There’s a Sex in the City episode where the girls are vying to get to the Hamptons for the summer. Having lived in New York for the past few years now, I get it. The summers in the city are unbearably hot. The subway platforms feel like Dante’s inferno and your skin feels like it will slide off at any moment. It’s disgusting. And I’m a girl who sweats. A lot. So when Samantha, Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda want to get out of dodge, I’m fully on board with their scheming summer plans.
But dahling, which Hampton do you choose? We’ll begin with Sag Harbor, the town missing ‘Hampton’ in its name only adds to its un-hampton-ness. People refer to it as such because it’s quant, but polite, seaside but only slightly slick, charming but not chavvy. The town itself is compact and cute. They have a great bookstore, a scrumptious coffee house (Sag Town), a delicious burger place (LT Burger) and some old school craft shops that I hope stick around for a long time. Because summer holiday with pom poms just got that much better.
It’s when you reach the marina, that you see the infiltration of ostentatious Hamptons living. Giant yachts push up against the parking lot docking area, which, for starters, is totally unsexy. If you’re on a yacht, you should be unreachable. One dude, smoking his cigar – natch – seemed to enjoy taunting the proletariat, sat on park benches, too close to his boat, with puffs of very expensive smoke. These park benches are literally two feet away from the boats (see photos), crammed with tourists trying to speak with the ship’s crew to find out if anyone ‘famous’ might be on board.
Then there are the houses. A quick search of real estate sites like Corcoran, Prudential Douglas Ellmiman or the more local, but equally extravagant Sanders website, shows properties that run into the tens of millions. If you’ve got it, why not? But it’s the conscipicious consumption of having so much by so few, that feels kind of gross. I mean, in East Hamptons, there is a Tiffany’s. Who needs a Tiffany’s bauble, only to be lost on the beach – it’s summer holiday! Most people take a summer vacation to relax, to swim in the ocean, feel the sand between their toes and get a little dirty. In the Hamptons, it’s all about having the perfectly manicured toes, in the just so beach dress, laying on the Hermes towel to keep the dirt at bay. To constantly maintain those standards of grooming, you might as well stay in New York City. It begs the question, how do Hamptonites truly relax? To watch them on an actual ‘real person USA’ summer holiday would make for endlessly entertaining television. Take note Andy Cohen, maybe that’s next summer’s hit show for Bravo? Call me, we’ll talk.
My New York Note Book 