After the Summer Swells

In autumn, New York's Hampton Bays has all you need to soak up seaside life at your own pace -- and avoid $25 hot dogs.

We're sitting at a picnic table looking down a narrow inlet lined with fishing boats, sharing a dozen oysters on a plastic plate, fresh and sweet next to pints of white-collared Guinness in plastic cups. The bay opens out under a sky with the quality of a pearl, lit from within, the sun setting behind us, the moon gleaming in the lingering light.

We could be sitting outside a simple pub tucked up a stream leading to Galway Bay. Exchange the Guinness for Budweiser and it's a gin mill with parked Harleys on the Redneck Riviera of the Florida panhandle. But here's where we are: the Shinnecock Bay Fishing Station and Marina in New York's Hampton Bays, which like those other destinations seems to reveal itself more fully when summer's gone.

People struggle to describe the village of Hampton Bays -- a bulge of land on Long Island between Great Peconic Bay to the north and Shinnecock Bay to the south -- almost always coming up with the same things: the working-class Hamptons, the blue-collar Hamptons, the casual Hamptons. Many people who live in the tony resort of Southampton, just up the road, and the villages that run east to Montauk don't consider Hampton Bays "the Hamptons" at all, that designation having less to do with geography and more to do with old, obnoxious money uncomfortably mobbed up with new, repellent money.

In the summer, Hampton Bays swells with summer residents, but not nearly as seriously as the villages to the east, and in Hampton Bays people would rather fish than preen over $25 frankfurters. (Yes, that's what the humble dog was going for this summer in one Hamptons place.)

The geography is something special. There's a reason the place was "found" 40 years ago. Master painters such as Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner and Willem de Kooning, among others, were here first, coming out to Long Island in the 1950s for cheap rents, rural solitude and, above all, the light. At times Greek in its clarity and worn satin at others, it takes its source from the surrounding bays and the Atlantic.

The beaches are as fine as anywhere in the world and are all yours in autumn, waiting for brave swimmers or sweaters, blankets, picnics and long walks. On misty days, views along the dunes never quite end, dissolving into feathery horizons. The ocean seems to be breathing, with sandpipers scurrying at the water's edge. In the fall, especially October through November, the beaches glisten on bright, sharp days drifting toward night skies you want to frame and take home.

The great ocean beaches are about a mile or so from the main drag, and at this time of year, all facilities will be closed. But go to Tully's Sea Food takeout on Foster Avenue for creamy chowders and baskets of fried clams, shrimp or flounder. From Tully's, it's a 10-minute walk over the magnificent arch of the Ponquogue Bridge, spanning the Shinnecock with views of shallows and sandbars. Take in the sight -- below and in the distance -- of snowy egrets stalking and slowly bobbing their long necks as they hunt near the wetland shore. Ahead is the muffled thump and dump of the Atlantic claiming the perfect beach.

The villages from Southampton out to Montauk are serene but severe in their beauty. The main streets smell of the sea with a slight reek of money. Off the main drags there's a sense of medieval wealth and power, but instead of castles and keeps and moats, there are 10,000-square-foot mansions and privet hedges 15 feet high.

But Hampton Bays' Main Street is something that passes unnoticed until you get out and stroll -- easy to do because parking is free and plentiful. It's casual, for sure, but there are two exceptional restaurants, places where a margarita doesn't require a consultation with your bank manager, and honest bars and eateries like the Shinnecock Bay Fishing Station tucked away off side streets crowded with modest houses.

John Haynes, the owner of the little bar, restaurant and fishing station, takes a seat at the picnic table to talk. The sound of a cannonball break from the pool table comes softly from the bar. "Hampton Bays? I'd call it the best-kept secret of the Hamptons," Haynes says. He and his wife, Nancy, moved east from what the natives call "up island" -- anything west of where you're standing -- two years ago. He considers himself one of the world's happy men. Living over the bar, "we get this view every morning and every night," he says.

Hampton Bays is a bargain in one of the more expensive regions of the country. Settle for paper plates and plastic forks, but Nancy Haynes's linguine with clam sauce is fine-china-and-silverware sensational, with fresh clams chopped and sauteed quickly in butter and oil, plenty of minced garlic and a perfect soupcon of peperoncino. Fish and chips are allowed to breathe, not ballooned in batter. Three people, five pints of beer and the bill is $57.50, which includes the oysters.

"It's all fresh," Haynes says, nodding over his shoulder at Shinnecock Bay and the Atlantic just beyond, the sky now maroon with a hanging shoal of gray clouds. The stars have come out overhead. "When the long-line boats come in we'll get tuna, swordfish, mahi-mahi," he adds. "We all live on fish."