Close readers of this paper will have noticed Sag Harbor Mayor James Larocca’s offhand evisceration of a peculiar local pomposity last week. Having to do with the roads. Having to do with a particular, putatively British brand.
Drivers “don’t understand that this is a historic whaling village built over three-plus centuries,” he said of road impatience, road rudeness, and I’ll go ahead and add here illegal U-turns, deficient turn signaling, and willful ignorance of four-way-stop etiquette. A village “that until recently didn’t have a single Range Rover in it.”
It’s funny about the Range Rover, the stigma that’s accrued to this one model, to the point where, in addition to a lot of money, you really would have to have a blind spot to even consider buying one. Unfair? Maybe. But who are you gonna believe, a stereotype or your lyin’ eyes?
Consider: fall 2021, corner of Jermain Avenue and Division Street, drop-off time at Pierson Middle and High School. A kid and her friend shouldering backpacks cross, seemingly safely, in a crosswalk. Until a black Range Rover peremptorily tries to make a left in front of them, braking before contact, but still sending one shocked child rocking back on her heels to land in a sitting position in the middle of the road. Once on the sidewalk, the middle schooler starts crying out of fright and presumably relief. A nearby adult attempts to comfort her.
The driver of the Range Rover continues on without so much as lowering a window to ask if she’s okay.
Or consider: summer 2021, near a, shall we say, challenging parking situation in front of a Noyac restaurant, where cars stop as someone waits to turn left across oncoming traffic. A teenager pedals his bicycle, perhaps unwisely, against traffic, but still, he’s on the shoulder. He’s cut off by, yes, a black Range Rover, so closely that his bike’s front tire slams into the front left wheel of the sleek S.U.V., bouncing him off and into the street.
The kid scrambles to his feet and hustles his bicycle out of the thoroughfare before he’s run over. The blond woman behind the wheel of the Range Rover makes no move of concern or sympathy, and simply drives off.
The bicyclist gathers himself and starts riding again, shaken but unhurt. (I know, because I shouted at him to see if he was all right. I’m not Mr. Wonderful, it just seemed the thing to do if you’ve got a conscience.)
Only two examples, but regardless of make or model, such behavior is increasing in prevalence, wouldn’t you agree? “I don’t know what it is,” I said to my son, who was in the car for one of these encounters, “fear of the unwashed masses? The weird insularity of wealth?”
At some point, Mayor Larocca might have more to say on the subject, and if not, then maybe he’ll address rampant Main Street jaywalking. I’ll keep an eye out for it.