The I Survived the Winter Party of 1985

And then there was the year my friend Linda Shapiro, heading for divorce, told me she didn’t know what to do with herself. She’d run an exercise studio in Manhattan but no longer wanted to do that. I told her she should come out to the Hamptons and be an event promoter. She’d done a terrific job making the studio a success. She was so good at it. And I needed a promoter to take over the annual “Dan’s Papers I Survived the Winter Party”

“You’ll love doing this,” I told her. “And there’s a need for this now in the Hamptons. You’ll make a fortune”

By that year, 1985, I’d become a seasoned newspaper publisher. I’d started Dan’s Papers in 1960 and one of the things I loved to do was hold crazy events. It promoted the newspaper.

There was a man named James Moran who did stuff like that years earlier. I’d read about him. Once he’d hired 200 people with eye maladies. He dressed half as redcoats and assembled them at the base of Bunker Hill in Boston, put the other half in rebel gear at the top of the hill, gave them all muskets and said, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.” Chaos reigned.

Another time he rented a banquet hall in the Waldorf Astoria and, to promote two popular songs, hired 300 people named Herbert or Dominick to attend. At one end of the hall, waiters served sherbet while a band played “Pass the Sherbet to me, Herbert,” At the other end guests feasted on meatballs to “Pass the Meatballs to Me, Dominick.” More chaos reigned. I loved the guy.

By 1985, I’d been promoting the annual “Dan’s Papers I Survived the Winter Party” for three years. It was held without charge in late March and the locals loved it. Besides the event T-shirt, there were beard-growing contests, chili cookoffs, tap dance competitions, singing competitions, a dog show, water slide rides that landed you in an inflatable swimming pool, and a sumo wrestling competition where kids age 6 to 10 would be strapped into blow-up costumes, then launched into wobbly inflatable fighting rings to try to push an opponent to the ground. All while the winter wind howled outside.

I didn’t have much money back then so finding a place to hold the party was a big deal. One year I held it in a derelict building next to the Southampton Diner that originally had been a bowling alley. Another time I arranged it in an abandoned discotheque hall that today is Bay Street in Sag Harbor.

“Crowds will come,” I’d tell the building owners about not paying them. “Maybe somebody will rent it.”

It was exhausting creating this party.

And so I asked Shapiro to take over the job. And I did tell her I couldn’t pay her.

And she said yes.

Having handed it over to Shapiro, I didn’t want to hear any of the details as she went along, but she did tell me that she had a new venue. It would be at a Sag Harbor restaurant called The Harborside, which was closed for the winter. Sounds good, I said.

I woke up on Saturday, Party Day, to a massive blizzard. Uh-oh. Would anybody come? Weather reports were often inaccurate in those days.

I started out in my car. There had not been a sunset. It had just gone to black. My headlights shone on white pillows of falling snow as I crawled along at 5 miles an hour. You couldn’t see 10 feet; 6 miles to Sag Harbor would take an hour, almost.

I hunched over the steering wheel. I was to be the master of ceremonies. Would anyone be there besides Shapiro? Harborside was where Long Beach Road meets Noyack Road.

Suddenly, 40 minutes later, I was there! It was amazing! There must have been 500 cars in the lot. Headlights framed snowflakes fluttering down. Disco music thumped. I parked and rushed inside, happy as could be. I  checked my coat. I’m just 15 minutes late.

A six-piece band was playing on a platform. The performers looked out over a room full of guests, some dancing, some eating or drinking. Where was Shapiro? I couldn’t see her. I sat amongst others at a table, shivered and brushed off some snow. She’d be out in a moment, I was sure.

What a party! I’d never been inside this venue before. I thought the main event space must be way across the far end of this room.

A few people saw me and waved. That was a comfort. I was expected. And then the music ended, people applauded, and a man with a clarinet took the microphone.

“Would the bride and groom please come forward?” he said.

People stamped their feet, applauded, and cheered.

This was a wedding.

“Isn’t this The Harborside?” I asked a woman sitting next to me.

“No.  It’s The Harborview.”

I stood up, offered a sickly smile and left the table. Of course I knew where The Harborside was. It was on Bay Street by Long Wharf, 15 minutes away, maybe 50 in this blizzard. I ran to the coat check. And I asked if they had a payphone.

The coatcheck girl motioned to the closet behind her. I told her it was an emergency.

Well, this is what the public can use, she said, opening the cloakroom door.

And so, there I went, sliding down to the floor in the back after parting all the clothing with a quarter in my hand while scarves and overcoats dripped wet snow onto me.

Shapiro came on. “Where are you?” she asked.

“I’m on my way,” I said. How’s it going?”

“When will you be here?”

“Soon,” I said.

And thus, it was that I survived the “Dan’s Papers I Survived the Winter Party.”

And Linda’s career thrived for the next 40 years.