“The Hamptons”: Marginally Less Fun than Prison
Excerpt:
"Now, about prison. Not the place for you. There’s not too much more to say about that subject."
That’s what you think. Another time, perhaps. But not to worry, because cliched as the idea is, the city really is quite pleasant on summer weekends. In fact, I thought, waiting for the non-Harley friend to choose a folding bicycle, it could be worse: I could be in…"The Hamptons."
There’s a reason I put inverted commas ("quotes", to you Yanks) around that. It’s the way people insist on saying it: "The Hamptons", or, the faux airy, "Oh….just The Hamptons…". For all the world as if they were off to the, oh yawn, White House to spend the night in the Lincoln bedroom - yet again. Instead of merely to partake of the hundred mile traffic jam that is the Long Island "Distressway", as some folks might air quote it. (Richer folks being prone to hop the seaplane or helicopter.)
Back in the day, when artists like Jackson Pollock and long-suffering wife Lee Krasner were cavorting there, I suppose the East End of Long Island really was a bucolic, oceanside escape from the heat and turmoil of summer in Manhattan. And I suppose, too, that this lent it glamour of a sort. But that was then. And even so, I have never quite understood its famous claims to beauty - unless you find inspiration in acres and acres of cabbage fields. The beaches are nice enough, the sand dunes making up for the lack of dramatic cliffs, the vague visual tedium of sand dunes mitigated by the occasional riptide with it’s exciting prospect of an imminent drowning, a shark attack, or a helicopter rescue, or….well, at least you can dig holes. Except for the banker-surfers, though, it’s comparatively empty. Which is peculiar, given the mad rush to "the beach" of a summer weekend and that the seaside is logically the reason to do so. Except it’s not. And that’s the problem with "The Hamptons".
Many of the people you find there now have paid rent for summer "shares". They are generally not (yet) the people straining to ape the "upper" class in frumpy Lily Pulitzer dresses, the men’s polo shirt collars turned up for no reason in particular. These same people sit in "tastefully" appointed, big-ass mansions behind fifteen foot high, perfectly manicured hedges in the hushed avenues of whatever Hampton and are often called Martha Stewart or Steven Spielberg. Sometimes they have ludicrous rapstar names and will make a point of attending polo matches and every party everywhere, like Jay Gatsby on crack. No wonder the real hoity-toity "old" money (such as it is in the U.S.) long ago upped sticks and fled Manhattan-on-Sea, the playground the nouveaux riches, for Maine, upstate New York or even, at a pinch, "The Vineyard" or Nantucket.
Take the "Hampton Jitney" (please! - to use an old joke). It’s exactly like a Greyhound bus but because of the free bottle of water, much more expensive. Also, the passengers are scarier. I’m not ashamed to admit I’m terrified of the Jitney. Jitneyphobia. Having miscalculated the train times back to the city, I once burst into tears at the thought of having to get on the thing and had to be driven back to the city instead, sniffling and apologizing to my baffled host. Once had been enough, you see, to cause irrevocable trauma: stuffed to the gills with overly-tanned, uptalking, OMG’ing, midget sized girls with mercilessly blown-out hair, I remembered cowering in my seat. It was like having a ‘Nam flashback, helicopter sounds replaced by trilling cellphones. These girls, by the way, are often called Melissa, Heather or Jennifer. As all this chaos on wheels went on, various children in expensive miniature outfits ran shrieking up and down the aisle, while the otherwise normal looking gentleman behind me loudly booked an appointment for "a haircut and highlights". Lordy…
If your aim, when taking a weekend out of the city, is to be somewhere quiet and beautiful where nobody knows your name, you’ll be mighty disappointed. Although much has been written about the generalized vulgarity of the place and none of the following is breaking news, it’s worth repeating what you’ll get once you’ve completed the long trip out: bumper-to-bumper traffic replete with huge SUV’s (even now), speakers blasting, and streets lined with snack-sized versions of ‘Saks Fifth Avenue’, ‘Ralph Lauren’, etc. There you will discover all the most annoying people you find in the city doing exactly the same annoying things: shopping, shopping, meeting for brunch, getting their nails done, shopping, and most bizarrely of all, spending their evenings in nightclubs like ‘The Pink Elephant’ (which have also joined the mass exodus to the beach and infest the place with gusto), often sleeping it off all day, unless they’re shopping, having brunch….and so on.
Which is why the beach is so empty.
So what’s the point of the place? I will say here that almost anyone who spends time there will claim: "Oh no, we don’t do the whole scene thing there. We hate that! We just like to stay home and barbeque." Don’t believe a word of it. I have fallen for this trick many a time, and, come 9pm, your hosts will suddenly appear in the doorway all dressed way up, and declare, only a bit sheepishly, that there’s "this cool store opening in town!" or "this great club in Montauk, it’s just like being on the beach!!!" (imagine). Time to plead a headache and stay behind with a good book.
Incidentally, the headache things is a bit more tricky if the host is a date….
Sample conversation (circa 2003):
"I really want to check out this new restaurant in town."
"Why..?"
"Why not? It’s meant to be cool."
"But you said we were going to relax and sit in the garden and feed the swans…I didn’t come out here to be cool"
"Oh, don’t be such a killjoy."
"I have a headache…"
"Come on, just get dressed and let’s go."
"Okay…but I am dressed."
"You’re wearing flipflops…don’t you have any heels?"
"Yes…..but they’re back in the city."
"Well why the hell wouldn’t you bring them??"
"Because we’re at the FUCKING BEACH!!!"
…aren’t we? (Unsurprisingly, things took a turn for the worse after that exchange. And there’s not too much more to be said about that subject either.)
And that’s why, this Labo(u)r Day weekend, I shall escape to the city instead, despite invitations from a few well-meaning party animals folks who swear up and down that they really and truly just love to stay home and barbeque. I have politely declined. Not "The Hamptons", not this time. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me, like, eight times……well, I’d rather go to prison. Or, God forbid, even the folding bike shop.
Copyright Britical, 2009. All Rights Reserved.