Illicit pleasures on our beaches: Not what you’re thinking but maybe more important. Sipping chardonnay at Main Beach is technically unlawful. Seems I’ve been a scofflaw all my life.

Illicit Pleasures on Our Beaches

I’ve been planning to write a column on wines for picnics, which in this part of the world naturally means wines for beach picnics. But I realized only last week that publishing such a column was ill advised since we are not allowed to consume wine or other alcoholic drinks on village and most town beaches.

Surprised? This information surprised me since I have been in the habit for the last forty years of taking my dinner, including a bottle of wine or a beer, to the beach on sunny summer evenings.

Last week I was sitting with a friend at the beach when a village police officer came by in a patrol vehicle and warned me that the bottle of wine propped on the blanket was a violation of the law. My first reaction was relief that my dog Polo, who was splashing in the surf nearby, was not doing something illegal, and my next reaction was absolute astonishment that I was.

I checked the village and town codes the next day and confirmed that it was indeed an infraction of the law to sip your chardonnay in the wrong place. You don’t have to be rowdy or misbehaving, or in an obviously wrong spot such as a sidewalk or a playground.

The law is comprehensive. I checked in with Larry Cantwell at Village Hall who confirmed it was part of the code since at least 1979, and who agreed that many residents over the years had been unknowingly breaking the law. The purpose of this and similar laws, I concluded from our conversation, is to increase public safety and in so doing to reduce the liability of the municipality.

A law is a law and once it is in the code, it requires enforcement, so I next queried our village police chief, Jerry Larsen. Police do patrol the beach, he told me, and if they spot an open bottle they generally give a warning. This is done informally, without inquiring into the identities of the offenders. This is surely a benign policy. It seems to require some significant transgression for stronger action to be taken, since only five summonses have been issued in the past year and a half.

But this nevertheless leaves us with a situation where what most of would consider innocent behavior is technically unlawful and by picking up that glass of pinot grigio you become a scofflaw. This is certainly not the most pressing problem for government on the East End, but it is drink, if not food, for thought. I don’t think any of us have to worry about being put in the slammer for popping a cork, but I don’t like the idea that government is quite so controlling in our personal lives.

The answer, it seems to me, is to have a law that achieves the public safety requisites, especially relating to large or unruly groups, but that does not impinge on the rights of a family or small group to consume normal amounts of alcohol on the beach. It is really up to the residents, the voters, in the village. If they express a desire to change the law then we will have to see if a new law can be drafted that addresses the various concerns and finds the right compromises.

In the meantime, I will refrain from writing about my recommendations for wines at beach picnics, since it would be compromising advice. I can safely say however that the miscreant bottle I was enjoying until it was discredited by the law was a lovely tocai friulano from Channing Daughters. Since it was the last bottle of that vintage in my cellar I was not about to give up a moment’s pleasure, so I managed to finish it stealthily, unobserved by the gendarme.