State Liquor Authority Says Shagwong Must Watch Crowds, or Else

The dance police may have backed off, but the always jam-packed bar at the Shagwong in Montauk hasn’t quite gotten out from under the thumb of the New York State Liquor Authority.

The SLA fined the bar $12,500 last week — the third time the authority’s board of commissioners have leveled five-figure fines on Shagwong’s owners for violating a variety of rules, of mixed severity.

The fine was issued for a dozen summonses issued to the bar last summer by town authorities, and reported to the SLA as all infractions by liquor-license-holding businesses are. The state commissioners seemed the most bothered by two overcrowding summonses, issued on July 1 and 3 of last year.

“These occupancy violations are concerning,” Commissioner Edgar De Leon said during the SLA’s disciplinary review meeting on July 12.

“If they come back again, it’s going to be close to a cancellation,” Commissioner Lily Fan, the board’s chairwoman, said.

Jon Krasner, one of the owners, took issue with the claims of overcrowding, saying the bar always keeps close tabs on how many people are in the bar relative to their legal occupancy limits.

“Safety is always our top priority and we disagree with the violations that were given to us last year,” he said, noting that no overcrowding allegations have been made this summer. “We always work with the town and hope the town will work with us to solve real problems.”

The summonses that incensed the commissioners were issued during a sweep by town code officers that also set off a review of the Shagwong’s certificate of occupancy that threatened to put an end to the boisterous late nights at the bar.

After the overcrowding violations, the town building inspector’s office issued an opinion that the Shagwong was illegally converting its dining room into a “nightclub” on weekends because staff were removing the dining tables and chairs to make way for dancing and bigger crowds that linger into the wee hours on summer weekends.

An attorney for the bar’s owners asked the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals to overrule the building inspector on the basis of the Shagwong having cleared out tables and chairs to make room for dancing to live music for decades — and likened the proposal that simply dancing in the bar was to be potentially halted to the authoritarian antagonists of the movie “Footloose.”

After three public discussions, at which former owners, employees and a host of Montauk locals attested to the bar having always been a dance hall late at night, the ZBA in June ruled in a 3-2 split vote, that the “Wong” was not violating its legal, preexisting use by being both a restaurant and a nightclub — even as board members worried about the implications that finding would have on occupancy limits and the safety of the bar when it’s packed full.

The Shagwong was fined $15,000 twice previously by the SLA. In 2018, it was cited for a host of minor violations like failing to post signs and display licenses and for failing to follow the limitations of their liquor license application. The SLA leveled another $15,000 fine in 2020 after the bar was cited for several counts of “failure to supervise” during the summer of COVID-19 restrictions.