When I go to a nightclub, especially a Hamptons nightclub, I’m not expecting refinement. I’m not anticipating costumer service or comfort or access to the bathroom. I’m pretty much prepared to be trapped in a body lock between those two crazy Swedish girls prostituting themselves, inhaling the stench of cigarettes, fresh vomit and weed. Often, consequently, I’m not even expecting to have a good time.

Even with these impressively low expectations, I found myself shocked by this.

This is the ripped and holey banquet couch at Dune which patrons pay upwards of 2K to sit at, stand on, or apparently, violate. This photo captures what I find paradoxical and intriguing about the Hamptons.

How can a theoretically elite and successful club, complete with celebrity sightings, promotional events and outrageous prices, get away with decorum like this?

If this couch, subpar to a McDonald’s booth, was presented to a bottle service group in the city, they’d immediately go elsewhere. In the Hamptons, the bottle service group literally and figuratively jumps on it, accepting the grimy booth as just another part of the preposterous Hamptons financial defilement package we submit ourselves to weekend after weekend, without really knowing why.

I’ve written before about how Hamptons wackiness often inspires a Zen-like attitude, an acceptance of ‘loss of control.’ And I think this passive acceptance crosses over into every element of summering on Long Island.

A thirteen dollar bagel? Well, the next bagel shop is ten miles away and perhaps more expensive, especially if we include the gas money to get there.

A thirty dollar cab ride home (per head!)? Well, I’m drunk, unable to drive, and in the wilderness.

A germ-laden couch with holes in it for 2K? Well, we just valet-ed the car and escorting a rowdy drunken group to an alternate location would require the patience of a kindergarten teacher or a Taser.

The entire Hamptons setup traps tourists seeking prestige and relief from city humidity into accepting prices and quality they’d otherwise scoff at. It traps them into paying off a doorman, when in New York they’d cab it over to the club around the corner. Into partying on a banquet they normally wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. Into accepting customer service they’d normally be phoning the better business bureau about. And consequently partying like orangutans with all city manners, conventions, and standards tossed out the window. Hence what keeps the Hamptons simultaneously dirty and fun.

Driving in a Hamptons-style overloaded car, we were cruising between Fourth of July parties when the entire backseat shrilly screamed “Breaaak!”

No, a deer or rodent hadn’t scurried under our tires.

No, a tree wasn’t tumbling onto our windshield.

Our GPS had navigated us though a South Hamptons back road that was lined with cars as far as the inebriated eye could see. Music blared at a level so high we could hear it within our own music-blaring car. Girls dressed to the nines hiked from their far parked vehicles to the mansion that was evidently hosting a raging event.

In a usually smooth bout of communication, we alerted our other three cars of friends that we’d be ‘breaking for this party.’ In a miraculous moment that only Fourth of July intoxication could provide, everyone somehow agreed and we all parked, staggering out of automobiles in the pursuit of party.

“Hey, is this Jamie’s party?” our ringleader asked a clearly bedraggled set of exiting participants. This is a name he pulled out of his ass, but it got us the desired response.

“No it’s Rob Cook’s,” they responded wearily (and helpfully.)

DING! DING! DING! DING! DING!

We now possessed the host’s name. Our friends worried as we approached the noisy house: What would we find on the other side? How would we fit in?

“Maybe it’s a wedding. We can’t crash a wedding.”

“Maybe it’s a charity event. We’ll be like the only ones not in tuxes.”

Wrong and Wrong.

We entered with ease – no checkpoints, no hired security wielding lists. The glamorous manor was wisely locked up, yet the path to the backyard remained unguarded. We pushed through the hanging open wooden fence and admired what looked like the movie set for one of those teen comedies like “She’s All That.” Sprawling grass. Kegs. Naked kids in the pool. A loner puking in a bush. The token black guy wearing a baseball hat on the deck in a DJ booth. A self-serve bar stock piled with Mountain Dew.

For some reason, it took chillin on the lawn and a few more drinks for us to fully become aware about where we’d landed. As we further analyzed the music selection, lack of décor, and scattering of late-blooming teenagers, it finally dawned on us that we’d crashed a high school party.

A young man not far enough into puberty for shaving to be mandatory approached me suspiciously and asked, “Who are you here for?”

“James,” I sung quickly, my dyslexic mind easily switching up the names I’d heard out front.

“You mean George?” he corrected.

“Yeah-huh. George,” I nodded, attempting to recover as my heel fell into a sink hole in the grass.

He walked away unconvinced.

After trying to remember how to pump a keg and high-fiving a kid in Speedos that looked like Ron Jeremy, we decided to go before serious suspicious started to arise.

Standing at the opposite fence, good-naturedly waving to the incapacitated revelers staggering out, a wiry lad, presumably George, repeated Miss Manners-style; “Thank you for coming. Thank you for coming!”

We piled back into our cars and headed to our true destination: a more tranquil event hosted by forty-year-olds, but all of our party spirits had been profoundly touched by George. Ah, to be young and utilizing your parents’ empty South Hampton villa. High school immaturity, much like a contagious disease, fevered within us for the remainder of the night.

For me, time spent in the Hamptons remains a Zen-like exercise in coping with unpredictability. Unless you’re traveling with your own set of wheels, you rarely have any say in where you go, what you do, or when you do it. You start to feel like those chubby, clueless toddlers strapped in rear facing car seats, happily oblivious, along for the ride. People with cars have the control, but are burdened with responsibility. Everyone else is enviably carefree, but consequently at their mercy.

There’s two different ways to handle this scenario. One is the aforementioned ‘toddler approach,’ which we’ll discuss today. This involves utter passivity. You go wherever your share house is going because it’s easy, it’s non-confrontational, and there are people to take care of you once you’re obliterated on Patron. The other approach, which we’ll explore later this week, involves trying to take your Hamptons destiny into your own hands. Breaking off from the herds to accomplish some sort of side mission, whether it be meeting up with other friends, attending an alternate party, or frequenting a different club. If you have a car with a GPS system, this is easy. If you don’t, this ‘mission approach’ involves attempting to brainwash your ride to align with your plans, attempting to brainwash anyone with a car to align with your plans, or taking a very expensive taxi to your plans, which you share with six other people you don’t know.

With that intro, I let myself get ‘toddler style’ dragged this weekend to East Hampton’s Grey Goose Manor, where your liver comes to die. On the plus side, they serve a dinner with remarkably tasty steak so guests don’t suffer from alcohol poisoning immediately. On the down side, there’s still enough easy-to-chug vodka to get all of East Hampton hospitalized, jailed with a DUI or both.

Further proving that the Hamptons is essentially adult summer camp, the grub was served buffet style and eating took place in the ‘chic’ version of what for all practical purposes was a dining hall (granted, with complimentary Vitamin Water and martinis as opposed to a soda machine, yet still campy in feel).

Very pink beverages where passed around by circulating cocktail waitresses, which I couldn’t consume since to me, they tasted like cotton candy. This lead me to one of the three bars to ask, “I’d like a non-pink beverage. Preferably, non-sweet. Hell, just give me a vodka-water.” The Grey Goose bar representative was extremely accommodating.

The party filled up until the entire manor was instructed to leave for Lily Pond at the same time, which the valets just loved.

The festivities continued in the parking lot for forty minutes while we created a mega traffic jam on a one-way-only dirt road and men battled one another for the attention of the frenzied parking attendants.

The best part of the night by far was when a promoter loaded ten models into the back on an Enterprise van – no, not a van with seats. I mean like an empty mid-size van used to move furniture. The ladies were helped into the stainless steel cargo hold while I tried to snap pictures. The promoter in charge violently stopped me, going as far as to physically block my camera with his hands and scream obscenities at me. So I guess he doesn’t want people to know that he treats his female entourage like cattle. I’m sad I don’t have the visual, because if that transport scenario doesn’t epitomize the Hamptons, I don’t know what does.

Thursday. It came so fast I don’t think anyone was truly ready for it. Even the most professional organizers don’t have much experience dealing with 3-day weekend scenarios in which Friday’s the day off. So after countless emails and what felt like hundreds of debates via MSN, someone in my Hamptons crew made the executive decision that we’d all leave for Long Island post-clubbing at 2:30 AM to avoid traffic. Making this plan possible were two sober drivers and a car service. The most amusing part of our time spent at Kiss & Fly (which wasn’t promoting any 4^th of July party but was just its normal, crowded, cone-filled self) remained that every time the word “Hamptons” came up you’d hear a resounding chorus of, “Yep! We’re leaving right after this!”

So apparently our ingenious idea of partying in the city and driving to Long Island post-club in the middle of the night was something other East-bound fun-seekers had thought of as well. In fact, the more people I spoke to, the more it became apparent that all of Kiss & Fly was heading to the Hamptons as soon as the party winded down. Instead of cruising down a desolate LIE, I realized we could very well be entering some sort of packed, party highway.

So much for avoiding the crowds.

After Kiss & Fly, it took awhile to get everyone regrouped in our ringleader’s SoHo apartment. He tried to sober people up with homemade pressed Paninis, a sandwich that’s easily up for grabs for the title of “best Panini of my life” since it was crisp, meaty and oozing with Dijon. When finally car-bound, we wrestled over who got to utilize the one pillow available in the backseat. Someone upfront with a potent chip craving instructed the driver to stop at a gas station, where they proceeded to buy one of every kind of potato chip known to man. Cape Cod – Doritos Nacho Flavor – Lays BBQ – Doritos Cooler Ranch and Cheetos were consequently passed around until everyone fell asleep sitting up, inhaling crumbs. When I startled from slumber, I realized it was because our car wheels were crunching gravel instead of gliding over pavement i.e. we’d arrived at our house’s driveway in the shortest Long Island travel experience of my life. If only I could be unconscious and high on snack food’s artificial flavorings for all such journeys…

As our group stumbled inside and proceeded to claim couches / beds / lawn chairs / sections of the floor, the head of our house received a message from producer friends interested in pitching a reality TV program / documentary centered around the life of a friend of ours in the house who is launching a noteworthy business venture in coming months. Their idea had been to come to the Hamptons for the long weekend to get some trial footage. The text they sent resembled something like:

“We’ve decided to come. See you all tomorrow. I hope there are enough beds for us and the camera crew.”

To which our first reaction was, “camera crew!?!!?!?” and our second reaction was, “beds!?!!??”

We wrote back that we hoped the camera crew would be okay with sleeping outdoors on lawn chairs, since every Hamptons house on holiday long weekends is PACKED, PACKED still being an understatement.

So we drifted to sleep plotting how to best avoid the oncoming camera and fake an accident in which all the necessary electrical equipment might get destroyed in the pool. The adventures to come…

Unreal!

Remember Dirt Nasty’s comedic video, posted last week, which pokes fun at everything eighties? The vid took Youtube junkies by storm, but now seems to be influencing real life fashion decisions.

I, for one, didn’t know whether to scream in delight or horror when I saw this young gentleman at Hampton’s Dune Saturday night wearing the gold chain a.k.a. Donkey Rope that Dirt Nasty wears and continuously references in his rap lyrics. Who wants to holler, “’I’m radical, T-shirt say party animal,” first? [Note chain similarity!]

Did our Dune dude wear the chain to the club as a joke? As a Simon Rex homage? As a reference to the video? Or is that really just what he considers a classy look to pick up broads on Long Island?

Who knows!

Also under the category of crazy, I felt it appropriate to exhibit this delightful photo. I’m deeming it the ultimate share house lifestyle photo of the month, complete with ‘guy passed out on couch.’

It’s never pretty the day after.

I woke up this past Saturday at 10 am still drunk from Friday night at Cain and instinctually knowing there was no way I’d be spending the rest of the weekend in the city. My Hamptons escape house would be too crazy for my hung over mind to handle so I eliminated Long Island as an option (last weekend the house was overcrowded and loud to the point that sleep became an impossibility. Girls with cars actually drove back to Manhattan to flee the madness at 3, 4 and 5 AM in the morning – it was that bad.) So without leaving bed, I lurched for my cell phone and dialed an ex-boyfriend from college who I knew had a share house in the fabled Jersey Shore.

After we caught up on each other’s Friday nights, I discovered he happened to be at Penn Station heading to the shore as we spoke. The proceeding conversation went something like this:

Me: So, any chance of you inviting me?

Um…well, you should definitely come out another weekend.

Why not now?

It’s only my second weekend out there myself. I haven’t been since Memorial Day. I don’t even know how to get there with the train.

That’s a dumb excuse. Obviously you’re going to figure out how to get there with the train. Why can’t I come?

[Really awkward pause.]

Me: We don’t have to sleep in the same room. You don’t even have to make-out when we’re get drunk. I just want to be poolside. I need to leave the city.

It’s not that, it’s –

You won’t even have to talk to me. I’ll bring a book.

I definitely want you to come out another weekend –

Other weekends you’ll be at weddings and I’ll be in the Hamptons. Seize the present moment.

I just –

It’ll be more fun with me there goddammit!

Well, I can pick you up at Spring Lake…

DING! DING!! DING!!! Victory!

Children, take this as a lesson as to where persistence can get you.

I’d write about my psychological theory ‘the crazy girl approach to love’ that came into play here, the theory that men really just want to be told what to do, but I already wrote that article here.

It wasn’t until halfway there on the train an hour later that I sobered up and became fully conscious of what I’d done. I was entering the land of frat boys, Guidos and sideways baseball caps without mental preparation or body armor. New Jersey Transit was propelling me directly into the jaws of the New York summer destination famous for its lack of class.

House party activities that ensued included beer pong, quarters, consuming Coors Light, eating Dominos, and this endlessly amusing game called cornhole with which I became obsessed. After defeating every person in the house and their guests, I wanted to continue playing. When I started envisioning myself conquering the cornhole sport at the next Olympic games while wearing one of those beer dispenser helmets with a wrap around straw, I knew I’d developed a problem and made myself stop. For more information about cornhole, I suggest viewing this highly entertaining video.

Ala’ Hamptons, drinking in the Jersey Shore begins around noon and continues throughout the day. The only difference is you’re drinking from a keg instead of a bottle Stella Artois and downing jello shots instead of vintage Patron. With the average age being twenty-five instead of thirty-five, the snood factor eliminated, and any form of pretentiousness or self-respect out the window, the possibility for childish fun is quadruple what you’d experience in the Hamptons. Since there are a lot of college or fraternity/sorority reunion share houses on the shore, maturity is minimal.

Unlike the Hamptons where posh nightclubs are the 1 AM after dark activity, in Jersey you venture to spots that sport cheap liquor and seven dollar lobster, like the Parker House in Sea Girt. Five dollars gets you in, then the wrap around porch with hanging plants, softly spinning antique ceiling fans, rowdy, upstairs, Top Forty dance fest and theoretically quieter downstairs, are all yours to enjoy. The place is at full force with the energy of Pink Elephant by 10 PM. The place shuts down at 12:30, making the shore an “earlier” vacation destination than the Hamptons, which I appreciated.


Lack of cabs and lack of people who remembered to stuff their ID into their beach sarong prevented us from exploring Edgars, the lone club in this area which adopts Parker House patrons post midnight. While I’ve never considered myself a Jersey Shore type of girl, my strong craving to play cornhole again might get me back there and reporting on Edgars sooner than I think. Stay tuned.

An additional plus about the fair weather aside from the obvious sun, spring hook-ups and sudden bouts of personal optimism, is the emergence of a new kind of party – the daytime party, which I’ve written about briefly here. Somehow, once a bathing suit is considered appropriate 24-hour clothing, it also becomes acceptable to start drinking all. day. long.

Let’s think about this.

In December, if a group of friends sat indoors around a television consuming alcohol from 12pm onward in a weekend long frenzy, moving from innocuous beer to wine to mojitos to deadly vodka shots all before dark, they’d be labeled as reclusive, depressed alcoholics. Yet switch December for June, put everyone around a swimming pool instead of a TV, throw some beef patties on a nearby griddle, and suddenly this kind of behavior is not only acceptable but encouraged. The scene no longer resembles a crybaby musical, but rather healthy, stylish adults making the most of the nice weather.

These bacchanalian events are usually enabled by the seemingly-innocent concept of a barbeque. Note that no one ever says, “Why don’t you come over and get sloshed with me tomorrow afternoon?” They say, “Why don’t you come over to my barbeque tomorrow afternoon?” which essentially means the same thing. Observe that daytime summer drinkers avoid the word “party,” lest it make them sound like the addict they truly are. Admitting you’re “partying” during the day is deemed immature and over-the-top. Yet there’s nothing wrong with friends getting together to eat. The fact that your friends group is in the hundreds and crates of alcohol have been purchased in bulk for the occasion is incidental. People need a beverage with their burger, right?

Hence why even hardcore winter drinkers will feel their liver convulse through the crash course that is the sunny barbeque months. And by barbeque I do mean party. If we define a party as a social gathering for pleasure or amusement, usually with music and drinking, what goes on summer afternoons poolside fits this description to a tee. And if you’re in a place like the Hamptons for example, the festivities continue into the clubs all night long. Instead of arriving at a club with three or four drinks in your system like you might in the city, you arrive with twenty-three drinks in your system with the insane expectation to consume the same amount of club alcohol. This helps explain why I’ve seen the most wasted partiers of my life in the Hamptons.

How to survive this seductive summer debauchery?

I’d say hold off on drinking until you’ve eaten at least something from the grill. Stick with light beer or sparkling wine for as long as possible. I’d also recommend not mixing your poisons, so going from champagne to wine to tequila-infused mojitos to beer to rum-infused mojitos to vodka, as I did Sunday afternoon, probably isn’t the best idea if you want to be functional at any point in the next 48-hours. Most importantly, hide your car keys in a flower bush and don’t try anything too crazy off the diving board. By August our communal tolerance will have gone up and the sinful summer barbeque won’t cause such wreckage…hopefully.

Ah, the Hamptons (sigh). Home of the $13 bagel and $150 cab rides. If that’s not enough for you, hop into your convertible and take a cruise over to the only place perhaps hipper than South Hampton itself, Shelter Island’s Sunset Beach. Here social hour starts at around 4pm, getting rowdier and rowdier through sunset. After dark, it’s time for more $14 white peach cocktails and frolicking in the sand until the last ferry ride back to mainland reality at 1:15 AM.

The $25 price tag for a platter of carrot sticks isn’t the only thing that’s unbelievable about this place. Sunset Beach is like being transported to a European Riviera on a seven minute, as opposed to seven week, boat ride. You lounge and socialize at the café with strangers (European). You can even rent overpriced lounge chairs on the beach (European). And they even give you glass beverage containers and expensive-looking cutlery, despite that fact that you’re wearing a bikini (also European). The entire experience reminded me of La Huella, the seaside hotspot in Jose Ignacio near Punta del Este – the WASPY American version, of course.

The best news of all is that despite the fact nearly one-third of Shelter Island is owned by The Nature Conservancy and kept in a forever-wild state; its remaining 5,000 acres are big enough to host every single person you’ve ever partied with in Manhattan.

That’s right.

Make sure the sunscreen on your face is rubbed in, because I can guarantee you’ll be bumping elbows with people you never thought you’d see sober (let alone awake in daylight hours, and in swim attire). You might even discover many of your party animal acquaintances have (gasp!) children or (gasp!) wives. I’d recommend bringing shades to guise any bouts of shock that might scramble through your eyes as you run into faces you only thought you’d see distortedly on drunken nights at Kiss & Fly. I for example ran into:

1. A lovable womanizer I know from both Manhattan and Punta, who in a previous incident bit my nail off in a South American nightclub.

2. My philandering ex-boss from half a decade ago who owns New York clubs and restaurants. He used to have us organize his venue’s seating arrangements so he could go on dates while being out of eyesight of his pregnant girlfriend, who’d eat at the restaurant every night.

3. A former model who on previous occasions had threatened to kill me for speaking to her meal ticket, I mean boyfriend, who wasn’t only my co-worker but longtime friend (not to mention I wasn’t even single at the time…)

This unexpected treasure trove of old acquaintances had me sneaking out Sunset Beach café’s back exit, through the kitchen and past the staff porta-potties fugitive style. Nonetheless, not even a run-in with a girl who used to voicemail me death threats could put in dent in the natural beauty or serenity of this place.

As a summer party destination, it’s worth checking out for sure.

Ready for a photo tour of a newly built Hamptons house that’s just begging to be destroyed with debaucherous activity? It’s got all the elements necessary for a non-stop summer blow out. Let’s check them out:

1. The kick-ass deck. A Hamptons party pad needs a humongous, sprawling deck as this is where all social activity will take place. Who in their right mind would ever want to party indoors?

2. A glamorous, heated pool. How else are you going to get your backyard to look like a music video? Poolside ladies are also necessary.

3. A billiard room with an outdoor deck and three flat screen TVs. Why not?

4. An elegant master suite for the private party. Don’t worry; this bed could easily sleep six. Nothing raunchy about that.

5. A tub big enough for four, just so if the party gets too stressful you can truly “relax” without chlorine or sand.

6. A jacuzzi which doubles as iPod deck complete with built in speakers.

Architectural genius! Also a must: the large BBQ (not photographed), at least a dozen lawn chairs, and multiple freezers. Party on.

The words “Lily Pond” make me think of frogs, ducklings, lily pads, flowers and children’s literature. Interestingly enough, it’s actually the name of a nightclub in East Hampton. I got over my “What they were thinking?!” distress and decided I wouldn’t let the fact that the club sounded like a five-year-old’s favorite book prejudice my opinion. Yet trying to scope out the place with an open mind remained additionally challenging since Lily Pond’s rep at the poolside Hampton’s conversations I’d been eavesdropping on wasn’t positive. It seemed like I’d heard Hamptonite after Hamptonite hating on the place describing it as “a dump,” “Guido-central,” and “the worst night of my life.”

Yikes!

The snobs in South Hampton and beyond also complained about the club’s distance, describing it as “a long haul” compared to Pink Elephant or Dune.

I stayed in East Hampton this weekend around so the distance complaints were nixed. We were there in our insanely over-priced taxi in ten minutes. (Note: Taxi drivers in the Hamptons like to charge you ‘per head’ so they can make upwards of $100 dollars on inter-town rides. P.S. Meter’s are non-existent).

The backstory is that Lily inhabits the space formerly known as Resort. After a small fortune spent in renovations, it’s now the official brainchild of Unik Ernest (PM) and Michael Satsky (Stereo).

Outside was appropriately as mess just as any Hamptons club past midnight on a Saturday should be. I allowed myself to be herded through the entrance and found myself genuinely surprised by the layout before me. It was large! Almost spacious (for the Hamptons). And had real decorations ala Manhattan club with gold walls and chandeliers, unlike the pirate-y, sawdusty feel of Dune.

After apparently not having a lightening system set up Memorial Day weekend, the club’s now overcompensated by installing absurdly over-the-top mini spotlights. These rotating bulbs run up and down the room swirling varying shades of yellow, purple, pink and making it 100% impossible to discern if the object in front of you is man, woman, child or beast. So consider bringing sunglasses or nausea medication. Also, keep the random make-out sessions to a minimum because visual (and consequently mental) impairment is a certainty.



I’d always cited Pink Elephant’s status as ‘best’ Hamptons club on the fact that they were the only venue with a substantial outdoor area. Come to find out, this isn’t true. While Dune is an enclosed sweatshop, Lily Pond boasts an outdoor area. The music’s quieter out there and it’s definitely not where the best bottle service or action is, but if you want to escape the indoor madness, chat with or merely get a concrete look at a fellow partier, the outdoor space is a lovely option.

A mysterious female rapper gave a thirty minute performance which was bizarre and unexpected, then the DJ took over in what I considered a commendable job. Yes, the club was a madhouse and uncomfortably crowded, but that’s to be expected. What I found noteworthy was how the whole space had this unique, European feel. Nothing that classy but several steps above in ambiance compared to other Hamptons clubs. I left early since I just wasn’t drunk enough to fit in and wanted first dibs on a bed, couch or air mattress.

On the whole, Lily Pond - nowhere near as bad as the South Hamptoners made it out to be. These folks just might be resistant to change.