Bellport, Brookhaven, and Yaphank - friendly LI hamlets and villages

East on Route 27, Sunrise Highway. Pass Hospital Road, don't confuse it for Station Road. If you confuse Hospital for Station, you can get off at Route 101 (Patchogue-Yaphank Road), heading south past Brookhaven Hospital and Best Bargain Books into East Patchogue, where you can hop onto South Country Road heading east. After a few miles, the speed limit changes to 30 mph and there are American flags hanging on the telephone posts, and you know you're in a village, the village of Bellport. Pass the intersection of South Country and Station Road, though, and you have missed the village of Bellport.

Four corners of the village of Bellport, each containing one restaurant and a few shoppes, this town is easy to miss but also easy to like and appreciate for its distinct welcoming community. Founded by Captains Thomas and John Bell in the 1800s, this would-be seaport is now a quiet, cozy community for full-time residents and affluent Manhattanites, seeking to escape the bustling city for laid-back Long Island living.

It's possible to walk the village of Bellport in about 10 minutes, peering into the windows of the village's Natural Pharmacy, on which there is a sign written "No cell phones please - Unless Really Really Really Important" with s smiley face, and reading the menus of the four major restaurants: Avino's Italian Table, Meritage, The Bellport Restuarant, and Porter's on the Lane. We had settled on Porter's, for its "Winesday" specials (more to come on that later), but wanted to breathe in what Bellport had to offer first.

On the northeast corner of Station Road and South Country, there is a store with tons of beach balls in the window. No store name, no awning, just a sign on the door that says "OPEN." Upon entering, we were greeted by random paintings, T-shirts, surfboards, marine paraphernalia, and a man in a tight-fitted beige dress shirt and beard. Quinn, a 20-year old college student at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, is the "old soul" type, the new-age liberal art student who wants to celebrate the diverse culture of Bellport and Long Island by opening a community showcase, the Halftone Corner Store Cooperative. Everything in the store, which is run by Quinn and two of his friends, all Bellport residents, is made for or designed by local artists/residents. They screen documentaries nightly and have jazz bands perform on the weekends. This showcase represents the art-elitist side that Bellport harbors, yet it is presented in a way that would grab everyman off the street and accustom him to new culture in a way that is hardly overbearing. Quinn was kind enough to give his recommendations and knowledge of Bellport, and I found him to be genuinely interested in us and our true survey of culture in Bellport.

Leaving Quinn's store, we rounded down S. Country past the quaint Bellport Restaurant, and back around towards Porters on the Lane. The acoustic-guitar-playing entertainment on break, we decided to take a seat in the dining room of the nautical-themed eatery. Our server, Courtney, super-model tanned and beautifully blonde, informed us that the Winesday special and the hummus plate were only available at the bar, a strange way of running specials, I thought. After ordering a bottle of Relax Riesling, we decided to order the hummus anyway, a scrumptious crab cake with vegetables baked into it and an avocado sauce base, with an order of the graham cracker-breaded fried calamari, which was tremendous. The food was impressive, the staff was generous and helpful, and the owner John was affable in his inquiry into our dining experience at his delightful new restaurant (only opening in 2008).

John co-owns Carla Marla's ice cream shoppe across the street with his wife, Jenni. The size of a shack, with curbside "dog parking" in front, Carla Marla's is quite possibly the last mom and pop ice cream shoppe standing on a Long Island taken over by Carvels, Ralph's, and Rita's. My two-scoop cone of Butterfinger Blast and my companion Kerri's cup of Piece of Cake were delicious saccharine treats, satiating our walk down Bellport Lane towards the bay. At the end of the road lined with old Victorians and fish captains' houses, past the cannon commemorating all veterans, is the Bellport Bay Yacht Club. The bay water is cloudy, but not a deterrent to families coming in off of their boats, washing them off with a hose once ashore. Joining us on the dock were a man with a red polo and his two dogs, families in polo shirts enjoying the nighttime at the yacht club, grandma and grandpa crabbing with their handful of grandchildren, a man talking to a woman on a bike about his 55 Ford, and the bugs gnawing on us as the docks creaked and day turned into night. As we were leaving, the yacht club warden was interrogating a woman who had just pulled up in her station wagon with a sticker from 2005. She was being aggressively told that she needed a new one. We walked past them towards the ferry station, which takes a Bellport guest for $15 to the exclusive Bellport Beach on Fire Island, which is not accessible by car.

As we walked past Porters heading towards the car, Courtney on the front porch saw us and asked us what we thought of the bay. Admiring her congeniality and friendliness, we answered that the bay was beautiful, with which she agreed, and she wished us well as we departed, completely taken aback by the friendliness this small Long Island village had to offer us tonight.

Further on down South Country Road in Brookhaven is Painters Restaurant and Bar. The entire high-ceiling venue is filled with paintings on the walls, murals depicting headless men and women, unknown portraits of men, landscapes and abstracts. The frog-in-throat bartender informed us, as if my sweat glands hadn't already picked up on the fact, that the air conditioning was broken, as were their taps (which was a disappointing blow, since they had the elusive Delirium Tremens on its pink elephant tap). Dripping sweat, we sat at the bar through one bottled drink, observing the paintings and the company of an old man reading a magazine drinking red wine, and two men eating each other's pasta, being recognized by the woman at the other end of the bar. Painters is an interesting bar, and I would have liked to stay for open mic night, but I could not take the heat, so back to the road we went.

Hopping on Montauk Highway for a minute, then a stint on Horseblock Road in Brookhaven, and quickly off to Rocky Point-Yaphank Road, we passed Lower Lake and turned onto Main Street in Yaphank, where we found the Black Rock Tavern. A quick digression about the Main Street of Yaphank: picture a T-intersection with a refurbished 1950s-era Shell station on the left-hand corner. Maybe a storefront on your right. That's it. Small post office and one Washington Mutual later, and you are out of downtown Yaphank, a town sequestered in the geographical center of Long Island, which was first settled in 1726, and which is now very proud of its historical heritage. The Black Rock Tavern plays into the heritage of this country more than the tiny town that inhabits it, with license plates on the walls from all different states (Montana and South Dakota right in front of us and spurring conversation amidst our dollar beers), baseballs bordering the walls, with artifacts like a mitt and boxing punching bag everywhere you look. The downfall with this old western-style tavern was the beat-bumping dance music that was flowing nonstop from the jukebox and which drove most of the customers from the place. Definitely a different style Long Island bar worth checking out, however. I have hiked the trails around Yaphank before, some part of the Paumanok Path, and the lakes and rivers that surround the town are beautiful, so knowing about the Black Rock Tavern will be helpful for a respite or day trip out to eastern Brookhaven Town, where the amount of small villages and friendly inhabitants is more numerous than previously thought.