It’s been a long, cold, lonely winter, the song goes. It feels like years since it’s been here.
But for well over a decade now, a sure sign that spring is near appears — briefly — on Amagansett’s Main Street. On Saturday at 12:01 p.m., the Amagansett Chamber of Commerce’s Am O’Gansett Parade will begin. Led this year by Jim Lubetkin as grand marshal, it will step off at the hamlet’s municipal parking lot and proceed west to Indian Wells Highway, whereupon processioners will turn about and return to the starting point.
The lighthearted take on the annual St. Patrick’s Day observance was founded by Patty Collins Sales and Lee Satinsky in 2008, shortly before the establishment of the hamlet’s chamber of commerce, Ms. Sales said. “Lee and I were chatting about the possibility of having a parade down the sidewalk after a long, cold winter,” she remembered. “Someone said, ‘You could never do that.’ Challenge accepted, and it’s grown from there.”
Within a few years, Joi Jackson Perle joined the founders “and has been the third musketeer ever since,” Ms. Sales said.
A perennial competitor for the world’s shortest parade, it has clocked in at under 11 minutes from the start, “and as far as I know it’s the only one that goes down the street and makes a turnaround to return to the starting place,” Ms. Sales said.
As grand marshal, Mr. Lubetkin follows a long list of local luminaries, including the late Carl (the Greek) Gust, Vinnie and Nick Mazzeo, Joan Tulp, Michael Clark, the Amagansett School, Htun Han, Hugh King, and Joe and Sal LaCarrubba.
“We chose Jim for this year,” Mr. Sales said, “because he’s shown up almost every year in his frog costume to be part of the fun. He’s a great sport and a great guy.”
About that frog costume: It is gently used, “like a previously owned car,” the grand marshal explained. Its prior owner, who “was about my height,” wore it but once. “Somehow, it was passed on to me as a joke,” he continued. “The only time I wore it was for that parade.”
As it happens, Mr. Lubetkin knows the Cleveland Guardians’ mascot, Slider, who “literally is his own species,” according to the team's mascot coordinator. “He and I have talked about these things,” Mr. Lubetkin said. “He said, ‘The key to doing it well is you don’t talk. The most you say is ribbit.’ ”
Slider, MLB.com reports, is best known for falling off the outfield wall onto the field during Game 4 of the 1995 American League Championship Series, and whether or not Mr. Lubetkin’s frog will look to one-up Slider at Saturday’s parade remains to be seen.
But “I enjoy it. It makes people happy,” the New York City native said. “I look at it in certain ways as small-town America.” In the city, “I knew the parades they have for St. Patrick’s and others — those are huge. This is sort of the opposite.”
“And you can never have too many St. Patrick’s parades,” Ms. Sales said, adding that anyone wishing to participate in the Am O’Gansett Parade can call her at 516-458-3978 or meet in the parking lot.
“The people who started it years ago deserve a lot of credit,” Mr. Lubetkin said. “It’s a very nice thing, and I’m happy to help out.”
