El Paseo

Yet, for years, April through October, I’ve gravitated to the salty-air seating at the low-key Clam Bar. Jerry Tuthill, an owner, whose necklace features a gold crab grasping a shark’s tooth, says it best: “Once people come out here in Greenport, it’s like they leave all their troubles behind.”

Mr. Tuthill, a cheery and hefty retired cop of 63, had the pleasure of marrying into the Claudio family and, with his wife, Beatrice, founded the Clam Bar in 1988. Having grown tired of trekking to the flashy Hamptons, across the bay, for a good night out, he decided to bring the party home.

Like many clam shacks, Claudio’s décor is guilty of nautical hyperbole, but the place would be naked without it. Ship steering wheels hang from the ceiling; fishing nets, with their bounty of Christmas lights and plastic lobsters, dangle from the walls.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, Roy Morrow eagerly tucked into his plate of locally sourced raw oysters and sipped from his gin and tonic, looking every bit the seafaring gentleman. Storm clouds loomed overhead, and Clam Bar staff members busied themselves preparing for the Memorial Day rush, but none of that deterred Mr. Morrow, a retiree in khaki shorts, brown loafers, a sky-blue linen shirt and a baseball cap. His younger brother Lance, who had just moved to town, and about 75 other customers — some on an annual pilgrimage from Kentucky — were also upbeat.

“You can come out here dressed however you want, not shave, swear across the bar and have fun, and nobody cares,” said Mr. Morrow, happily perched on a barstool from which he has surely uttered his fair share of curse words.

Out on the wraparound dock, cigar smoke flirted with engine exhaust. Domenic Papa and three friends had finished lunch and fired up their 40-foot racing catamaran for the 10-minute trip back to Connecticut, across the Long Island Sound. They’d be back at the Clam Bar next weekend — and every warm-weather weekend thereafter — screaming faster than 100 miles per hour each trip, they boasted.

Asked if this high-octane ritual ever got old, Mr. Papa, 52, glanced at his friends puffing hard on their oversize stogies. And then he smiled.

“Never,” he said.