Author Archives: Alexander Goetzfried

By Alex Goetzfried

The infamous fire hoop.
Photo by Alex Goetzfried

On a cold February night at a beach in Sag Harbor, the last thing you would expect to find is half naked women swinging chains around their heads with balls of fire attached to the end.  But at Harbor Frost 2013 that is exactly what you would find at the beach adjacent to Long Wharf.

Prometheus stealing fire from Zeus.
Photo courtesy of www.maicar.com

Fire and dancing have been a part of human culture since our earliest ancestors learned to control fire. According to Greek legend Prometheus a Titan, and an immortal of the first pantheon, stole fire from the gods and gave it to man.  Native tribes of the South Pacific, India, and the Americas all had intense ritualistic dances involving fire in their pre-colonial pasts.

Harbor Frost is a wintertime festival to get the community out of the house, and offer some family fun with a little bit of theatrics.  What festival would be complete without some type of dangerous, primal, pagan ceremony?

One dancer creates a worm hole of fire.
Photo by Alex Goetzfried

For this purpose the powers that be of Harbor Frost brought in The Fiery Sensations as the opening act of the grand finale.  A fire safety officer was brought down to supervise and the savagery began.

The Maori Tribes of New Zealand originated the most popular form of fire dancing known as POI.  According to sacredfiredance.com POI was used to train men for battle and to keep the wrists of women flexible for weaving.  This is the only evidence of functionality for fire dancing that is on the Internet.

Encircled in flames.
Photo by Alex Goetzfried

Functional or not, the ceremony of fire dancing to intense music is wildly entertaining.  The days following a blizzard are normally spent in the throws of cabin fever and mild depression.  Watching beautiful women in belly shirts whip around fuel soaked poi balls in a dizzying inferno is a wonderful method for combating wintertime insanity.

From Captain Quint to Polo

by Alex Goetzfried

The commercial fishing fleet at Shinnecock Docks.
Photo by Alex Goetzfried

Although the Hamptons are the summer getaway and play-land for the mega-rich, this was not always so. Before high-end boutiques and estates dominated the landscape, there was a rough seafaring community running the economy.

Settled in the 1700s, the Eastern end of Long Island was predominantly sustained by the commercial fishing industry.  Commercial fishing was a trade passed down through generations and was the backbone of the local economy. There is still a stronghold of fishermen, working out of the Shinnecock Inlet who are reluctant to let go of the old way of life, and still provide a necessary product to the area: fresh, local, fish.

As the latter half of the 20^th Century approached a shift in the industry began to take place.  Government regulations and catch laws enforced by agencies like the Department of Environmental Conservation to protect stocks from overfishing hurt the industry.  It is a bitter relationship between fishermen and conservationists. The families who had been working in the trade for generations were facing the loss of their livelihood if regulations were too strict. However, if regulations were not put in place, fish stocks would have been depleted, the industry would perish anyway, and there would be a world of ecological problems.

A scollop knife used to shuck scallops on the boat. Photo by Alex Goetzfried

The initial regulations were not too strict and the commercial industry endured.  In 1985 nature wreaked havoc on the industry in the form of the Brown Tide.  Brown Tide is when the waters of the bay turn a murky brown caused by an enormous algae boom.  Although harmless to humans, the Brown Tide in 1985 decimated bay scallop populations, and nearly collapsed the commercial fishing industry in the Peconic Bay.

The industry survived, but never returned to its former economic dominance, and today social norms have left the industry with a skeleton staff.  Rising gas prices have also effected fisherman whose boats can eat up to $600 of fuel going out to sea, another $600 to return and that does not include the cost of actually fishing.

Rising gas prices are part of the demise of the local fishing industry.
Photo by Alex Goetzfried

The pride of being a bayman has diminished.  Many fishermen don’t want their kids to enter the industry, and many of the kids don’t want to be fishermen anyway.  The restaurant business, construction, and landscaping have all overtaken fishing as leading industries of employment, mostly catering to the rich who visit just a few times a year.