When I was a little kid, my father used to drive west from Shirley along Montauk Highway through Blue Point. On the north side of the road, next to a gas station, was a small skating rink whose center of interest was a concrete sphinx. It was painted pink: ergo, the pink sphinx.
Later, someone moved it to the south side of the highway, to a cement company in Bayport, where it now sits. It has a round head and a naïve, wide-eyed presence, so I used to call it “Vito the Sphinx.” I think I am the only person who remembers this early location.
Weird LI says Vito originally stood by the Anchorage Inn. Mae West, early Hollywood temptress and double entendre expert (“Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”), once tried to buy this inn, but it burned down. Vito was created in 1897 by the inn’s owner, an immigrant from Belfast, Ireland, called Captain Will Graham. People like Teddy Roosevelt, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks stayed there. Who knew? There was something about the place that made it irresistible. I suspect it was Vito.
The area today is nondescript: you drive by small private homes, a Greek Orthodox church, a dog-breeding business, and various ethnic restaurants. Until you reach Bayport, there is nothing that really catches the eye. As Marilyn Monroe once said about New Jersey, “There’s no there there.” (Contrasting viewpoints welcome!) I’m not sure if that local restaurant has preserved its memorial to the late Gabby Petito, shown as an angel with butterfly wings.
The sphinx, no longer pink, bears the inscription, “She who climbs to the Sphinx’s head a millionaire will surely wed.” At its base is a sign which reads, “Climbing prohibited.”
I used to own a concrete scale model of Vito, but I have no idea what happened to it.—Kathryn Nocerino