Going to Sag Harbor

There is a moment, on the drive from New York City out to Sag Harbor, after you’ve done battle with the Long Island Expressway, then Highway 27, and finally, the Scuttle Hole Road shortcut, when it occurs to you that you can turn off the A/C, roll down the car windows and feel and smell the cool country air. You can also be reminded, if you are me, of the personal landmarks along the Scuttle Hole Road shortcut. There is the produce stand that always had the best watermelons, which closed during Covid and never reopened. There is also the vineyard where I sometimes went to outdoor yoga lessons, during the couple of summers I was yoga-obsessed. There is the turnoff to the King Kullen grocery store, which used to be open 24 hours, and where my old Conde Nast-era driver Simon once spotted his childhood idol, Pele, in the parking lot, late on a hot August night, when we’d stopped at the store because I’d left my toothbrush at home and needed one.

I’ve been spending summers in Sag Harbor since maybe 1995, when my mom started renting houses there for the summer. The places all had enough room to fit her, my two brothers and their partners, and me and mine (when there was one). It was a tight fit, but none of us minded, or minded much. I was old enough by then that dragging my sweaty ass around the city in the summer had lost much of its charm, and I was excited to return to this town that had made such an impression on me years before, even if it meant close quarters.

The first time I went to Sag Harbor was with my friend Kate, and I must have been 28 or so. Kate’s mom, who was a psychologist and NYU professor, had purchased a house there, and one weekend in early fall, we went out to spend a couple of days there. I liked it immediately. Sag Harbor reminded me of small New England towns I’d been to as a teen, with a diner that served inedible clam chowder, a lobster stand on the pier, and an old-school movie house on Main Street.