part 2 here

According to Long Island royalty, Hamptons clubs are strictly B-list since born-and-bred Hamptoners only attend private parties and tastefully catered charity events. My source divulged that real blue book natives even consider restaurants a step down, since frequenting one implies you don’t have a chef.

Our house party shindig involved a $3,500 alcohol delivery from the local store, shrimp skewers, insalata caprese, potato salad, steak, charred hot dogs and gourmet burgers (marinated in a French sauce before being grilled to perfection) for around sixty people. These BBQ socials tend to take place during the day. It’s therefore customary to take your guests out for a ride on your boat (located just down the lawn, on your private dock, of course).

The boys in our house had purchased a powerboat mere days before, meaning no one really knew how to use it yet. Our excursions so far had involved

1) ‘Christening’ i.e. swigging Crystal on the boat while it was parked at the dock

2) Driving the boat at full speed in reckless U-turns in a frightening adult version of Disney Land’s tea cup ride (yes, people were screaming ‘whee’ and getting splashed)

3) Trying to anchor on a nearby beach before realizing we didn’t have an anchor. One of our friends did hop on shore however to offer some of his Rose Brut to local crab fisherman

4) Boarding the boat the next day, launching off, and noticing that the battery was dead. While this was somewhat disappointing, no one really seemed to care. We fortuitously floated to our neighbors dock, tied up, and jovially left the boat at their house with no explanation, no note, and no concerns

5) Motoring over a sandbar, oops (the bay’s both shallow and confusing, especially while intoxicated) and making our motor sound like a grunting old man on his death bed

Despite these minor troubles, overall the toy was a huge success. Guests were taken for a ride in shifts as we played oh-so-mature water games like ‘drive directly into a nearby wave,’ ‘speed and halt,’ and ‘wipeout.’ I’m sure the locals in their canoes and kayaks really appreciated our wake.

A pleasant yet less active element of the house party involved (shocker!) actually getting to talk to people. It’s hard to assemble a meaningful conversation in the thumping madness of a club. In the Hamptons however, you don’t just meet up with your posse for drinks at 11 in the evening and put them in a cab at 3 AM. You live with your entourage, bonding on a much deeper level than you would in the city (example: “Who clogged the toilet in downstairs bathroom #3?” “Who farted in my bathrobe?”)
For me, the entire Hamptons experience and house party existed as a modern day version of The Other Boleyn Girl – a renaissance court in which the activity is the pursuit of leisure, pleasure and power.

Everyone’s trapped in a large estate or share house (much like the royal courts of France and England) with the intention of relaxing while simultaneously battling for the best living quarters, rooms, and beds. If you’re the guest in someone else’s home, the home’s owner in many ways assumes the role of king. The guests seek his permissions, whether it’s taking the new jet skis out for a spin or inviting five more people to sleep at the castle.

Socially, at least in the Hamptons, not that much has changed in past centuries. The men are just playing touch football instead of jousting, and the women are wearing bikinis instead of ball gowns.

part 1 here

About the chef: Our house had a sour-puss chef called M who hated the cruel circumstances he was forced to cook in. M was previously our host’s mother’s cook, before that, he cooked for two presidents. He now found himself in a houseful of forty drunk twenty-year-old and immature thirty-year-olds who’d happily eat Doritos indefinitely and didn’t know the difference between fennel and watercress. Most of the heated arguments centered around the fact that he’d prepare dinner to be served at 9 PM and no one would sit down until 11 PM. If cooking is your life’s passion and food needs to be served hot, I understand how this could be frustrating. M was also fielding questions 24-7 like:

Will you teach my how to make soufflé?

Have you seen my baggie of weed? Oh, are you making brownies? Because if you’re using it for that, that’s cool.

M will you make us Margaritas? I’ll get the blender. (Question asked at 10 AM)

That quiche you made for breakfast was better than the orgasm I had last night. I loved the bacon bits.

Can I lick the bowl?

(Drunk girl) Thank you SOOOOOO much. Can I give you a hug?

(Me watching oven timer) Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, cookies!

Can you call the liquor store and order fifteen more crates of Rose? Just tell them we’re averaging 23 bottles of champagne a night.

Your egg salad is seriously kicks ass, man.

Are you married?

Do shots with us! M, you have to do shots with us!

So upon further analysis, it didn’t surprise me at all that the chef was one of the crabbiest humans I’d ever met who scowled at our compliments as if we’d tossed dog poo at him. On the contrary, this guy deserves some sort of culinary award for cooking in extremely immature circumstances.

About Dune: Night number two we traveled to Dune, the nightclub I wrote about in disdain last year. Nothing’s changed.

Unlike Pink, Dune doesn’t boast an outdoor space. And while at Pink tables are a foot and a half apart, at Dune, they’re six inches apart. I’ve started calling Dune the sweat shop, because in essence, that’s all it is: A sauna in which you can never get comfortable and you’re constantly battling the person next to you for elbow space. The music brings a whole new meaning to the word cheesy.

The basic ambiance – the ropes, shells, tacky ceiling – all looks like a pirate theme in a dive bar. And I know we’ve gone beyond hoping for elegance in Hamptons clubs, but couldn’t we at least hope for something more than creaky, saw dusty, wood floors?

From my limited experience, Dune also seems to have the sloppiest partiers. Maybe patrons let themselves get too drunk to walk because they know at Dune falling down is an impossibility: The tightly packed crowd will hold you upright. One girl in the very center of the club swayed and spun around on top of a banquet like an unbalanced swivel chair, a dangerous accident waiting to happen.

Later, she poured an entire flute of champagne onto a boy (ex-boyfriend’s?) head below. He proceeded to wail and shake the champagne out of his long hair much like a wet dog shakes himself off after a swim.

So if you get off on that kind of thing at $5,000 a table with an extreme crowd and rowdy fun, Dune might be the place for you. Personally, I prefer to be somewhere a lot less sweaty.

We stayed a good forty-five minutes before piling back into our black vans and heading toward the house. There was a lot to prepare for since on Sunday we’d be hosting the house’s very first BBQ / house party of the summer.

To be continued…

Miss Model Behavior’s the nightlife writer for theBlaqlist.com. Feel free to post any nightlife comments or questions on our forum or contact her at MissModelBehavior@theBlaqlist.com

Accepting an invitation to stay in the Hamptons is like journeying into a black hole. No matter how well you know your host or how great they ensure you their set up is, until you’re physically on the premises you should be prepared to accept both a caddy shack and a castle. You can never fully know what you’re getting into. If someone guarantees you a bed, pack an air mattress. If they say there’s a fulltime chef, pack ramen. If they say you have a ride, reserve worst-case-scenario jitney seats.

Do I sound paranoid? Well, New Yorkers are liars, folks. And especially in the Hamptons, it’s every camper for themselves. Plus I had some bad experiences last year which left a particularly bitter taste in my mouth.

Bartok, my friend whose visits I use as an excuse to act like a sixteen-year-old, had arrived Thursday night. Our plan was to train it out to the Hamptons Friday as soon as I finished work around 6 PM, the logic being that anyone driving would’ve already left and that the highway would be bumper to bumper with people having just departed from their office. Immediately, our Hamptons karma seemed to be recovering from last year since we

a) were offered a last minute ride

b) by a driver who wasn’t insane

c) by a driver who also had the good sense to take us out for post-work Grey Goose shots, Coronas, and appetizers at a gemstone of a restaurant called the Water Club, a scenic, peaceful place literally in the river with a pianist and waiters in bow-tie uniforms. This was smart because we

d) missed the hoards of ‘people leaving the city early’ traffic and got to our destination in Watermill in a shocking hour and forty-five minutes.

Getting to the Hamptons that fast on a holiday Friday felt like cheating on a test. By waiting till 8 PM to leave the city, when you think traffic would be detrimental, we actually coasted at a safe speed through clear roads. The satellite navigation system, which I named Sandra, got us to our destination without a single wrong turn. As our kind driver said, “I’ll take shots over traffic any day.” And I hope to use this logic again in some sort of future scenario.

No previous Hamptons house could compare to the kingdom we drove up to. It was large, Great Gatsby-like and impeccably furnished with a pool, rolling grass, hammock, cottage, enormous deck and dock since it was literally on the water. Rumors of the chef were true as well, as he was already dicing onions in the kitchen and looking peeved. Come to find out, the chef was unendingly peeved, but we’ll get into that later.

Survivor-style, Bartok and I took over the first bathroom we could find to shower and make ourselves Hamptons worthy. My friend who’d invited us, who we’ll call Fahotti, is from a Middle Eastern country I’ll leave nameless. For some reason, I’d assumed everyone in his house would share his accent, skin color, and place of origin. Hence my surprise when we joined the group at dinner and found that his male friends in the house were so classically American that unaltered, they could’ve been posing for a J.Crew catalogue. Ladies were present too, and we all enjoyed a delicious home cooked meal of fresh baked bread, mushroom stuffed chicken and summer soup made from scratch.

My largest Hamptons concern has always been the car issue: crazy drivers, drunk drivers, space in the car, getting left behind. All these worries were blissfully eliminated as the home’s organizer had hired two drivers in huge black SUV vans to transport the house’s entourage (which would increase throughout the weekend to number around 60 people on Sunday night) to and from the club.

Gossip floated around for weeks that Pink Elephant would not be able to stay at the Capri Hotel where it enjoys an outdoor space. Some claimed Pink would move into Tavern (too big), others said it would be at Capri but be limited to indoors (too small). Anyway, this hullaballoo was all lies and more lies. Pink is exactly as it was last year with perhaps quieter music outside, which let’s face it, is a blessing when you want to give your eardrums a break or God forbid, have a conversation with someone.

Being May, it remained too chilly for people other than chain smokers to spend a lot of time outside, which means the inside of the club looked like this:

This body mash would’ve been a downer, but our prepared host had ensured we receive a spacious table in front of the DJ booth and near the door (breeze, yes!). Pink in the Hamptons is unabashedly more commercial than Pink New York and primarily played Top Forty while mixing in some old school favorites. Because let’s face it, when you’re drunk and on vacation with your friends, you’d much rather have everyone jumping up and down to Usher than doing that whole sophisticated euro house thing. At night in clubs in the Hamptons, no one’s even going to try and pretend to be sophisticated.

Yes, there was some fun drama and unexpected scuffles. My gold watch that looks like a Bulgari, which I actually bought for $5 from a war veteran by Ground Zero, got entangled in a nearby girl’s fro. I apologized and thought that kind of accident could be categorized as the standard party endangerment one accepts when entering a club packed to the ceiling with Patron-filled people, but she took personal offense and seemed ready to stab me with her shoe horn necklace (being the courageous person I am, I ran away). A Belvedere bottle some how landed / launched / fell onto Bartok’s bare foot, creating a bruise which she complained about for days. And security had to control some intense table feuds and drunk-ready-to-fight frenemy situations. But I learned last year that Hamptons clubs aren’t a classy place. So instead of being appalled, I took in the rowdiness with a smile and sip of champagne.

Clubs are a bout of extra intensity in the all-day fiesta that is the Hamptons. Clubbing seems to serve as an opportunity to get everyone out of the house, a human dog-walking of sorts. Back at the castle post-club, the music continued. Someone who really wanted to see girls get naked had the smarts to turn the pool up to 90 degrees. Everyone can imagine what happened from there.

On this night (night number one), I claimed an actual bed and had the feeling several people would join me. One girl did midway through the morning. Keep in mind that Friday however, we were an assortment of only twenty people. This number would increase exponentially as the weekend progressed.

To Be Continued…

Miss Model Behavior’s the new nightlife writer for theBlaqlist.com. Feel free to post any nightlife comments or questions on our forum or contact her at MissModelBehavior@theBlaqlist.com

Exactly one year ago, I voyaged to the Hamptons for the very first time. The experience was not…how to put it kindly…a positive.

After drinking and changing clothes, it was time to hit our first destination. Memorial Day weekend means the grand opening of most Hampton clubs. We arrived outside of an establishment called Dune after paying twenty dollars to self park our car in a weedy patch of sand. If that cost twenty I was afraid to know the cost of valet? Fifty? It was just midnight and the heard of people already outside Dune resembled this fall’s massive immigration march in New York City. After many uncomfortable moments in line, Scruff finally picked us out of the crowd. We then past a large Maxim ad where certain douchey individuals chose to pose and have their picture taken by some kind of fake paparazzi.

I bee-lined for the outdoor area. If I had wanted to be in a muggy indoor club I could’ve stayed in the city and gone to the bar below my apartment. While Pink’s music and ambiance was a definite improvement, the condition of the people mirrored Dune. I saw older women jumping erratically around the outdoor beds like chimpanzees and an attractive blonde hump a tree only to break into a full out striptease. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge supporter of drunken fun, but there’s a difference between a party and a shit-show.

The story ends with me taking a jitney back to NYC before my scheduled departure in an effort to save my soul. I’ve clearly learned nothing however, because now, one year later, I’m going to do it all over again.

Why?

Because this year I’m not a naïve outsider expecting backless evening gowns and elegant ocean side clubs. This year, I’ve mastered the game of the share house, the back up share house, and the back up-back up share house, and the sleeping bag. This year, I won’t be discovering. I’ll be aware and ready to pounce. This year, I won’t be expecting people to take care of me. I’ll be a resourceful superwomen with a premeditated plan. I’ve already negotiated 12 entrance and exit routes.

So with my fantasy Hamptons bubble already burst and the shock factor eliminated, will my feelings be as hostile as last year’s?

More about my exact plan of attack and its results coming soon…

I’ve been putting it off forever, but I guess I can’t really stake claim as a nightlife writer if I refuse to discuss the Hamptons.

Memorial Day weekend is the beginning of the H-Madness that will continue in an obnoxious frenzy until Labor Day. Why it’s fun to lug yourself to Long Island, share an air mattress with three other people in someone else’s share house basement and go to a windy beach with freezing water while massively hung-over is unclear. It just is. Right? Or Wrong?

Let’s examine some of the pros and cons.

Hamptons Pros

Swimming Pools (yes!)

Sun (yes!)

Hot tubs (yes! yes! yes!)

Feeling like you’re at adult summer camp (camper activities: drinking, sunning, hooking up)

Bonfires (warm)

Cheesy events (countless!)

Leisurely walks and bike rides (if you can see straight, if all you can see is champagne don’t leave the sauna)

Group bonding (how can you not bond when it’s ten to a bathroom?)

Hot parties (depending on your definition of hot, but the NYC clubs definitely lose some of their weekend vigor)

Celebrity sightings (if you care)

The beach (if you’re cool with un-Mediterranean water temperatures)

Hamptons Cons

Transport / traffic (a logistics nightmare)

Lodging (bring your sleeping bag and prepare to be molested in your sleep)

Driving (yeah, someone’s gotta be sober)

Distance (stuff is far apart!)

Outrageously expensive cabs (*%$#@?)

Outrageously expensive everything ($8 croissants!?)

Nutty, rich people (somehow they’re on worse behavior in rural areas)

Very drunk people (the vacation atmosphere encourages people to ‘let loose’)

Dependency on others to go places / get around (this is usually my deal breaker)

Ridiculous ostentatiousness

Weird cell phone coverage

The inability to escape the people you’re with

Stuff that I don’t know if it’s a Pro or Con

Seeing everyone you know from Manhattan in beach attire

Going to every club you’d go to in New York ‘the Hamptons’ version

Living with people you’d usually just party with

More after my voyage there this weekend…

Miss Model Behavior’s the new nightlife writer for theBlaqlist.com. Feel free to post any nightlife comments or questions on our forum or contact her at MissModelBehavior@theBlaqlist.com