talk too much about Sea Cliff, did I mention that Spring on Long Island is so colorful it's Disneyesque? The trees have gotten really, really excited. They're covered in pink or white or red. And the bees! They're excited, too -- and fat, and furry and buzzing like chain-saws on every branch. I think these are apple trees. Or pear.But on to Sea Cliff. I'd read about this square-mile village in the NYT. The Times has a weekly section that, whatever its title, should be called: "For those in the city who are dreaming of escape to leafier climes but aren't sure where to move to." Week after week, this section of the paper features some little burg on Long Island or in Connecticut (no one wants to move to Jersey), a burg where a buck goes further than in the city (a city that eats money), where stress-free dog-walking and child-rearing are possible. Sea Cliff stood out in my memory as a place to visit because it was billed as relatively untouched and undefaced by the rich of New York City, a demographic that has an unfettered love of 5-acre estates, Godzilla-in-Tuscany mansions and SUVs by Porsche. Sea Cliff would be, I was promised, funky, friendly and kind of weird. Like Austin. Which is not nearly as weird as it used to be, but that's a complaint for another time.
Anyway, near mid-day I drove the barely half hour it takes to get to Sea Cliff, the same distance from Cold Scream Harbor as Pflugerville is from Austin. But on Long Island, a distance of ten miles can seem like a world away. You get pockets of ethnic domination, more Italians here, more Jews there, and you get family after family that ventures out of its birth-zipcode only to go on vacation or to a ballgame. "I haven't been to the city since 1952," one geezer on our street was known to boast. And this is saying something. Because unless this grizzled old fossil has taken the ferry to Connecticut, that means he's never left Long Island at all.
So I get to Sea Cliff and initially, while driving around, I'm thinking that the proportion of original housing stock to other houses may be larger than in any town I've ever seen (well, except Savannah) . So me being me, I find the village breathtaking. One Victorian rubs shoulders with the next, usually on small lots not larger than a tenth of an acre. These more modest homes were built for the accountants and the office clerk who would have brought their families here in the summer, the city being almost as intolerable in the Gilded Age's heat as it is in today's.
O
f course I head straight for the sea, leaving my car near a little public park that has its own gorgeous views of the Long Island sound. I discover that many of Sea Cliff's houses sit atop a 300 foot bluff. Unusually for Long Island's north shore, these houses' view (and the view of these houses) has not been thoroughly eclipsed by massive hedges. Some locals have assured me that this fondness for privacy screening is a New York thing and not something you have to suffer much in New England.
The village has its own public beach. There are many such beaches on Long Island but "public" has to be understood to mean, "Open to those lucky few who can get a parking permit." To get a permit in many cases, you have to have residency in the town. In the Hamptons this is a particular bother because, having driven all that way and discovered that there's nothing to see but hedges, you'll probably decide to go for a walk on one of the Atlantic beaches. And what a long walk it will be once you discover that the nearest truly public parking is at least a mile's walk away. The major town, Southampton, should change its motto to "Keeping the riff-raff out since 1765!"
But I digress. I found the 'No Diving' sign poignant because the platform is clearly unsafe for the stated purpose, being wholly out of water. Then I remembered the story we'd heard from a used car salesman a few weeks ago, when we were looking for a Honda to replace the one that I had managed to drown in the spring floods. The salesman clucked his tongue and said you didn't need floods to get something good and drowned on Long Island. He had recently sold a car to a lady who had gone to a seaside restaurant in Sea Cliff, there to attend a banquet for a wedding. Seeing a line of other cars parked along the shore road, she parked her Audi right beside them, then went inside to toast the happy couple for a few hours. When she came out, her car and all the others near it were sitting in tidewater up to their headlights. Hmmmm. Does this disaster strike you as avoidable? Could a well placed sign have helped? But this is New York, and they're not big on signage, not big at all.
The coolest thing about Sea Cliff was the sen
se of community. Despite the faux "public" nature of the beach, there were a number of urban parks, small but well kept and available to the actual public. An urban ethos pervaded the village, which I appreciated very much. Most of the houses had little in the way of a yard, so I imagine the parks were created to give people a place to picnic on fine days. Interestingly, the more well appointed homes also enhanced the urban feel, because despite their larger yards they would be placed near a village green or the town center. This gaudy beauty, with its very autumnal color scheme, was not far from Sea Cliff's main street.
And as was true a century ago, the more prosperous mansions stood among humbler homes, such as this blessedly pink structure. I'm not sure when Americans became so terrified of mixing with others outside of their economic stratum, but such fears are not much in evidence in these old neighborhoods. In films of the 20s and 30s, you often see upper-middle families hiring the housekeeper or the gardener from the family next door. Now, I imagine there are few of us who would ask the house-cleaner where she/he lives. Like we know one trailer park from another.
Of course, after all this walking about and my exhausting meditations on architecture and history, it was hard not to think of lunch, a subject truly dear to my heart. With this little
garden beckoning, it seemed sensible to find a sandwich and a drink and then take both outside for a moment of dining al fresco.
I took a deep breath. A sandwich is most easily secured, in New York anyway, from a deli. A New York deli. This is an adventure which in my mind is always accompanied by the theme music to "Jaws".
My heart pounding, I go into the deli, Tony's or Frank's or whatever the hell it's called, tucked into a line of artisanal shops on Sea Cliff Avenue, the town's main street. Now, at self-service lunch counters back in Texas, there's a shingle that says, "Place Order Here" and another that says, "Pick up Order Here". But not in New York. Oh, no. New Yorkers find it much more fun to have a kind of scrum at the counter, where customers body-block their way to the front, then maul a passing human, hoping the victim actually works in the deli and isn't just delivering beer.
Fortunately, Tony's staff looked to be fairly idle. So it wasn't long after staring at the menu that a stolid chap in his 40s -- I believe they kept calling him Tony -- appeared to take my order. "I'll have a Tony's Tiny".
"A what?"
"A Tony's," I say, pointing at the menu. Tony snorted, then ambled off.
Of course, I had just made a terrible error. One thing real New Yorkers never do in a deli is order from the menu. Oh, deli owners struggle bravely against the popular will, offering long lists of little innovations in the Sandwich Universe, each item having its own cutesy name, unfamiliar mix of ingredients, and linguistic flourishes provided by the owner's niece who went to college: Try our Beanie Panini, a scrumptious symphony of olives, swiss, black beans and avocado, toasted to buttery perfection.
But only ferners like me actually order these named dishes. This menu aversion is puzzling because New Yorkers are fond of efficiency. But put a New Yorker into a deli and, baby, it's The Day the Earth Stood still, all over again. You wait and wait while the guy ahead of you concocts some fantasy sandwich combo, involving a flotilla of ingredients, each of which has to be cooked, or perhaps chilled, to a specific temperature, then layered in a particular way (God help the deli-server who lets the mayo come into contact with the bread), and then garnished with the right kind of caper. You thought there was only one kind. You fool.
About twenty minutes later, Tony arrives with my Tony. I duly take it outside to the aforementioned prettyish garden spot. I draw the sandwich from the bag. This is America, not just New York, and the sandwich is massive, huge. If this is Tony's Tiny, Lord knows what battleship Tony's Big One could sink.
I took a bite. Sigh. The chicken was over-cooked yesterday and no amount of bacon, with which Tony has been very, very generous, will ever hide this. Maybe it would have been wiser to order off the menu. I'm coming to think that New Yorkers avoid menus for the same reason they avoid signs of all kinds. New Yorkers are not, contrary to their reputation, immoral or unkind. They have simply concluded if you don't know the rules, then you can't be blamed for failing to follow them. Signs, particularly speed limit signs, are simply odious reminders to do something you don't want to do. Better to hack them all down and save the taxpers' money.
I wrap the rest of my sandwich up for the dogs back home, then I find the new Honda that replaced the drowned Honda, and head for home. I'm sooooo coming back. To Sea Cliff, if not to that deli.
O
f course I head straight for the sea, leaving my car near a little public park that has its own gorgeous views of the Long Island sound. I discover that many of Sea Cliff's houses sit atop a 300 foot bluff. Unusually for Long Island's north shore, these houses' view (and the view of these houses) has not been thoroughly eclipsed by massive hedges. Some locals have assured me that this fondness for privacy screening is a New York thing and not something you have to suffer much in New England.The village has its own public beach. There are many such beaches on Long Island but "public" has to be understood to mean, "Open to those lucky few who can get a parking permit." To get a permit in many cases, you have to have residency in the town. In the Hamptons this is a particular bother because, having driven all that way and discovered that there's nothing to see but hedges, you'll probably decide to go for a walk on one of the Atlantic beaches. And what a long walk it will be once you discover that the nearest truly public parking is at least a mile's walk away. The major town, Southampton, should change its motto to "Keeping the riff-raff out since 1765!"
But I digress. I found the 'No Diving' sign poignant because the platform is clearly unsafe for the stated purpose, being wholly out of water. Then I remembered the story we'd heard from a used car salesman a few weeks ago, when we were looking for a Honda to replace the one that I had managed to drown in the spring floods. The salesman clucked his tongue and said you didn't need floods to get something good and drowned on Long Island. He had recently sold a car to a lady who had gone to a seaside restaurant in Sea Cliff, there to attend a banquet for a wedding. Seeing a line of other cars parked along the shore road, she parked her Audi right beside them, then went inside to toast the happy couple for a few hours. When she came out, her car and all the others near it were sitting in tidewater up to their headlights. Hmmmm. Does this disaster strike you as avoidable? Could a well placed sign have helped? But this is New York, and they're not big on signage, not big at all.
The coolest thing about Sea Cliff was the sen
se of community. Despite the faux "public" nature of the beach, there were a number of urban parks, small but well kept and available to the actual public. An urban ethos pervaded the village, which I appreciated very much. Most of the houses had little in the way of a yard, so I imagine the parks were created to give people a place to picnic on fine days. Interestingly, the more well appointed homes also enhanced the urban feel, because despite their larger yards they would be placed near a village green or the town center. This gaudy beauty, with its very autumnal color scheme, was not far from Sea Cliff's main street.
And as was true a century ago, the more prosperous mansions stood among humbler homes, such as this blessedly pink structure. I'm not sure when Americans became so terrified of mixing with others outside of their economic stratum, but such fears are not much in evidence in these old neighborhoods. In films of the 20s and 30s, you often see upper-middle families hiring the housekeeper or the gardener from the family next door. Now, I imagine there are few of us who would ask the house-cleaner where she/he lives. Like we know one trailer park from another.Of course, after all this walking about and my exhausting meditations on architecture and history, it was hard not to think of lunch, a subject truly dear to my heart. With this little
garden beckoning, it seemed sensible to find a sandwich and a drink and then take both outside for a moment of dining al fresco.
I took a deep breath. A sandwich is most easily secured, in New York anyway, from a deli. A New York deli. This is an adventure which in my mind is always accompanied by the theme music to "Jaws".
My heart pounding, I go into the deli, Tony's or Frank's or whatever the hell it's called, tucked into a line of artisanal shops on Sea Cliff Avenue, the town's main street. Now, at self-service lunch counters back in Texas, there's a shingle that says, "Place Order Here" and another that says, "Pick up Order Here". But not in New York. Oh, no. New Yorkers find it much more fun to have a kind of scrum at the counter, where customers body-block their way to the front, then maul a passing human, hoping the victim actually works in the deli and isn't just delivering beer.
Fortunately, Tony's staff looked to be fairly idle. So it wasn't long after staring at the menu that a stolid chap in his 40s -- I believe they kept calling him Tony -- appeared to take my order. "I'll have a Tony's Tiny".
"A what?"
"A Tony's," I say, pointing at the menu. Tony snorted, then ambled off.
Of course, I had just made a terrible error. One thing real New Yorkers never do in a deli is order from the menu. Oh, deli owners struggle bravely against the popular will, offering long lists of little innovations in the Sandwich Universe, each item having its own cutesy name, unfamiliar mix of ingredients, and linguistic flourishes provided by the owner's niece who went to college: Try our Beanie Panini, a scrumptious symphony of olives, swiss, black beans and avocado, toasted to buttery perfection.
But only ferners like me actually order these named dishes. This menu aversion is puzzling because New Yorkers are fond of efficiency. But put a New Yorker into a deli and, baby, it's The Day the Earth Stood still, all over again. You wait and wait while the guy ahead of you concocts some fantasy sandwich combo, involving a flotilla of ingredients, each of which has to be cooked, or perhaps chilled, to a specific temperature, then layered in a particular way (God help the deli-server who lets the mayo come into contact with the bread), and then garnished with the right kind of caper. You thought there was only one kind. You fool.
About twenty minutes later, Tony arrives with my Tony. I duly take it outside to the aforementioned prettyish garden spot. I draw the sandwich from the bag. This is America, not just New York, and the sandwich is massive, huge. If this is Tony's Tiny, Lord knows what battleship Tony's Big One could sink.
I took a bite. Sigh. The chicken was over-cooked yesterday and no amount of bacon, with which Tony has been very, very generous, will ever hide this. Maybe it would have been wiser to order off the menu. I'm coming to think that New Yorkers avoid menus for the same reason they avoid signs of all kinds. New Yorkers are not, contrary to their reputation, immoral or unkind. They have simply concluded if you don't know the rules, then you can't be blamed for failing to follow them. Signs, particularly speed limit signs, are simply odious reminders to do something you don't want to do. Better to hack them all down and save the taxpers' money.
I wrap the rest of my sandwich up for the dogs back home, then I find the new Honda that replaced the drowned Honda, and head for home. I'm sooooo coming back. To Sea Cliff, if not to that deli.
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