Shelter Island and Beverly Hills: Less is More

Jan 21, 2011

I was watching a program recently that mentioned that Beverly Hills ( I call it Heavenly Bills) doesn’t have a movie theater or bowling alley, and all this time I thought they were better than us. We don’t have a movie theater or bowling alley either. We don’t have garbage or recycle pick-up or mail delivery, or a McDonald's or any other kind of chain store or franchise. We don’t have any public restrooms except at the ferry and the library if you are willing to pretend you’re looking at books. When it comes to town amenities, Shelter Island tops the Less is More list.

We have a reason to get up everyday, or every other day, depending on how often you need to check your mail. We have a reason to leave home every week, depending on how much garbage you can stand at your house. We have a reason to recycle; you are strongly discouraged from throwing out any recyclable items because the town dump is only for “wet garbage”. And our garbage is special, it must leave your home in a translucent yellow town bag - or you have to keep it! If you want to throw out cans and glass in your garbage, you do it early or late so no one can see through your translucent yellow town bag and see that you are guilty of environmental terrorism.

I recall when my kids had the chicken pox (they nearly had to close the school because so many kids were out), I was too tired from taking care of them to separate my garbage and someone caught me with cans in my town bag and proceeded to lecture me. The person was not a local, as evidenced from their out-of-state license plate, so I could have run them over with my van and put them in a translucent yellow town body bag, but I didn’t have the $10.50 for the body bag, so they got lucky that day.

We also have a lack of big crime, but this is compensated by a really great variety of smaller and more amusing crimes. About eight years, ago there was a couple who got inebriated and were making love at night, on their front lawn, with cars going by. After I heard that, I switched to halogen headlights so I wouldn’t miss anything exciting in the future. There has been clamrake theft, which is the same magnitude of stealing a car off island (no sense in stealing a car on the Island because the police just call and stop the ferries). The worst crime we’ve had in recent years is that some awful person hung someone’s cat in a basement. Cats and dogs are like people here, just smaller and furrier. All the trucks on Shelter Island seem to come with a Labrador in the passenger seat. And if you can’t afford a dog, you can always rub cooking oil on the windows for that slobber effect and spread carpet fibers on your front seats so that everyone thinks you have a dog.

The one thing we do have, that not even Heavenly Bills has, is our own moat. The short ferry ride always transports you back in time; back in time for dinner, back in time before the IGA closes at 6PM, and the liquor stores at 7PM. Yep, there’s never a dull moment.