Wandering around Southampton looking for the Hertz rent-a-car office gave me the first taste of what the rest of the Hamptons are like, the big villages of Southampton and Easthampton. It’s pretty close to what you see on television, a bit like Beverly Hills transported to the beach. Everyone under 40 is very designer shabby, all flip flops and big sunglasses and $200 t-shirts in horribly bland colours. Everyone is trying to dress designer down. It’s amusing but I’m not buying into it. For starters, I look terrible in billowy grey t-shirts. I like to match. I like colour. I like tailoring. I like to look neat and tidy. I’m going to wear whatever the heck I want, and I don’t care about the rest of you.
Shopkeepers are exceptionally rude. S tells me they are generally pretty cranky this close to the end of the season.
Apart from the shops, there are lots of high-end seafood joints and nannies pushing whining kids around in fancy prams. Oh and it’s a great place to see retro roadsters. Lots of old lavender suited gents driving around in vintage Mercedes convertibles and rollers from the 1950s.
Easthampton is the trendiest of them all, but quite frankly, I didn’t think much of it. There are the usual shops, high-priced restaurants and gelato bars. And it would literally kill these people to say thank you if you hold a door open for them or acknowledge that we’re all breathing the same air today in town. Rude, rude, rude.
Compare this to Sag Harbour. In my first three minutes of stepping off the Jitney and pulling out my map and spinning around in a 360, a local-looking guy asked me if he could help me find something and pointed me in the direction of home for the next few days.
Then there were the lovely guys who sat next to me at the bar while I ate dinner at the New Paradise Café. New Yorkers. Both very impressed that I’m traveling by myself. One has a close friend who is Australian, Peter Lowy, and so has met quite a few Australians over the years. He’s always joked with Peter that he’s so successful in business in New York because of the accent. Before leaving for dinner somewhere else, they asked Howie at the bar to take good care of me.
Then there was the lovely Colombian local who chatted to me for hours and bought me drinks at Murphy’s dive bar in a back-street of Sag Harbour. W (S’ boyfriend) had drawn me a detailed map of where to go to dinner and how to get Murph’s afterwards. Murphs is a one room lean-to of a bar in an old shack in a backstreet of Sag Harbour. It’s such a contrast to the main street, which looks like it’s straight out of a movie set. Yet, anyone and everyone drinks at Murphs. There were the kids who all knew eachother because their parents have summer places here and they’ve spent their holidays in Sag Harbour for as long as they can remember. The locals, like the lovely Columbian and apparently according to S a lot of famous people swing past Murph’s to have low-key drink without all the attention. Before he died, JFK Jnr was often a regular at Murph’s when he was in town.
In town on Sunday morning I also read that Steinbeck lived in Sag Harbour for a time in the 1950s as well as Arthur Miller and Jackson Pollack. Steinbeck wrote the Winter of our Discontent one cold summer in Sag Harbour. He probably had a few drinks at Murph’s with Arthur Miller.
So I spent my days driving around in the Cobalt, walking along the beaches, driving past the most gorgeous homes I’ve ever seen, street after street, swinging into little art galleries and boutiques, checking out the local lighthouse etc. In a word, it was really low-key bliss. Oh and because it’s only $8.99 for a six pack, I bought Caronas and corn chips that I’d crack open in the back garden of S’s place while I told her about my day and watched the sun dip down over the back hedge. But I think the experience would have been very different had I not been staying in Sag Harbour and not staying with locals.
On Sunday I had to take the car back, so I couldn’t join in the sailing, which I think Buddy was a bit miffed about. So I watched them set off and swam out to a pontoon, which I soon found out was a private pontoon. Reaffirmed by the lady who also swam out to the pontoon complete with bathing cap, to ask me if I was a friend of the family’s, because this was their private pontoon after all.
...and that was the Hamptons!
Thursday, September 2, 2010
A note on car rentals
We HATE HERTZ. We love Avis. I booked a car online with Hertz to pick up from Southampton on Friday afternoon. I booked GPS, not a luxury in my case but an absolute necessity. Hertz will take your reservation. They just can’t seem to be able to provide you with what you’ve ordered. No GPS on any of the cars they had in their lot. After much, huffing and puffing and ‘Maybe you could take this car tonight and we can see if we can swap it tomorrow at an undefined time for a car with GPS but I can’t guarantee anything”, I said, “Thanks very much, but I’ll just cancel the whole deal and if you can let me know the number of the taxi that would be great.”
Five minutes later I arrived at Avis where they could hook me up with a car for the same price, and GPS. I told them that I’d just come from Hertz where they couldn’t deliver on the order, so I got a special deal on the Chevy Cobalt. It was no pony, but it was a coupe with a rear spoiler, but not being local, I don’t know whether a Chevy Cobalt is a cool car or not, or whether it’s just like getting a hyundai Excel with a spoiler? Shane advice?
Five minutes later I arrived at Avis where they could hook me up with a car for the same price, and GPS. I told them that I’d just come from Hertz where they couldn’t deliver on the order, so I got a special deal on the Chevy Cobalt. It was no pony, but it was a coupe with a rear spoiler, but not being local, I don’t know whether a Chevy Cobalt is a cool car or not, or whether it’s just like getting a hyundai Excel with a spoiler? Shane advice?
I heart the Hamptons
Love it or hate it – you gotta go to the Hamptons, and when you do, stay in Sag Harbour. I stayed there because it was the only place in the Hamptons that I could find an Airb’n’b place but in hindsight – it was the best possible choice. The cranky New Yorkers were right about one thing though – you need a car if you want to see it all, or maybe a yacht?
My first night in the Hamptons, I was quickly whisked away from the house by my host S. to her art gallery on Shelter Island - a tiny piece of the Hamptons jammed between the North and South forks accessible only by boat.
En route we picked up beer for the gallery party and we stopped by Buddy and Cynthia’s place to pick up S’ boyfriend W. Buddy is one cool guy. S, W and Buddy are all mad sailors. Buddy has Sag Harbour’s unofficial yacht club in a huge shed at the back of his summer place where he lets everyone store their boats during the summer. Three times a week through summer Buddy organises fiercely competitive sailing comps in the harbour.
We had to go to Buddy’s to pick up W, who was at Buddy’s after sailing to drop the boat back. Buddy and Cynthia were about to sit down to dinner, and the next thing you know, there I was chowing down on salmon watching the sun set over Shelter Island on the back deck of Buddy and Cynthia’s place right on the water – magical! Pinch me.
Buddy and Cynthia live closer to New York City during the rest of the year but they have two places at Sag Harbour for the summer. The place I went to and another place down the road which is kind of a bunkhouse/party house for their kids, so they can bring their friends home for the college for the Summer. Cool huh? According to their daughter Maggie, she's always getting in trouble for not bringing people home for the weekend to help crew Buddy's boat.
We had to make a hasty exit from Buddy and Cynthia’s to grab the barge over to Shelter Island before S was late for her own opening party. Not before, Cynthia marked me on the wall in the kitchen and wrote my name and the date and Buddy made vague plans to involve me in Sunday’s sailing comp.
The gallery party was a hoot! Sometimes I feel like I’m not really doing the holidaying so much as watching other people on holidays and sniggering and stifling giggles at all that I see and hear. The gallery party was definitely one of those occasions.
The opening was actually hosted by Karen, a glamazon that owns the gallery next to S’ and hosts entertainment at her gallery every Friday night of 'the season'. Tonight’s special entertainment was a very modern mix of images projected on a wall inside the gallery, with interpretive dancers and a DJ spinning random sounds to accompany it. In a word, it was terrible. I’m sorry, but modern interpretive dance is the biggest wank on earth. I like art, I like modern art. But I draw the line at interpretive dance. This was interpretive dance to random groaning sounds and scratching and bird noises and other crap. It was hideous. But that’s not even the best bit.
Have you ever walked past Ralph Lauren and seen a summer collection of sorbet coloured menswear? Models wearing lemon coloured jeans with mauve sweaters teamed with peppermint shirts. I often wondered who bought that stuff? I’m sure they sell a stack of gelato coloured polo shirts but I always wondered who bought the rest of the gear that always seemed to end up at the Harbour Town outlet store – surely this kind of stuff was really one item at a time wear? No? Now I know. It’s all sold to wealthy 65 year-olds in the Hamptons that actually wear it as complete ensembles. So picture this for live entertainment - I’m watching this complete garbage of a performance surrounded by wealthy old men in lavender sweaters teamed with peppermint jeans and white trousers with lemons sweaters. As I said earlier, between the performance and the outfits, and don’t get me started on what the women were wearing, there were a few times when I had to suddenly look away as a derisive smirk formed from the corners of my mouth. It was fantastic.
After the garbage performance – which I of course lied through my teeth and said I enjoyed, even hamming it up to talk about the energy of the dance and the flow between structured movement and free-flowing forms (while vomiting on the inside), we milled around outside and drank S’ beer. I chatted mostly to her friends - not a lavender jumper among them. There was the artist who is showing in her gallery at the moment and her husband who were really fun, S’ intern for the summer, Chip – a local real estate agent and Frank, a local interior decorator who specializes in mid-century pieces – hmm an interior decorator in the Hamptons oh how I want Frank’s job. Frank and I had a brief chat about the price of mid-century furniture in the US compared with Australia (which piqued Frank’s interest, again, I’m thinking about shipping containers!).
At about 11, we decided to pile into Chip’s Landrover and head for the uber cool bar Sunset at Sunset Beach. Now there’s a few cool ideas I could steal to rival the coolest bars I’ve ever been to on the Gold Coast, Noosa or Sydney. Friday is the quiet night so we just chilled out on the lounges by the fire pit – very cool indeed. And that was pretty much, the first 10 hours in the Hamptons taken care of.
My first night in the Hamptons, I was quickly whisked away from the house by my host S. to her art gallery on Shelter Island - a tiny piece of the Hamptons jammed between the North and South forks accessible only by boat.
En route we picked up beer for the gallery party and we stopped by Buddy and Cynthia’s place to pick up S’ boyfriend W. Buddy is one cool guy. S, W and Buddy are all mad sailors. Buddy has Sag Harbour’s unofficial yacht club in a huge shed at the back of his summer place where he lets everyone store their boats during the summer. Three times a week through summer Buddy organises fiercely competitive sailing comps in the harbour.
We had to go to Buddy’s to pick up W, who was at Buddy’s after sailing to drop the boat back. Buddy and Cynthia were about to sit down to dinner, and the next thing you know, there I was chowing down on salmon watching the sun set over Shelter Island on the back deck of Buddy and Cynthia’s place right on the water – magical! Pinch me.
Buddy and Cynthia live closer to New York City during the rest of the year but they have two places at Sag Harbour for the summer. The place I went to and another place down the road which is kind of a bunkhouse/party house for their kids, so they can bring their friends home for the college for the Summer. Cool huh? According to their daughter Maggie, she's always getting in trouble for not bringing people home for the weekend to help crew Buddy's boat.
We had to make a hasty exit from Buddy and Cynthia’s to grab the barge over to Shelter Island before S was late for her own opening party. Not before, Cynthia marked me on the wall in the kitchen and wrote my name and the date and Buddy made vague plans to involve me in Sunday’s sailing comp.
The gallery party was a hoot! Sometimes I feel like I’m not really doing the holidaying so much as watching other people on holidays and sniggering and stifling giggles at all that I see and hear. The gallery party was definitely one of those occasions.
The opening was actually hosted by Karen, a glamazon that owns the gallery next to S’ and hosts entertainment at her gallery every Friday night of 'the season'. Tonight’s special entertainment was a very modern mix of images projected on a wall inside the gallery, with interpretive dancers and a DJ spinning random sounds to accompany it. In a word, it was terrible. I’m sorry, but modern interpretive dance is the biggest wank on earth. I like art, I like modern art. But I draw the line at interpretive dance. This was interpretive dance to random groaning sounds and scratching and bird noises and other crap. It was hideous. But that’s not even the best bit.
Have you ever walked past Ralph Lauren and seen a summer collection of sorbet coloured menswear? Models wearing lemon coloured jeans with mauve sweaters teamed with peppermint shirts. I often wondered who bought that stuff? I’m sure they sell a stack of gelato coloured polo shirts but I always wondered who bought the rest of the gear that always seemed to end up at the Harbour Town outlet store – surely this kind of stuff was really one item at a time wear? No? Now I know. It’s all sold to wealthy 65 year-olds in the Hamptons that actually wear it as complete ensembles. So picture this for live entertainment - I’m watching this complete garbage of a performance surrounded by wealthy old men in lavender sweaters teamed with peppermint jeans and white trousers with lemons sweaters. As I said earlier, between the performance and the outfits, and don’t get me started on what the women were wearing, there were a few times when I had to suddenly look away as a derisive smirk formed from the corners of my mouth. It was fantastic.
After the garbage performance – which I of course lied through my teeth and said I enjoyed, even hamming it up to talk about the energy of the dance and the flow between structured movement and free-flowing forms (while vomiting on the inside), we milled around outside and drank S’ beer. I chatted mostly to her friends - not a lavender jumper among them. There was the artist who is showing in her gallery at the moment and her husband who were really fun, S’ intern for the summer, Chip – a local real estate agent and Frank, a local interior decorator who specializes in mid-century pieces – hmm an interior decorator in the Hamptons oh how I want Frank’s job. Frank and I had a brief chat about the price of mid-century furniture in the US compared with Australia (which piqued Frank’s interest, again, I’m thinking about shipping containers!).
At about 11, we decided to pile into Chip’s Landrover and head for the uber cool bar Sunset at Sunset Beach. Now there’s a few cool ideas I could steal to rival the coolest bars I’ve ever been to on the Gold Coast, Noosa or Sydney. Friday is the quiet night so we just chilled out on the lounges by the fire pit – very cool indeed. And that was pretty much, the first 10 hours in the Hamptons taken care of.
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