Disappointment Abounds in the "Anti-Hamptons"

I have taken William Floyd Parkway south to Smith Point Beach on Fire Island my entire life. However, we would always stay on highways and the parkway, without really veering off course (save for a Carvel stop on the way home from the beach every now and then).

I have canoed down the Carmans River in Shirley and docked our boats at the Wertheim National Wildlife Refuge. But this is practically all I've known of this peninsular area of south-central Suffolk County.

Putting crime reports aside, a google search of either "Shirley" or "Mastic" will lead you to both towns' village exploration committees' websites. Apparently, community activists in both towns are pushing their respective councils to vote on creating villages of Smith Point and Mastic Beach that would hopefully strengthen the community and focus on its positive aspects, rather than the constant bad press the area receives. According to the website of the same name, the civic organizations in these areas are trying to make them into the "Anti-Hamptons." Well today, I set out to see if that was possible.

I started my foray into the neighborhood by driving down Smith Road in Shirley, which borders the National Wildlife Refuge. Driving through the residential neighborhood, I noticed ranches and two-story houses that were nothing to really speak of. Your average middle-class Long Island household. However, turning onto Carman View Drive, we started to get a sense of the households that are behind the push for the village. Many of these beautiful houses, colonials patriotically flying the American flag, had signs in the front yards proclaiming "We Support the SPVEC Effort." The beauty and expanse of these houses, however, did not expand past this one area of the neighborhood. On Golden Gate Drive, established in 1956, four homes were for sale, and the only houses that really stood out were ones directly on the riverfront.

We passed the Manor of St. George, a mansion that is the only remnant of the land purchased by Colonel William Smith from the Indians in 1691, which included the entire Shirley/Mastic peninsula and land all the way east to Southampton. This historic purchase, easily one of the first major settlements on Long Island, is now relegated to a small mansion hidden in the woods off of a dirt road behind Santatecla Restaurant in Shirley, and happened to be closed on Mondays during the summer. This was the first unfortunate, disappointing discovery of the day.

On to Shirley Beach at Smith's Landing on Grandview Drive, where there was one lifeguard on duty, who spent most of the time we were there fixing his umbrella, and three lifeguards in the recreation room just watching TV or listening to the radio. The beach is a mere 20 feet wide, by maybe 100 yards in length, and the part of the water (the Carmans River) that is bathable is maybe two feet deep. There were 3 kids in the water, 1 black and 2 white, while about a handful of parents/residents sat on the dirty sand and looked on. There was a nice playground, but the sparsity of this beach did not contribute to the allure I was searching for in the proposed Village of Smith Point. It is nice and scenic by the river, but otherwise, the attraction here was relatively minimal.

Shirley's business district mainly being the densely populated William Floyd Parkway, we decided to cross over and head into Mastic Beach, which has signs promoting their business district. Parked at the laundromat, we walked around the town's main street, Neighborhood Road, which doesn't seem to get much daily foot traffic and doesn't have much to offer those who would stop by, like we did. Passing the New York State historical sign documenting the establishment of the Mastic Beach Town Square on July 4th, 1976 "to celebrate the nations' bicentennial [Bicentennial Motto: Beautification-Thru-Historic Endevor] (sic)" and the Village Exploration Committee building (proclaiming "We Support Mastic Beach 'The Village'"), we entered the town of Mastic Beach. Walking past a Handy Pantry, Barbara's Kitchen advertising home cooking, and a barber shop, we went into the sole bar, LinsaTorr's Place.

LinsaTorr's is dark, quiet, and thankfully air-conditioned. There were two men sitting at the bar talking to the flowery-dressed bartender who laughed when I asked to use the restroom, which informed me via the writings on the wall, "Don't f*#@ with grandma." Interesting place. A Bud Light bottle was a surprisingly low $3.50 and we sat in relative silence, admiring the patriotic signs on the walls and listening to the Jagermeister machine powering up. After the old, bearded gentleman saw on the backwards clock (it counted clockwise from 12 to 1) that "it's 12 o'clock already," and the other man left to get food, it was us and the flowered bartender who kept circling the bar looking for something to do.

I took the opportunity, after she got back from a smoke, to ask the bartender about the proposed village of Mastic Beach. Her response, unsurprisingly: "More government is just going to raise my taxes."
"I'm not for it. They're gonna raise my taxes," she repeated.
I asked how she thought it might benefit the town, having more money coming in for development.
"I don't know how." She became shy, somber all of a sudden, like I had given her a 50-question short-answer exam and she didn't know how to answer a single one. "I dunno," she continued. "I just don't want to have to follow their stupid rules like in Patchogue." Patchogue is a town-turned-village that is starting to come around, due to its influx of restaurants and bars, culture centers that bring a positive, younger clientele to the town. There is a blues-music scene that pairs well with a craft beer-drinking scene to whom the development-friendly mayor, Paul Pontieri, keeps catering.
We finished our beers, thanked the flowered bartender, who left us with one remaining thought on the subject: "It's not going to keep the garbage out of Mastic Beach." And she's probably right.

We drove over to the William Floyd Estate, where the signer of the Declaration of Independence once lived, which is now part of the National Parks Service and the Department of the Interior. However, disappointment greeted us once again with closed gates. I never expected a U.S. Government-run division of the NPS national historic landmark to be closed on a Monday afternoon, without any times posted for when it would actually be open. This only further contributed to our dilapidated and dysfunctional view of Mastic Beach so far that day.

Past stop signs with bullet holes in them to Oceanview Drive, lined with shacks, once summer cottages, looking out onto Forge River and the Great South Bay, we arrived at Osprey Park, where half of the dock was under construction, a Link Belt crane sitting in the water off the dock, next to a woman fishing. There was only one osprey nest in plain sight. The park was created as part of the 1996 Clean Air/Water Act, yet the water didn't look all that clean. The family of ducks out in the river was disrupted by a motor boat that drove right through them. Past an Indian man and two kids crabbing or searching for bait fish, a woman smoking at a picnic table (clean air?), a monarch butterfly, and the remnants of a playground, where Journey was playing on a hidden radio, we had seen nary an osprey and enough of this "park."

One right turn off of Mastic Road and you are on the Poospatuck Indian Reservation, population 271, the smallest reservation in the state of New York. Yet, Poospatuck must have the most per-capita smoke shops. The amount, for such a small area of side-streets, was uncanny. Shacks and huge stores. Trading Posts and sheds. All smoke shops. They were even attached to houses and mobile homes. It was incredible. The Poospatucks must have the most thriving business in all of Mastic.

Back on Mastic Road heading north, we stopped at Mike's Place Too just past the train tracks and next to the fire department, where we were drawn in by the Monday special: Buy one burger, get one free. This place was a real down-home American sports bar, with a fire-department border in the men's room, Giants and Yankees memorabilia everywhere, and a guy at the bar doing color commentary about this weekend's Yankees sweep over the Red Sox. My buffalo burger and fries were pretty good, but I definitely enjoyed the atmosphere, where mostly everyone sitting at the bar was a regular who knew the bartender, Nicole's, name and vice-versa. Definitely a place worth checking out in Mastic.

Scratch that...Mikes' Place Too is the only place worth checking out in Mastic, Mastic Beach, and Shirley, the poverty-plagued peninsula formed between the beautiful Carmens and Forge Rivers. My companion Brendan summed up the entire visit by saying, "It seems that there are a lot of community-oriented people here; their communities just suck."