BETHPAGE, N.Y. — Everybody is talking about the New Yorkers. New Yorkers will be the 15th club for the American team — or will they be the team’s 13th man? Is that a better analogy? Luke Donald and Keegan Bradley talked about New Yorkers at the opening ceremony and their Golf Channel surrogates, Paul McGinley and Brandel Chamblee did, too.
Let’s bring in Alicia Keys, from the chorus of Jay-Z’s epic “Empire State of Mind,” because she hits every note on this broad subject:
Now you’re in New York: These streets will make you feel brand-new. Brights lights will inspire you. Let’s hear it for New York, New York, New York.
In downtown Bethpage, a mile or so from the golf course, at an old-timey shot-and-a-beer stop called Susan’s, hard by a Long Island Rail Road track, six actual New Yorkers were hoisting cold ones on Wednesday. Late afternoon, early fall. This is a first, a Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black, but nobody cares, not here at Susan’s on Wednesday. New York is the wide-mouthed funnel of the American experience. It guzzles new. Old Susan’s is part of the whole thing. Eighty different countries fly into JFK. One-hundred and sixty languages are spoken in Queens alone. Susan’s is an Irish bar owned by a man named Vinny from Brooklyn with a barmaid from Spain named Maria and posters of great Black boxers on its walls. The bar’s softball team is called the Sigourney Weavers.
Susan’s advertises — in paint, on an exterior wall — 75-cent drafts. They’re $3 when you get inside, but nobody at Susan’s cares. Nobody at Susan’s cares about the Ralph Lauren blazers the Americans were wearing at the opening ceremony across the street, or why Rory McIlroy was so cranky, in those weeks after the Masters. He won. Right? They do care about the Mets. The Mets are holding on to October dreams by a thread. Susan’s is a baseball and football bar, and whatever else comes up.
“You Can’t Always Get What You Want” was playing. There’s a payphone on a wall that doesn’t work. Maria is happy to bring you peanuts and pretzels. The several TVs there assault you with new and more new: two boats have collided in the Atlantic Ocean off Fire Island; the Yankees will be playing playoff baseball come October for the 60th time; Zelensky spoke at the United Nations, at the General Assembly.
The six patrons at Susan’s gather in two groups of three. There’s a threesome of younger guys, in T-shirts and baseball caps, brims on their upper spines, sitting in the front of the bar, near the dartboard and the entrance. There’s another threesome of older guys, in T-shirts but hatless, seated toward the back of the bar, near the pool table and the restrooms.
The older guys are talking about the Yankees and looking at the boat accident and hearing about Maria’s recent vacation, a Mediterranean cruise. (She loved it. She didn’t get to Spain.) The younger guys had been to the golf course, earlier in the day. Maria says that she likes Jon Rahm, but otherwise has no interest in golf. She likes European football and American football. One of the young guys, after consulting his cellphone, notes that you can buy a ticket for Thursday’s practice round for $158, the price dropping as the weather forecast, for a drenching rain, becomes more confident.
“How much for Friday?” one of the young patrons asks.
Friday is the first day of this 45th Ryder Cup.
“Friday? Friday is $1,600.”
“Yeah,” the first guy says. “Can your credit card handle that?”
Where everybody knows your name.
Michael Bamberger
The beer is cold and the peanuts salty. Nobody’s rushing out to do some other thing. A train goes whistling by, at a terrifying speed for such a densely populated area.
The Long Island Rail Road and the Long Island Expressway, along with Montauk Highway and Sunrise Highway, are the main east-west arteries of Long Island. Any number of parkways and causeways will take you north and south. There’s Bethpage State Parkway, Sunken Meadow Parkway, the Jones Beach Causeway, many others. Sonny Corleone was ambushed at a tollbooth on the Jones Beach Causeway. Everybody knows who did it: Barzini family trigger men, with the backing of the Tattaglia family. The Godfather was written for New Yorkers.
Bethpage State Park straddles Nassau and Suffolk counties. Many Long Islanders come from families that headed east, leaving Brooklyn and Queens after World War II. Irish Long Islanders tend to root for the Mets, because Brooklyn was so Irish and the Mets were borne out the departure of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Italian Long Islanders tend to root for the Yankees, out of ancient allegiance to Joe DiMaggio. Jay-Z wears a Yankees cap in “Empire State of Mind,” and in real life.
Everybody on Long Island dabbles in golf. Most everybody. There are scores of driving ranges and golf courses on Long Island, public courses, county courses, state courses, village courses, executive courses, pitch-and-putts, mini golf courses with Carvel nearby. Bethpage State Park has five courses, each identified by a color. Only masochists play the Black course, and this week 24 Ryder Cuppers.
Bethpage, in its business district, has an Italian restaurant and an Italian deli and several Irish pubs. It has an Indian restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, a Thai restaurant, a seafood restaurant, a Greek restaurant, plus some others. It has diners and bagel shops. It has everything as New York has everything. This week, it has the Ryder Cup. At Susan’s, come Friday and through the weekend, one of the TVs there will likely have it on.
