Like a proper Irish wake, a large crowd gathered at the Meeting House restaurant at Amagansett Square on Aug. 2 to remember Michael O’Rourke, proprietor of the Amagansett Seafood Store, with equal parts laughter, beverages, and a profound sadness over the loss of a friend.
A native of Wexford, Ireland, Mr. O’Rourke, who was born on Nov. 23, 1959, had died two weeks earlier, the cause pancreatic cancer. Due to his illness, the Amagansett Seafood Store, fondly known to a large community of customers and employees as ASS, did not open this summer, as Mr. O’Rourke underwent chemotherapy and prepared for surgery. He died in his sleep, according to a GoFundMe campaign organized for him.
Meeting House was packed as hundreds of friends spilled out of the restaurant and onto the patio and the Square’s lawn. Inside, guests were invited to take a small stone or bracelet and “carry it as a reminder of friendship, laughter, and a life well played.”
Handwritten messages on a poster board testified to Mr. O’Rourke’s influence on the community. “Mike, my friend and mentor,” began one. “Thank you for all the good times, lessons, laughs, and drinks! You helped me figure out who I wanted to be and supported me through some of the worst of it. We will miss you for as long as it takes to see you again. Until then, Pura Vida” — literally “pure life” but also used as a farewell, greeting, or expression of gratitude.
The store’s regular customers were likely to be treated to conversation and a drink to go with their fresh seafood. Mr. O’Rourke was less businessman, or even fishmonger, than raconteur and bon vivant, as many gathered at Meeting House attested. Again and again the word “community” was uttered in reference to the “ASS Club,” a title that inevitably sparked confusion in the uninitiated but a smile or laugh among those in the know.
“Everybody’s got stories,” Huntley Garriott of Amagansett, who organized the GoFundMe campaign, told the gathering. When Mr. O’Rourke died, he said, he knew that “we need to get this group together, because . . . I couldn’t go to the grocery store and not go have a drink with the guy. A community that was built in a fish market, it’s unbelievable. People build fancy clubs in New York City, and country clubs, and whatever else they try to build to get a community of people like this that will get together with no pretense and no bullying and just have fun. Food or sports or drinks or people or whatever,” he said as the room erupted in applause.
He had told the Meeting House management that “we’ll have between 20 and 200 people, I have no idea,” Mr. Garriott said. “We filled it up, it’s awesome. Mike would be proud.”
Tony Berkman of Amagansett spoke at length to fellow ASS Club members, his remarks regularly punctuated by uproarious laughter and murmurs of recognition and agreement. “It still feels ephemeral to me, not permanent,” he said of Mr. O’Rourke’s death, “so I’m still in that processing phase.”
A few days after Mr. O’Rourke died, Mr. Berkman was at Meeting House, he recalled, where a friend offered his condolences. “ ‘Mike seemed like a really nice guy,’ ” the friend had said, the relayed remark provoking long and loud laughter. “I loved Mike dearly and I miss him beyond measure,” Mr. Berkman said, “but I’m not sure ‘nice guy’ would be the words I’d choose to describe him.”
“Truth be told,” he went on, “people often describe me as being nice, and I never really took to the compliment because I always thought people were conflating character traits of mine that I don’t quite care for: passivity, shyness, a desire to please, an aversion to conflict. Mike was none of that. He was indeed a force to behold. Witty, stubborn, acerbic, salty, perceptive, generous, fishmonger, gossip, sharp, loquacious. Mike didn’t suffer fools, nor bigotry, nor bad parking jobs. He had zero patience for excessive frugality from those with considerable means.”
Upon his own inaugural visit, “the store was crowded and humming, drunk with energy and laughter,” Mr. Berkman recalled, customers enjoying oysters and beer. “Mike was at the helm of it all, dishing out lighthearted insults to everyone around. I felt like I had wandered into some kind of seafood-store version of ‘Cheers.’ I was immediately envious of everyone there, who were clearly regulars and who could walk to the back and emerge with an ice-cold beer or a shot of tequila. I wanted very badly to be part of this!”
It was only a couple of years later that Mr. O’Rourke invited him to “go to the back and get yourself a cold beer,” Mr. Berkman remembered. “That was it. I was officially initiated in ASS. One of the best days of my life.”
Borrowing from the message on Mr. Garriott’s GoFundMe page, he likened the seafood store to “a European sports bar, a speakeasy, a community center, apres-beach hangout, canteen, raw bar, escape, O.G. creator of the world-famous ASStini, and of course, the best damn fish market on the planet, with a lobster roll plush with tail meat that would put anything in Maine’s finest to shame.” The description drew long applause.
The store hosted bachelor parties, fire and police chiefs, Academy Award-winning actors, financiers, private chefs and restaurateurs, world-renowned physicians, “and some of the nicest, funniest, and greatest people I’ve ever been lucky enough to know,” Mr. Berkman said. Mr. O’Rourke loved his employees, he said, “and he would often brag about their accomplishments post-ASS, like a proud parent would.”
“Mike was not political,” Mr. Berkman said, the observation again provoking knowing laughter, “but he did despise Trump and he despised ICE,” or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Mike, of course, was an immigrant himself, as were the families of many of his workers. But what drove his sentiments was his acute sense of righteousness and acting justly. . . . I never had any doubt about his big heart and just how good a person he was. I deeply admired his strong moral compass.”
Mostly, Mr. Berkman said, “Mike just loved spreading joy.”
More than anything, he said, “I will miss that indescribable energy.” On countless occasions, he’d sat with Mr. O’Rourke “during peak hours in the early evening when the joint was alive and buzzing in that ebullient frenzy and he would look at me, high on tequila and life and the spirit, and he would say, ‘You know what this is, right?’ I would nod knowingly.”
Addressing his departed friend, he said that “as you look down at us today, please know that we all know what this is, and we will miss it more than you will ever know. While you are no longer with us in body, you are with us forever in spirit, and we will all do our damnedest to keep this community alive in your honor and for the livelihood of us all. We love you, Mike.”
