There are so few places that you visit on holiday and instantly know that you will return because you have clicked with that place. In October 2019 we clicked with Greenport on the North Fork of Long Island as recommended to us by Sarah my school friend who is a New York resident, and today the 13 June 2022 we are back here spending a week exploring the environs and revisiting our favourite places in Greenport.
I can say for certain that not every town on Long Island is worthy of such recognition, we have explored South Fork, Sag Harbour, Shelter Island and the Hamptons this time around and can confirm that while there are some pretty places, Greenport holds the crown for us. Southold and Mattituck are close runners up with their chocolate, cheese and knick-knack shops but only in Greenport can you find the antique shop that sells different coloured glass objet with the sleeping labrador in the entrance, the vintage store that has overpriced mid-century tat and the spoon and fork shop that sells expensive spoon and forks.
This time around we have discovered Crabby Jerry’s the bar at the end of the pier with Evan the friendly barman, and cocktail competition. We sit there on Sunday afternoon and watch the birthday party for a small round local woman with a very high-pitched voice who has turned 40, she orders round after round of shots for her and her friends and we look on wondering how her Monday morning will look? A big man comes in the bar and tells her: ‘I thought you were already 40?’
We have found the farm shops selling asparagus, kale and strawberries, we’ve found the wineries with their slightly unpalatable wines and the beaches with their scrubby sand foreshore.
Our walk into town takes us along a concrete path past timber boarded houses and whitewashed churches, the odd scrawny rabbit and American Robin. We pass the American Beech Hotel with its blaring trendy music and strange shop selling lifestyle books and cocktail dresses till we reach Greenport downtown; a collection of bars and restaurants, never crowded like the Hamptons, never trafficy like Sag Harbour, just slightly slow and drowsy like it is still coming round from the previous evening.
Every place you enter in Greenport you can hear strong New York accents as this is the weekend destination for the New Yorkers that don’t aspire to the splendour of the Hamptons, the Hampton’s towns full of big shiny black cars which spill out older ladies in skimpy bright dresses with their posh american accents looking in the windows of the baby-doll-slut clothes shops of Southampton and Bridgehampton, the poodle parlours and hot yoga centres, smoothie shops and interior design curating. Massive grotesque millionaire houses in the style of tudor-manor-castle-souk set back behind white gates along the beach road with gangs of gardeners up ladders clipping hedges.
Not so in Greenport, where plain and simple, honest and open seems to be the outlook on life. Having a good time and eating oysters is the main occupation, there’s not a gardener in sight, no pretensions. That is how we like it.
Mark, Greenport, Long Island, NY, USA, 07-14 June 2022