We’re in Sag Harbor again for our annual one-week family vacation with my sister’s family, my mother and my family. I wrote this post last August (2006).

We love Sag Harbor; it’s the un-Hampton (remember the un-cola?).
You don’t have to use traffic-congested Montauk Highway to get there –
a real blessing. Nor do you have to deal with all the Ferrari-driving
rich that habitate in the Hamptons.  Sag is a real place with hilly
streets, perfectly scaled architecture,  a charming downtown, loads of
churches and bay beaches that make it a lovely place to be.

Ten of us (husband, kids, sister, bro-in-law, niece,
babysitterandsomuchmore, mother, friend of son) shared two houses on an
idyllic street in the heart of Sag. We call it a family vacation

Yup, a lot has changed in Sag since 1991 when I spent a week
photographing artifacts at the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum (for a
children’s film called Long Island Discovery). Back then the Paradise
Diner was a real, honest-to-goodness diner and there was a great
variety store. The variety store is still there – one of those now-rare
five and dimes where  you can get absolutely everything – almost. They
still have Old Gold Cigarette posters from the 1920’s and ’30’s hanging
on the wall. And the cashier has a real seen it all look on her face.

But the Paradise Diner is now an expensive bistro called the New
Paradise Restaurant, and there are one too many t-shirt shops and
high-end boutiques with hostess gifts and gifts for dogs. I used to
love to browse at Paradise Books (what the diner became before it
became the restaurant ). But that’s gone, too.

Still, Sag has a lot of charm, a lot of history and personal
history, too. This was our eighth summer renting there. Our first
summer, Teen Spirit was in second grade and OSFO was just a toddler. It
rained for most of the two weeks we were there but we still had fun.
This year, Teen Spirit brought a friend and they took long walks just
to get lost, went to the movies by themselves, jammed on their guitars
in the air conditioned bedroom, and spent hours in the ocean (when it
wasn’t too hot to go to the beach).

During the worst of the heat wave, a large grouping of us sat in the
air conditioned living room and moaned about how hot it was. "Ohhh,
it’s soooooo hot," someone would say. "Really, really hot."

In the back yard, we filled 2-year old Ducky’s inflatable swimming
pool with ice cold water. The boys had  water fights that devolved into
general mayhem. We took turns sitting in the tiny wading pool and
sprayed our heads with the hose. Anything to feel cool. Anything.
Thankfully, the refrigerator had one of those ice makers on the door.

Our haven for cooling off was Haven’s Beach, which we call the
Cheesy Beach, because it doesn’t have waves like Atlantic Beach. That’s
the Fancy Beach in Amagansett (they charge ten bucks to park but we
love it anyway). The Cheesy Beach, however, is an easy walk from the
house (when it’s not too hot to walk) and it has numerous charms; it’s
downright blissful at low tide when you  can walk a quarter mile out
without the water touching your knees.

One day at the Cheesy Beach, a group of teenage girls from Eastern
Europe in g-string bikinis that didn’t cover their buttocks at all,
chain smoked and took pictures of each other with disposable cameras.
They seemed to enjoy the stares they were getting from the boys
swimming in the bay.