These tall islands made their country club. Membership is blooming

If you are a young man of appropriate age and under standard dignity living in Long Island, it is possible – if it is not likely – you have developed a trend for better pizza union in America: Rose pizza.

Rose sits unwittingly in her cube between the corridors filled with makeup and General Bustle of the New York City Penn Station. Its vibe is of seed. His service is fiercely rude. Its conditions are almost non -sanitary. Its pizza is average aggressive. And yet, anyone with the great fortune to visit its fluorescent interior as some books know that it is also one of the most vital institutions of New York’s cuisine.

Every day, 650,000 people flow through Penn Station. Many are heading to Long Island-an amalgam with rich accents and beach residents who have chopped into the same delis and made the same traffic for generations. Much more stop at Rose’s.

If you ask them, Rose customers I’ll tell you that they are there for a quick bite or a cold beer, but that’s a half -real. A visit to Rose’s gives the Long Islanders what they value most and experience the least: a place where the time stands.

Probably because they live under the shade of the fastest city on Earth, some things are more precious for the islands tall than tradition. Rose is a tradition. Such as traveling to and from Penn Station to the Long Island Railways. Such as the golf tradition in the center of our history-it that occasionally arrives after a late night visit to Rose’s AND Long Island Railway: Beer in nine rear.

I arrived at West Sayville Golf Course Long before dawn on a spring morning predicting a reflection of the golf spirit. Beer in the nine rear, as the group called, began as a gathering point for fathers from the city of West Sayville on the lost weekends to travel to football and Little League. At a distance, the central premise that loved so much golf – the common link between men – seemed clean with this group.

It didn’t take much time to learn that these people were NO Golf purists. At least, not in the sense of white belts and carefully stuck shirts. As the cars (and Ubers) flowed into the parking lot, it became clear that the meeting was about more than golf. One participant had not slept before he arrived, due to his tiredness for a long night in the bar (it was unclear if it meant as an employee or a customer). Another filled one coolant so cute that one can clean their clubs. Some more were obviously fighting last night’s demons.

“And we’re in the best behavior today,” one of the competitors with laughter told me. “Sal and Gio made sure that no one would get it too hard last night.”

Sal, the founder of the group, is a short, quiet, genius man. He began the group’s early morning tradition years ago, approaching local Muni, West Sayville Golf Course, with an offer. He could bring enough boys to wait a shotgun with 24 men, ninth before the first groups arrived at West Sayville every Sunday in the morning-and they There may be revenue from six fees of greens and carriages.

The golf course agreed, and soon the tradition grew from 6am hit in the ritual before the dawn of the passage that includes almost every father in the city. These days, the text comes out every Wednesday at 8am sharp. Tee sheet is filled up to 8:05.

“If you don’t say”in ‘ Within 45 seconds, you close, or you have to be an alternative, ”says Gregg Giannotti. “There are teachers who put alarms, there are people who give their phones other people to make sure they come in.”

Giannotti – who all call Gio – is my spiritual shaman in this group. He is the closest thing to a celebrity here, a local media personality known as half of Wfan’s Boomer and GioA popular performance of morning sports conversations.

Gio invited us here because he loves golf, and because for him, these people ARE Golf not in a strict way, of the private club that defines the perception of the Long Island’s golf, but not-free, the blue collar that determines so much of its reality.

“Well, today we had a true CELEBRITY: Suffolk District Police Commissioner, “Giannotti says with a fuss.” We got some retired correction officers, retired police officers, a insurance boy, a painter, a couple of teachers there too. Oh, and a hospitality of sports conversation. “

On a typical Sunday morning, Vibe between this group is joyful. Bruce and Billy Joel rip the speakers. The head coverings that hold local sports teams greatly exceed those who hold the ridges of the country’s local clubs. Competition is at the same time deeply serious and filled with laughter with rib cuttings. Golf course labels are diligently followed. The pace of the game is on.

The game is a nassau with nine holes, and the shares are high. Victory and you return to the group’s parking shelter a hero; Loss and you are a piece.

“When I’m telling you I’m going to think about the shots lost from today for the rest of this week, I will,” Gio says. “You would have thought that we just left nine back to Augusta the way we’re talking about these holes and setting the pin.”

Giannotti is joking but not really. Many participants have begun to call their Sunday morning tradition “West Sayville CC” – a name coded for the muni they have collaborated with in their private club.

Putting here is nothing bad, just a group of friends willing to do what others are not to steal in nine weekends. After all, this is how many of the first private clubs of America started here at Long Island: an involvement of the same minded individuals who hope to have it around. The years that followed turned golf membership into an entity that gave them status and wealth, but many of the founding fathers just wanted a place to play.

Among those who compete, a similar tradition follows the day’s efforts: trash conversation in the parking lot under the rising sun, followed by coffee and livestock at home.

“I squeeze nine holes inside and usually get home before (my kids) are even,” says one competitor.

At a time when the sun finally comes out of the clouds on Sunday morning we visit, the group has already surrounded the asphalt. Golf is over, and Skewing has reached a fever step.

It is here in the parking lot who wonder what this golf tradition says not for these men, but for the Long Island more widely. What is it about the outskirts of the city of New York, in the direction of deducting the city’s riots, leading to Long Islanders in traditions like these?

Gio knows the answer almost intuitively.

“Everything everything we are in one place,” he says. “Our personalities, our competition, our cynicism, our humor – all come here.”

Public Golf, Gio says, is a life microcosm in New York: a steady bounce of change. In the face of the constant pus of the city, it can be difficult to remember where your feet are. Traditions are one of the few things anchored on Earth.

“No matter who is winning, who is losing, who is playing every week, every person of your personality you have won growing up here is in that golf course,” Gio says. “Like it as if you were a goose you never saw another goose, and then one day saw a bunch of geese. You’ll be like, THIS is what is supposed to be like. ”

Not too much After my visit to West Sayville, I stuck in Penn Station in a hurry.

Terminal has been widely renewed in the last few years – the fruits of a public works project some decades Too late. Rose disappeared after a skeleton wall as work reached a fever step, and for a while there was a concern that the restaurant would never return.

But as I went down the land at the terminal, I was glad to see my old friend resting exactly, where I would line up, sitting with dignity in a cube against her young competitors shining.

After renovating the Penn station, Rose is different. It is bigger, cleaner and in most ways better – but it also lacks part of its original soul. (The cashier fell to the clients in the same Bush era’s crate that has existed inside the restaurant for decades … then admitted with love Tap-to-Pay.)

However, it was late and I was a little buzzing and in a hurry, so I ordered a slice of pizza. He arrived in his hands no more than two minutes later, and while smelling the glorious boiling of bread, sauce and fat, I felt the world was slow around me. I sat there for a moment, transferred to a wave of nostalgia and thought of my friends in West Sayville.

Men of the big country club club on Sunday Long Island have changed. History has changed. The spirit has changed. But like pink, tradition is exactly the same.