This week, an idyllic beach on Fire Island was the site of a populist coup: Long an exclusive area for residents of the affluent nearby village of Bellport, Ho-Hum Beach was suddenly opened to everyone on Tuesday after a rival town supervisor began ferrying people over by water taxi. The NAACP called it a victory; the Bellport mayor called it “unconscionable.” Local news has dubbed the whole thing a “ferry flap.”
Bellport is a dreamy little place on the south shore of Long Island that residents love to say has the exclusivity of the Hamptons without any of the obnoxiousness. (“It’s not the kind of place where you show off,” one local told the New York Times in 2021.) The homes are historic New England saltboxes, the stores and restaurants are charming and understated, and Isabella Rossellini has a farm nearby. Most important, owning property in the village confers privileges, including subsidized membership at a country club, access to a skating pond — and the right to take the ferry (which is actually a modest boat with a capacity of 47) to Ho-Hum, a rustic beach across Bellport Bay on Fire Island. Bellport has owned the property where the beach is since 1963, but Fire Island beaches are technically federal land designated as the Fire Island National Seashore. Ho-Hum has always been a quirky zone, not really part of Fire Island but also separate because of this very literal gatekeeping. Anyone can technically get to Ho-Hum by boat, but only village residents and their guests are allowed on the ferry that goes there every day.
The trouble is that the people in Bellport who have access to the exclusive privilege of the Ho-Hum ferry overwhelmingly belong to a specific demographic. According to the Census in 2022, Bellport’s 1,844 residents were 97.5 percent white. Next door, the 10,530 residents of the town of North Bellport, who don’t get to go to Ho-Hum, were only 64.1 percent white, 39.8 percent Hispanic or Latino, and 28.9 percent Black. (Those percentages don’t add up to 100 because many Hispanics also identify as white.) People in North Bellport, while still pretty comfortable, are also not as rich. So the locals who end up having to drive 20 minutes to other beaches instead of taking a five-minute ferry ride feel they are being discriminated against for being from a lower-income community that’s a lot less white. “I’ve never been there,” one Black North Bellport resident told Newsday, “and I’ve lived here since 2007.”
In January, town supervisor Dan Panico of Brookhaven, a town to the northeast of Bellport, made the democratization of Ho-Hum his pet issue and began publicly urging the village of Bellport to open the beach. He pointed to a 2018 annexation agreement between Bellport and Brookhaven that, he said, gave Brookhaven residents a right to access. “I’m no different, you’re no different than the children and families of North Bellport, and they deserve a means by which to enjoy this island and go to the beach,” Panico told the audience at his inaugural address, which happened to include Bellport mayor Maureen Veitch. Veitch said she was “taken aback” by Panico’s statements.
On August 25, Panico made good on his word and announced that the town of Brookhaven would offer water-taxi rides to Ho-Hum. The town of Bellport fought back. Panico claimed that an unnamed town trustee went online and “sabotaged” the taxi rides by reserving most of the spots under a series of fake names. Then Bellport village issued a summons to the taxi for docking without a permit. The following day, August 26, Panico held a press conference, during which Black residents stood behind him with signs that read “Ho-Hum for Everyone.” Mayor Veitch released a statement condemning the stunt and saying Panico was “obsessed” with Bellport.
Panico has promised to continue to fight Bellport in the courts. On Facebook, debate raged over the ruckus at Ho-Hum. Some villagers said Bellport needed to get with the times; others argued that they have access to the beach because they pay the higher taxes to maintain it. One user continually speculated whether Panico was simply trying to add Ho-Hum as an “amenity” in his plot to increase housing development in Brookhaven. Another Bellport resident called it “pure communism.” And still another put it all on Panico: “We are under attack by a rogue politician.”
