On The Beach Blog

...but a snug harbor, a safe haven, actually... with hot "designer" coffees, confections of every description and even a fire in the hearth.

(Yeah, it's a gas-fed "faux fire" with simulated wooden logs, but it's cheery and generates ample heat!)

And it's smack in the middle of downtown West­hampton Beach... up the snow-cleared and de-iced steps into Beach Bakery Cafe!

I am definitely not one for the yuppified brews and blends which are staples of Starbucks, and prefer plain ol' straight-out-of-the-pot coffee served sans sweetener and dairy.

"Black... like my heart," I'd tell waitresses and servers.

But yesterday afternoon, I went for the $4/16 ounce caramel latte and a chunk of crumb cake, sat at at a table in an upholstered chair and read Dan's Papers remembrance of their movie reviewer, Ed Koch.

It was delightful... there was only one other occupied table, Bob Murray plying a couple of clients with Earl Grey and Chamomile teas while gently explaining the current realities of Western Hamptons real estate, against a background of irregular traffic clomping in from the strret in snowy boots.

Fifteen minutes later, I had the gal behind the counter bag up a pair of the raspberry-filled, fried croissants which send both my wife and my son-in-law into a paroxysms of gas­tro­nomic rapture.

Then home to switch vehicular places with Jeanne in the freshly dug out patch of driveway... courtesy of a pair of Guatemalans... in the old days it would have been Snapper Hulse's enterprising sons who would have cleared the entire drive for the $30 it cost us yesterday.

(But that was during the Reagan years, long-gone but well-recalled.)

My sole regret was that I hadn't brought my Canon with me and snapped some photos of the docks askew in Aspatuck Creek, or the sparsely parallel-parked vehicles along central Main Street... who'd a-believed this come July?