When I saw that someone had tried to peel the Southampton Town beach sticker off my wife’s Subaru, only half succeeding, I knew summer was here.
We all mark its arrival in different ways. Refusing to even try driving west after 1:30 in the afternoon. Negotiating around gleaming new Range Rovers that somehow lack working blinkers. Abandoning the entirety of formerly charming Sag Harbor Village for lack of parking. Conducting daily head-to-toe tick checks, particularly tiresome for those of us with a strain of Neanderthal in us and the attendant body hair, in my case once described by an ex-girlfriend as “obscene” when some happened to stick out at my shirt’s neckline.
Happily, there’s Long Beach, where I took the plunge on Sunday for the first time in summer 2026, the water clear and the temperature just right, the view pleasing, the sand uncrowded.
Even when I was young and heedless, I could never bring myself to hit the ocean until the 1st of July. I’ll note that both of my daughters have now been in at Sagg Main, pronounced numbing yet refreshing, which is mentioned here only because of my puzzlement at failing to get any family member to love Long Beach as I do — the mile straightaway for easily measured runs, the odd shells and collectible beach glass, the opportunities to swim the gentle coast readily marked off by lifeguard stands, the endless yet curiously unobtrusive parking.
I’ll even let go of my memories of the old Oasis hot dog stand, just as long as the Mister Softee truck comes around.
Ah, but then apres beach, there awaits the ultimate summertime amenity, newly resurgent following a trip to the basement, the outdoor shower, dating to not long after our Noyac ranch house’s 1968 construction and drained by a jury-rigged PVC pipe that simply ends 20 feet out in the middle of the lawn, approximate to, speaking of 58 years ago, the soon-to-fail septic.
That’ll be an almost entirely town-and-county-subsidized home improvement project, a spanking-new alternative-innovative treatment system. Happy to do it. Anything for those bay waters.