Red Bar

While the Hamptons may lag behind NYC in sheer quantity of restaurants, there's plenty of really good food to be found out here. I've already raved about Le Chef, but Red Bar is sneaking into second place in my list of overly-indulgent restaurants.

Just before Mom arrived on her visit, I had a great accomplishment at work that really required celebrating, so I wanted something special for our first dinner in town. I had heard good things about this Red Bar place (and I just really liked the name) so off we went. From the time we looked at the drink menu, I was pretty sure that we'd made a good choice. First, they serve Chimay ale, which I love. They also had a very nice collection of Long Island wine, including several favorites from my friends over at Channing Daughters.

And then we heard about the specials. They were doing really astonishing things with Nantucket scallops that evening, and we had a wonderful scallop ceviche along with a salad loaded with pears, candied nuts, and Stilton cheese. After that, there was another scallop entree (can you really have too many scallops in one meal?) and a whole roasted red snapper.

Now, the snapper was a little intimidating. When the food came out, my mother was presented with this rather large whole roasted fish, bones and head and all. The women in my family won't let much come between us and our seafood, but we really were both stumped as to how to proceed. Cut the head off? Pick off the good bits, like a lobster? Are you supposed to eat the fins??? What are we supposed to do now??!? Mom was looking like she thought she'd been cheated and was eyeing my scallops in a most distressing manner.

Just when I started to think I was going to have to defend my entree with little more than a butter knife, help arrived in the shape of a Brazillian waiter who traded a few snippets of Portuguese with Mom as he quite deftly turned the Plate O' Monster Fish into dinner and whisked away all the icky bits. He warned us to watch out for more bones, and we did have to be careful. Totally worth it.

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

Why, oh, why would a blogger ever leave home without a camera? I ask this because words will certainly fail to do justice to my latest favorite Hamptons moment. The thing is, when a Hamptons girl is stopping by the drugstore on a Saturday evening for some Chapstick, she just wouldn't expect to need photographic documentation - which is why I don't have a picture of the fire truck parade.

Mom was here for a visit over the weekend, and at some point on Saturday her Chapstick went missing. So on the way back from duck pizza at World Pie out in Bridgehampton, we stopped by the local chain-drug-superstore. Chaos ensued, as it turns out that Mom is just a little bit picky about her skin care products (we don't think of ourselves as high maintenance... we just want it how we want it. I come by it honestly). Mission more or less accomplished, we headed back to the Jeep to the sound of blaring sirens rolling past.

Refer back to my post of 9/11 of this year if you need a refresher, but that many sirens that close to me does still make me a little bit skittish. All downtown NYC 9/11 survivors, I think, quickly identify and assess such things - almost without realizing it. In my case, I couldn't smell anything burning, so I looked around to find the emergency vehicles. They were on the side road at the intersection with Main Street, and they didn't seem to be moving very fast, so Something was clearly Up.

But... they seemed brighter than usual. A LOT brighter than usual. And looking down the street, there were a bunch more coming along.

So it turned out we had stumbled upon a parade. All of the fire trucks were wrapped up in string after string of Christmas lights, from the front bumpers to their ladders. There were wreaths and light-up, blow-up reindeer and Santas on the roofs, and assorted light sculptures attached to the back ends. The firemen were following along behind in their gear. The very last truck was carrying Santa and Mrs. Claus through town, presumably to preside over the Village Christmas tree lighting in the park.

What else could we do but stand out there in the cold and watch Santa drive by?

Naturally, immediately upon returning home, the Chapstick turned up in Mom's pocket. So the trip to the drugstore was a wasted one... right?

Several lessons learned, here: Sometimes it takes a little insignificant chaos to get you into the right place at the right time. Take the &%*@! camera - it's small. The best holiday moments are the unexpected ones. But most importantly: You don't ever have to be too old, too stressed out, or too jaded for Santa Claus.

A Question

The apple orchards are closed for the year, but you can still see fruit on the trees as you drive past. Why is the local grocery store inviting me to buy a holiday meal for needy families in the area - a meal made up of canned and processed meat, starch and sweets, all of which have been trucked in from who knows where - while fresh local apples are rotting on the trees?

Post-Turkey

One of the things I love about the Hamptons in the holiday season is the decorations. Now, back home in Kentucky, there's always the traditional drive around town to look at the Christmas lights on the houses. We have a lot less of that here, as the uber-riche in the estate district really discourage people from gawking at their homes, no matter what the time of year. But the Town puts up Christmas trees covered with colored lights, lining the downtown streets in each little village. It's quite pretty, especially at night.

Escape to New York

One of the very best things about living in the Hamptons is that NYC is a mere 100 miles away, so I get to visit frequently. Much as I love life out here, the sight of the Empire State Building as the Jitney approaches the Queens-Midtown Tunnel always melts my heart, and something in the hum, the smells, the buzz and the life of the streets of New York still says "now you're home" to me, just as it did the very first time I set foot there.

Now, if you know me at all, you know there are some things that many people in the world consider minor indulgences that I take very, very seriously. These are the little pleasures that can brighten most any day. The list includes things like raincoats and lobsters. Another one is chocolate - not a Hershey's bar, mind you - fine artisan chocolate with high cacoa content and unexpected flavor blends. So, this weekend, my Hamptons To-Do list got put on hold in favor of my annual pilgrimage to one of my favorite New York events - the New York Chocolate Show.

This is a candy marketer's dream and a chocolate addict's nightmare. Where else would one buy a ticket - a $28 ticket, the price went up, mind you! - for the privilege of crowding into the Metropolitan Pavillion with thousands of New Yorkers, elbowing your way to the booths for claim sliver-sized samples of fine chocolates from around the world? But it gets better - the samples are the lure, of course. This thing is the biggest culinary flea market you've ever been to - in a chocolate-induced stupor, you're surrounded by piles of chocolate to purchase! It's diabolical.

We sampled many things from the mundane to the glorious to the just plain weird (sometimes all at once). The bleu cheese chocolate truffle was interesting though not enough to purchase. I always enjoy comparing the single origin chocolates - several vendors offer an array of varietals from Madagascar, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and others. Then there were the vendors with the French truffles who chastised us for chewing - "No chewing! No! Let it melt!"

I was somewhat disappointed by the prevalence of large manufacturers (though the Green and Black's Cherry bar was one of the delights of the show). My memory of this show is of many smaller independent producers creating unusual blends and tastes. There are still some of those to be found, but Lindt, Dagoba (now a unit of Hershey), Guittard and the like seemed to dominate more and more. M&M/Mars was even there handing out Twix Java samples.

Teababe accompanied me on this trek, and like others I've taken with me on this pilgrimage before, was put off by the mobs of the faithful. She stuck it out for two full hours with me, which speaks highly of her friendship, perseverance, and affection for me, and for which I thanked her most inadequately with dinner at an incredibly yummy French place. Combat pay. She earned it.

The balance of the day - two wonderful meals, the new Joe Strummer documentary at IFC Cinema, a truly awesome Lucky Brand Jeans find at Filene's Basement, running into friends of Teababe's on the street at Union Square, a cup of tea at Tavalon, and a hair-raising taxi ride back to the bus stop - lived up to my best memories of New York City. Yeah, I remember, I did get burned out on the noise, dirt, and cockroaches, and I'm very happy in my new seaside home. But there are so many wonderful experiences to be had here, and I still love New York.

Goodbye Second Home

Tugboat's North Sea House is no more. I went and helped pack up some of the toys, books, and the liquor cabinet (bottles are much easier to move when they're empty).

This place was where I went when I had to get out of my teeny apartment, or when we closed the office early on a Friday. Where I knew I could get a burger when I couldn't stand the thought of cooking. It was that corner bar that every singleton needs for when you don't have plans but you need somewhere to go. I took my visiting out-of-town friends here, to show them a Hamptons they never expected.

I met so many new friends here (some of whom didn't outlast my friendship with the bar, but that's another story). Here, I sang in public for the first time in years. I jammed with musicians here who are so far out of my league that anywhere else, I would have been nothing more than audience. And wow, did we put out some awesome music.

Sing a chorus of "Big Yellow Taxi" here. It's a strange moment to find that I've been in the Hamptons long enough to start seeing things change. Now I can start a story with "Back when we used to..."

Apples and Oranges

One item on my Hamptons to-do list has been to Pick My Own Apples. For slightly more than it costs to buy trucked-in apples at the local grocery, you can wander around in the orchard and personally select your very own apples right off the tree - along with busloads of visitors out from NYC, New Jersey, and the Bronx who are determined to see the rural sights. You know, get out of town for a few days and breathe the Fresh Country Air (TM). Quick, get a picture of little Jimmy breathing the country air! Jimmy, you better SMILE when you pick that apple!

So there I was in this cute little apple orchard. Apple trees in a production orchard, far from the spreading, climbable things that my non-rural self had simplistically imagined, much more resemble shrubs. I had the feeling of walking among the Hampton standard privet hedges, except with fruit and not quite as tall or as manicured. They are planted in rows with a fairly broad space between, but the branches of each tree touches its neighbors.

I was surprised by the number of windfall apples piled beneath the trees, and I'm curious as to what happens to those. I'll be sure to ask next time.

Although I shouldn't be, I am continually suprised on my outings on glorious fall afternoons to see that there are astonishingly large crowds everywhere I go. As my formative experiences with the Hamptons occured in the winter months, I suppose that deep down inside I try to believe that this place is some kind of secret from the rest of the world, where nobody ever goes. Time to face facts... people know about this place. It's a tourist attraction, for cryin' out loud!

But this brings me to my apple-picking bretheren, on this fine Sunday afternoon. Seeing so many families there to enjoy the corn maze and pick fresh produce was, overall, a nice experience. As a big fan of healthy and local foods, I find it encouraging to see kids lining up to pick apples instead of, say, Twinkees. And I think it's great for city folk to get involved enough in their own food to actually go to the place where it's produced. So far, so good, right?

The part that bothered me was the frantic pace of these people as they "Do" the Hamptons Farm Thing. One particularly upsetting moment was listening to a child a few rows over who was shrieking, over and over, "I'm going apple picking!" Should be a heartwarming moment where you stop and reflect on this child's newfound connection with the earth and its bounty, right? Until you listen more closely to the shrill, almost panicked tone to this kid's voice. He sounded just as overstressed and overstimulated as his parents... and I realized that to some here, this exercise in "getting back to nature" was just that - an exercise, a photo for the scrapbook, a cheaper weekend getaway than Disneyworld.

So I walked to the deserted far ends of the rows of trees. I strolled along and watched the flies and spiders and bees and appreciated them (in the outdoors where they belong) for doing their jobs. I inhaled the winey smell of the windfall apples beneath my feet and browsed the fresh, perfect fruit still on the trees. I marveled at the size and weight of the fruit of these tiny little trees. I learned how to twist an apple so it will come off the branch easily in my hand and I felt very good about playing some small part in the harvest.

Shrieking kids or not, I'll be back. Next, I might even go pick my own pumpkin.

Down On The Farm

One interesting twist in local/slow food is the concept of Community Supported Agriculture. There are several CSA farms on the East End, and one that was of interest to me was the Golden Earthworm in Jamesport. So I loaded up the Jeep for an Outing and went on a little ramble last weekend.

Now, I'd love to be writing right now about the wonders of CSA and how I went to the Golden Earthworm and was so impressed that I bought a share and all my produce next summer would be coming from the East End, and how proud I am to be able to reduce my carbon footprint by eating local produce, and how great it is to get more connected with your food sources. Alas, it was not to be. Because despite what it said on their Web site - and even on the roadside sign - the farm stand was closed on Sunday. Naturally, finding this out required me to get pretty seriously lost on the back roads of the East End, as I discovered too late that my poor little GPS didn't have maps of Jamesport. It would admit that the town existed - barely - but that was all. Score one for Big Oil.

Nonetheless, I rarely if ever drive all the way to Riverhead with only one goal, so we were off to my next stop at Adam and Eve Organic Farmstand. This one was kind of cute - lots of pumpkins out in the fields, and some Nigerian Dwarf goats penned outside. Apparently I arrived one weekend too early for the Garlic Festival, which might well be worth going back for. Unfortunately, lateish on a Sunday afternoon, the selection was fairly limited and I was about to return to the Jeep emptyhanded when I noticed a "Roasted Corn" stand across the parking lot. I was getting pretty hungry by then.

Well, the corn wasn't roasted, it was boiled and soggy and gummy. I'm not convinced that the corn was local to start with, and it clearly had been cooked yesterday if I was lucky. Thoroughly disgusted with the whole local produce plan by then, I headed off to locate Briermere Farm. I had learned about these guys from the Golden Earthworm site. At this point in my travels, that was not much of a recommendation, but I figured it was still worth checking out.

Briermere is a fruit farm and while not certified organic, bill themselves as committed to responsible and sustainable farming. They have strict guidelines about the amount of pesticides used - just enough to deal with the somewhat unfavorable conditions for certain of their crops. Limited pesticides and really fresh nectarines... now, this seemed like something I could get on board with.

I was simultaneously encouraged and dismayed by the state of the parking lot. It was jammed with BMWs and SUVs and the like. The popularity looked good - and at least it was open - but it wasn't necessarily frequented by locals, which can be cause for some trepidation. Also a lot of these vehicles weren't exactly parked straight, which led me to reflect on the idea of the beginning being at the end. In this case, that means that Riverhead is on the NYC-facing side of the Long Island North Fork Wine Trail - and at 4pm on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, a bottleneck of westbound (and, on average, slightly tipsy) traffic.

There is a long counter on the porch in the front of the building that is heaped with vegetables at one end, and fruit at the other. Inside the building, there is an impressive array of freshly baked pies for sale - this is where many of the shoppers were headed. On the veggie side, there were Brussels sprouts on the stalk, local spinach, tomatoes, broccoli, and other farm stand staples, and I stocked up. Then I found the fruit. Glorious fresh-picked apples, nectarines, pears and teensy little plums were available by the quart ($5). I liked the quart-bucket system that speeded up the selection, but unfortunately that's usually a little more fruit than I buy at one time. I got nectarines and honeycrisp apples and shared them with my landlords.

All I can say is that shopping for produce at an outside farm stand with a bunch of fairly affluent New Yorkers who have been drinking wine all day is a unique experience. I had to pull out some long-neglected NYC survival skills to deal with the woman who kept thwacking me in the back with her plastic shopping basket as she turned to speak to her companion. Suffice it to say that I suspect she'll be more aware of her surroundings in the future.

I'll definitely go back - ideally, in the morning. There are perks to being a Local.

Hamptons To-Do List

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Horseback riding in Montauk (tentatively scheduled with G-Mac for 9/23)
Parrish Museum in Southampton Village
Hallockville Museum Farm in Riverhead
Pick-your-own apples (10/14)
Corn maze
Atlantic Marine World Aquarium in Riverhead
North fork winery outing
Red Bar restaurant in Southampton Village

Post Traumatic Stress

Yeah, I get it. Really bad day, 6 years ago today. You know how I know? 'Cause I was THERE.

I was in the basement after the first one, I was all of a 3 blocks away for the second one. I smelled the smoke. I got jet fuel and asbestos in my hair. I saw the buildings come down first-hand. I walked from the World Trade Center to the Staten Island Ferry to 14th Street to the ferry pier at 34th St in high heels and I had the blisters to show for it. I stopped in a bar I knew to wash my hands and face and they gave me a beer, said I looked like I needed it. I stood in line for hours, covered with dirt and ash, to get on a boat to get me off of Manhattan. I saw 7 World Trade come down seemingly spontaneously as the ferry was pulling into Hoboken Terminal. Once I got there I was sent to "decontamination" where the Fire Department sprayed me off, head to toe, high heels and bag and all, with water.

Worst of all was the moment when the explosion of the second plane. A noise loud enough to knock all thought out of your head, except "This is it, isn't it. This is how it ends." Except it wasn't, it was only smoke and stench and panicked people running. The rest of the day was spent choosing the next place to go... if I can make it to 14th St, it'll be okay - no, the subways aren't running. Um, if Flannery's is open, maybe I can sit down for a minute - well, at least I can drink a pint (they were right, I needed it). If I can only get to the PATH at 34th St, I can get home - um, no PATH service. Isn't there a boat terminal around here somewhere? Well, yes there is - and there's a line literally a mile long. 9 hours later, I limped in my front door wearing bedroom slippers I bought somewhere along the way in a Rite Aid.

A lot of people have a lot to remember today. There's a palpable grief in the air as thousands of people remember that 6 years ago today they lost so many loved ones, so suddenly, so shockingly. I don't know how those people feel today - does the incessant reminders, rememberances and memorials feel like a fitting tribute? Maybe so, and if that's the case I don't begrudge it. But it isn't news - the news happened six years ago. Today's media coverage is a rerun.

But for me, it was something completely different, something unforgettable that doesn't need a TV special. I'd like to say that on every September 11th, I recommit to the decision I made then: to go on with my life and work without submitting to fear. But there's no bravery in it, just momentum that keeps me doing what has to be done - the same momentum that eventually got me home that day. Six years later, there is only resignation and a bone-deep weariness of the hatred and violence of man.

French Food Rocks

I had the most wonderful dinner this weekend. Once we made it though the perilous Labor Day Weekend, looking forward to Tumbleweed Tuesday when all the City people finally GO HOME, we celebrated with a lovely meal at great French restaurant here in the Village. I've heard about this place before and I had been quite curious. It lived up to its PR.

I had spent the late afternoon driving back from NYC after watching the Yankees get their collective butts kicked by the Seattle Mariners, and laughing cruelly at the long, long, LONG line of cars headed west. I suppose it's not really nice to be amused by 90 miles of bumper to bumper traffic, but when it's going the other direction, it's really quite funny. Especially since most of those bumpers spent a great deal of time this summer in between me and the grocery store.

Le Chef was nearly empty when we arrived, but that's to be expected on Labor Day after 5pm. The waiter was pleasant and friendly - particularly towards my friend Chef #2, which made him blush. Trapped in my earlier slightly sadistic mindset, this was somehow wonderfully entertaining.

There was an extremely tempting dinner special that night, one involving lobster. And if you know me, you know that no shellfish stands a chance, especially when I'm in that kind of a mood. This unlucky crustacean was a 1.25-lb lobster removed from his shell and swimming in an absolutely delicious, delicate tomato sauce, along some scallops (to keep him company?). This was in a bit of puff pastry and served with some yummy roasted veggies. I had a glass of a wonderful white Burgandy, something that I didn't even know existed, to go with it.

So it wasn't exactly the traditional end-of-summer BBQ, but somehow it was an even more fitting end to my official Hamptons summer. Now that the tourists are out of the way, we can work on seeing some of the sights!

Goodbye Summer (Part II)

Saturday of Labor Day Weekend started with a home-cooked breakfast for Teababe as we tried to recover from the previous day's culinary excesses. Lemme tell you, one healthy breakfast cannot compensate for what we did to ourselves the rest of the day...

First, we were off to Sag Harbor to explore and to get sandwiches. Sag Harbor is ridiculously cute and quaint, even for the Hamptons. Located on a harbor on the Peconic Bay side of the South Fork, Sag Harbor today boasts an active public marina. The town, once the main harbor for nearby Sagaponack (eventually yielding the name of the new settlement) is mentioned in Southampton Town records as early as 1709, though it was not permantly settled by Europeans until the 1730s. The previous residents were Algonquins.

Sag Harbor loves its history, and a stroll through town yields many points of interest for future visits - you can barely turn around without running into a historical marker or a museum. The extremely walkable downtown shopping district is a fascinating blend of antique and variety stores, high-end retail, and restaurants from a walk-up pizza counter to upper-end sushi. All is not calm at the moment though: there is a serious battle brewing to "Save Sag Harbor" from a planned large CVS drugstore and other development that has the potential to seriously change the character of this small town. This will bear watching over time... who wins here, the developers who finally got the Town to broaden the main road in to 2 lanes and look to profit from the influx of wealth, or the residents who want to maintain the feel of these small villages?

The Village Cheese Shop is another food stop that is worth the drive (and, I note as I write this, another small independent vendor). Walking into this place almost makes up for missing Artisanal, the French restaurant with the glorious cheese counter, back in NYC. I'm prone to stopping just inside the door to inhale that overwhelmingly delicious smell of dozens of gourment cheeses. The Cheese Shop also carries Vosges chocolate bars - this helps cut down the number of trips I have to make to Soho for truffles.

While the Cheese Shop's speciality is, predictably enough, amazing cheeses from all over the world, they offer a limited selection of sandwiches as well. We obtained a goat cheese and sweet pepper as well as a turkey sandwich To Go, for a picnic at our next stop - Channing Daughters. I've written about Channing Daughters at length in the past, but this time there were several tasty new wines including my new favorite, the Cuvee Tropical.

So that seems like enough to fill a day, right? Nope, not in the Hectic Hampty-Hamps! Teababe is a singer as well and so accompanied me to the next stop, our first gig at the Beach Hut at Meschutt Beach in Hampton Bays. We followed that with a second gig at our old standby, Indian Cove. The Beach Hut was a real pleasure with perfect weather, a large crowd that sang along and thoroughly enjoyed the music, and a backdrop of the water and beach behind us. That is, it was a pleasure until the sun went down and the wind picked up, covering our instruments and ourselves with sand. Never before at a gig have I gone from needing sunscreen and bug spray to a sweater!

Goodbye Summer

Lesson learned from this weekend: planning is a waste of time. Okay, not really, but that idea I had about heading to the Shinnecock Pow Wow this weekend was a total bust.

Teababe came out from NYC to visit me this weekend, which is always a treat. First, there's the company, which is awesome, but then we get to run around and do all kinds of things I don't usually think to do. We started out with a driving adventure to Montauk. Now, this is Friday of a big holiday weekend - it's a basic Hamptons survival skill to stay off Route 27 East, the main road, to get anywhere.

So, trusting the GPS, we took off on a set of twisty back roads. I suspect that my portable navigator has developed something of an electronic sense of humor, though, as it apparently spontaneously decided at some point that where we really wanted to go was in a little cul de sac somewhere in the wilds of North Sea. Fortunately for me, Teababe is a patient kind of girl.

So the reason we drove 1 hour for dinner: The Inlet. This was a recommendation from a friend way back in the spring, and I've been thinking about that dinner ever since. The return trip was just as good, which is saying something. The Inlet is cool for many reasons: it's super cute, it has a great view of the water, the service is consistiently friendly and excellent, there's a good sushi bar as well as an extensive (non-Japanese) cooked menu - and the fish is incredibly fresh. According to the review I read, the restaurant is a venture by a cooperative of 6 fishing boat captains. You can see the boat dock from the bar. Did I mention the fish is fresh?

A diner at the next table leaned over as she prepared to leave and said "Order the tuna tartare. It's amazing, it has the most amazing dressing and pieces of mango in it. I've been to some good restaurants but that's the best thing I've ever had." We believed her, and she was possibly right. There was also a lovely day-boat scallop ceviche with lots of cilantro that all but took my breath away.

The only disappointment was a roasted monkfish that was a little overdone that we shared for an entree, but fortunately, we also ordered more sushi, so on the whole the dinner came out pretty much wonderful. We had a spicy tuna roll that was wrapped in slices of astonishingly buttery avacado (a food I usually don't like, but if it's paired with delicious raw tuna I'll risk it) that was especially memorable. Finish it off with a lovely bottle of a local Pinot Grigio and serve at sunset... hard to beat.

Once we finished up and waddled back to the car, dessert seemed all but impossible. By the time we got back to Bridgehampton a half hour later, though, I decided we needed one last culinary treat. And to run the entire spectrum of the Hamptons in one evening, the only possible answer was a stop at Tugboat's for a Guinness float. We picked up a pint of chocolate ice cream at King Kullen and made for Southampton.

Now, the first time someone suggested that I let him drop a scoop of chocolate ice cream in my Guinness, I told him he was out of his mind. But as Tugboat rightly told me then, he's never steered me wrong. The chocolate sweetness against the stout beer is wonderfully rich and unexpected. Ice cream goes in first, BTW, and drink it with a straw. You want to finish it just about the time the last of the ice cream melts.

After all that, all we could possibly do was go home, set up the air mattress, and try to recover in time for the next day's culinary adventures...

P.S., I've just read two awful reviews of the place on TripAdvisor when I went looking for a photo to share. They are wrong, wrong, wrong.

Music On The Beach

One thing that I've wanted to do all summer long is to check out one of the excellent Southampton Cultural Center's Summer Concerts In The Park, if only to check out the banners that I made for them back at the beginning of the summer. I finally made it down to Cooper's Beach last night (AKA the Scene of the Crime - my first 5k) to check out Project Vibe, a truly fantastic local reggae band.

SciFi Chick was running late, so we got to the beach just in time to hear the last song and enjoy a pretty sunset - but hey, at least we got there! After a lovely stroll along the beach (tide coming in, 1-2 foot surf) it was time to head back to town for a beer. That means the Southampton Publick House, because who wants to drink bottled beer that's been trucked in from St Louis when someone is making fresh beer for you right around the corner from your house? Another part of my environmentally-friendly "Drink Local!" campaign.

The evening wound down with a late-night walk through Agawam Park. The sprinklers had already been on so the grass was cool and damp on bare toes.

Time's Running Out

Labor Day Weekend is approaching, which is a good time to take stock on my progress of my Hamptons Summer. So how have we done?

Well, I've completely failed to visit the Parrish Art Museum, the Atlantis Aquarium in Riverhead, Madame Tongs, any of the Southampton Cultural Center's Concerts in the Park, to go horseback riding in Montauk, or to pick any of my own produce at any local farm - so as far as achieving my planned goals, not so good.

On the other hand, I've run 5 different races, played a lot of summer gigs on the North and South Forks, visited wineries and new restaurants, acquired some great finds at yard sales, made some wonderful new friends, got a soft top installed on the Jeep and put some miles on it - so as far as having a fantastic summer, pretty well.

So here's the plan. In September, I'm going to see what I can do about that initial To-Do list, starting with the Shinnecock Nation Pow-Wow this weekend. After all, the beauty of being a local is that those things are still there for me in the off-season!

Ellen's Run

Despite my best intentions to party it up in the Hamptons this summer, it seems that most Sunday mornings I am supposed to be somewhere in East Hampton by 8:30 am to run 3.1 miles. Now, running 3.1 miles is not something you really have to get up early to do. Also, it's not absolutely necessary to drive to a place a half hour away - there's plenty of perfectly runnable roads and sidewalks much closer to my home. But these 5k races have a secret weapon: the T-Shirt.

Oh, the mighty t-shirt. Remember, these things are ugly, and they're plastered all over with a bunch of sponsor logos, and really, people should pay you to wear the hideous thing. But a 5k t-shirt is still a powerful thing. Thrown on with your rattiest jeans and a baseball cap for a Sunday morning donut run, it says to the world "I'm not a lazy slob, I can actually run 3.1 miles and for all you know, maybe I just did! Yeah, that's it! It's not overeating, it's carb-loading, buster!"

Which is why this morning, exhausted from an unplanned trip to Florida and the previous night's gig, it was the thought of that stupid t-shirt that got me out of bed. And it's not just any t-shirt - this was Ellen's Run, one of the biggest running events out here on the East End. Ellen's Run raises money for breast cancer related charities to the tune of $160k or more per year. It attracts hundreds of runners and all of them wear their Ellen's Run shirts to run around the Hamptons. I've seen the shirts. I've coveted the shirts. I'd registered and already paid my entry fee, and I wanted my %*#&@ t-shirt!

So that's how I found myself flying down Route 27 at 8:45. I made it to East Hampton High School at about 8:52 - plenty of time, I said to myself! These things NEVER start on time!

Ah, how wrong I was. This is without a doubt the best-organized race I've been involved with. The large milling crowd was my first sign - most other races I've been in have had maybe 100 runners at the most - here, there was the better part of a thousand participants lining up (the final results listed some 787 participants). Someone on a loudspeaker was announcing that it was 5 minutes to race time.

I was in trouble. There were no t-shirts in sight! A brief sprint took me to the school cafeteria where numbers were being passed out. Fortunately I had pre-registered, so all I had to do was find the right table to pick up my number and my timing chip. Then it was off to the next table where for one awful moment, it seemed I had wasted all this effort - I was told there were only youth shirts left. Heartbreak! Another volunteer went digging around (I must have looked extremely disappointed) and found a box of adult smalls. Triumph!

I joined the mob at the starting line just as they announced 30 seconds to race start. But I was still carrying my t-shirt. I suppose at this point, shirt in hand, I could have bagged the whole thing but that seemed like cheating. I wanted to EARN the shirt, so off I went. And here's the funny part - I had parked the Jeep right along the race route! It only slowed me down by about 15 seconds to throw my shirt inside, and it gave the nearby runners a good laugh.

Chip timing turned out to be unexpectedly cool. With a large number of runners, you just can't all get past the starting line at the same time - it took me more than a minute. But the chip keeps track of when each runner starts, so you have an accurate time when you finally reach the end. I got there in just under 40 minutes, doing 12.5 minute miles, 439th out of 787.

Towards the end, I met up with a walker who asked me if I had run the whole way. I admitted that I had taken a few walk breaks. She seemed to think that meant I was doing better than she was - so I had to point out that since she was in fact ahead of me, that wasn't necessarily the case. She jogged the remainder of the run with me and crossed the finish line on my heels. I found her name on the list of participants, so if Lori Schultz of East Hampton ever reads this, please drop me a line. You seemed super cool.

Post-race, I met up with my running buddy G-Mac and we raided the samples, breakfast, and water. So, all together, it was entirely too much effort, but now I've Been There, Done That, and Got The T-Shirt. It is Jeep-red, too small, over-logoed, and I will wear it proudly on my next hung-over morning juice and donut raid.

Wine, Women and Song

We have our South Fork vineyards, but the real Long Island Wine Trail is found to the north of us. For those of us in the Hamptons who don't have boats, that means a long drive around the Peconic Bay to Riverhead and back out the North Fork. While I have dreams of a drive down the Main Road, wandering from winery to winery, the only place I've managed to go so far is Osprey's Dominion (mostly 'cause they pay me).

Back in May, my band did our first official paying gig here, following it up with our second official paying gig that night at a restaurant in Hampton Bays. This was a repeat - not only were we back at Osprey, but we apparently didn't learn that 7 hours of performing in one day is maybe a little too much, and we booked the restaurant again for that evening.

The weather on Saturday was just beautiful - low 80's, sunny and breezy - so we played outside under a tent, with a great view of the grapevines. We could actually pull the car right up to the stage, which made this the easiest load-in in our gigging history. There was a good turnout of people who were all drinking lots of good wine, so everyone was in a good mood and feeling quite mellow. Often at gigs a listener will offer to buy us a drink, but this was the first time they had the bottle in hand! Our favorite table included a charming redhead who we named "Ginger Spice", who was singing along on the 80s music.

Osprey seems to be a bigger operation than Channing Daughters, my South Fork favorite. The staff is a little more harried, but when things calmed down at the end of the evening and we were ready to trade some of our hard-earned money for wine (the band gets a discount, of course) they were quite helpful in our quest to give our pay right back.

The visitors are a mix of locals and tourists, though the vineyards in the summer seem to be something like the Statue of Liberty in NYC - New Yorkers only go there if they are hosting a guest that wants to go. The outside picnic setting attracted a lot of families, but the usual vineyard guest is often fairly upscale. So that's one way to see how the "other side" lives here in the Hamptons - get a job somewhere that they go!

Cluck Cluck

Today is my friend Jan's birthday. We're going to celebrate with a sushi dinner and a little mini luau/fire party at their house - that means throwing a bunch of logs in a barrel on the back patio.

Jan's house is where I get my eggs. They have a small property in the woods in Hampton Bays where they keep goats and chickens, mainly as pets. Now, I've talked about the farming tradition out here, but this is still a little unusual. There are plenty of working farms (that have not yet been sold and turned into subdivisions) but I don't think there are many residences that are trying to turn back into farms.

I've never touched a live chicken before. They are very soft.

Home Away From Home

One of my favorite things about being a year-round Hamptons resident is finding these out-of-the-way places that are far outside of the average outsider's view. While the celebrities and the like are off partying at places I couldn't get into even if I knew where they were, I can often be found at Tugboat's North Sea House. Now, Tugboat is a good friend and he's careful to keep my favorite libations and snacks on hand, so I'm probably a little biased, but I just love this place. It might have something to do with the fried macaroni and cheese.

Tugboat will tell you that he designed the place to be like hanging out in your friend's living room. He's really done a good job with that - there's mismatched but comfy furniture, a big TV to watch movies on, books and games scattered around, and the like. The advantage over someone's living room, of course, is that there's a kitchen and a bar right there.

Tugboat's is a great venue for local music. He'll let just about anyone play music there (even me!), which leads to some very eclectic and unexpected stuff. The Open Path Gathering Open Mic last Thursday night was an example of this at its best, with a fantastic group of accomplished musicians (and then there was me and my bandmate Jan) who were there just to jam and have fun.

Mind you, these guys play in various projects all over the East End and beyond - there was some serious talent concentrated in this room. And believe me, some of the best music you'll ever hear is a bunch of friendly (and possibly slightly tipsy) musicians showing off for and with each other. We had a keyboard player backing up vocalist Caine on a Stevie Wonder tune. We had Jessie Haynes' original music. We had musicians sitting in with people they've never met before on songs they didn't know. Caine's dog even got in on the fun, sneaking up on stage to steal some of Jessie's White Russian.

I don't know if this is a real Hamptons moment - more of an anti-Hamptons moment, I guess. But it was a lot of fun.

Veritas

There's slow food, and there's the "eat local" movement. Why not extend that to drinks as well?

I was very surprised to discover that Long Island has a rich farming tradition, including a great many vineyards. Most of the wine is grown on the North Fork, the far east section of the Island that is north of the Peconic Bay, but there are several here in my little corner of Hampton-ness.

My favorite is Channing Daughters just down the road in Bridgehampton. I love this place. And I love the marketing brilliance that created the the Wine Club.

The way tastings work here at most places, you pay a nominal fee either per wine or for a flight of wines. So after you've been standing around in the tasting room for a while, when everyone is getting a little chatty and everything that's getting poured starts tasting pretty darn good, well, someone in the group is bound to ask "So what's this wine club anyway?" And your friendly wine guide will happily tell you about how you can sign up to buy the two bottles of wine that they select for you every two months, and you'll get a discount on that wine and all the other wine you buy there, and - here's the kicker - that wine tastings are free for you and your guests. Not only that, rather than just the ordinary 6 wines that the uninitiated are permitted to sample, you get to taste pretty much anything they have.

All I can say is that after even a mere 6 wine flight, this sounds like the best deal anyone ever offered you.

3 shipments of wine later, I can tell you that this is one of those rare decisions made while slightly tipsy that turn out to be very good. The wine is consistently wonderful, and the staff there is an amazingly friendly bunch, and I'm learning a lot about wine - most importantly, that Chardonnay is way tastier than I ever would have dreamed (move over, Napa Valley). And, I have to admit, I get a secret little snobby Hamptons thrill from being part of the "in" crowd and being recognized by the winery people.

Best of all, as I now always have a chilled and lovely bottle of white wine waiting, I've discovered one of the simplest pleasures to be had here - spending late Sunday afternoons on the front porch of the house with a book and a glass, watching the joggers and dog walkers pass by, as the sun sinks behind the tree line. These quiet times are some of the moments that I will always treasure from my time here.

Drink local!

Independence Day

Of COURSE there was a parade! Southampton Village holds the only 4th of July parade on the East End, and it's very popular. The parade route, conveniently enough, goes directly past my home in the Village, so we sat on the front porch to enjoy it all. With Nantucket Reds in hand (champagne and cranberry juice) - hey, this is the Hamptons.

This parade has a long history - the people in the house across the street have had an annual party since the kids were small to gather and watch. Those kids are in their late 50s now, and have grandchildren of their own. It has all of the standard small-town parade features, including handmade floats, a few marching bands, antique tractors, and what seemed to be nearly every fire truck and ambulance on the the East End.

Appropriately enough for an Independence Day parade, there were multiple groups of veterans participating, including WWII and Vietnam Vets. In addition we had several groups of protesters, the local Democratic Party Committee, a memorial to a local soldier who was killed in Iraq, and a few anti-Bush activists. I found it interesting that the soldiers and the protestors received approximately the same response of subdued applause. It might not have been the same people clapping for each group, but I couldn't discern a measuarable difference in volume. All of the participants seemed to get an equally polite response. I wonder if that means that opinion was equally divided, or that everyone was equally indifferent? On the other hand, everyone seemed to agree that the fire departments deserved some serious love.

Nonetheless, the day itself was just a lot of fun. For the biggest NYC parades, you take the subway there and get to the route early, stand for hours packed in with lots of other spectators. The whole time, you watch the people around you for pickpockets, bemoan your aching feet, and wish you had gone to the bathroom before you left. Eventually you get watch a combination of fancy costumes and corporate floats blow past as quickly as possible.

This had more in common with some of the smaller neighborhood parades I happened upon from time to time in NYC, things like processions for a saint's day through Little Italy. The lawn chairs, the homemade decorations, the parade participants waving to their neighbors, the slightly less than perfect marching bands gave a great down-home neighborhood feeling to the whole thing. Not to mention at this version we could have cocktails on the front porch without attracting unwanted attention from the NYPD. All together, a great way to spend the day.

Another Man's Treasure

An excellent sport here that is seriously overlooked by summer people and weekenders in the Hamptons is Yard Sale Scramble. The playbook comes out on Wednesdays in the form of the local newspaper, the Southampton Press. Serious players map their route based on the announcements in the Classifieds and start out at the crack of dawn on Saturday or even Friday morning.

I'm more of an opportunistic hunter. The weather here today was sunny and perfect and I needed a good excuse to get outside, and I've been thinking that I need a spare bicycle for summer guests. So I noted the half-dozen closest sales and set off in the Jeep. No particular plan or agenda - but I had a full tank of gas and my trusty GPS, and given those things here in the Hamptons, I am fearless.

The true flavor of a town is not in its manicured city center, its restaurants, or its boutiques. Visit the yard sales, the thrift stores, the local deli. Those are places where you can begin to peek through the curtains.

The best one today was in the nearby town of Water Mill, on Dead Trail Road. Just getting there involved a lot of turns on twisting, unmarked back country roads (this part is a lot more fun with a patient electronic navigator riding shotgun). The "For Sale" sign in front of the house was a clue - as near as I could tell, the sellers were the children of a couple who may well have lived in that house all their lives, and were now to the point of distributing a lifetime's accumulation of... life. Old tools that must've hung in the workshop for years, unused. A cheap microwave. A fur coat. Souveneirs from vacations, furniture that was good when it was new. A walker, a portable toilet, and the miscellaneous things that collect in a house where someone is dying. It was somewhat like walking through someone else's family photo album. I was curious about where she wore those furs, what he built with the tools, where they were now.

Beware the "fake" yard sales, the permanant flea markets with their broken down collection of junk. These tend to contain the dregs, the ghosts of garage sales past. There are no memories there, only fragments and a strange scratchy desperation.

I only found one bicycle today, and it was sufficiently rusted out and abused that I couldn't see offering it to a guest. But I did find a collection of small looms (for Mom), a pair of beach chairs, a basket (to hold fruit at the office), and a small pottery bowl that is nicer than I could make. Total: $16. I'm hard pressed to put a value on the memories.

A Run To Remember

Running is a big, big hobby out here. Any day of the week, driving around the neighborhood is made more interesting by the need to be on the lookout for an assortment of more-or-less athletic types out to Enjoy Nature and Get Fit.

So there they are, risking knee and back injury, pounding the pavement, iPods plugged in. They're everywhere. And, somehow, I've become one of 'em.

It all started in January when I did the usual annual thing - this year I resolve to lose weight, get in shape, blah blah blah - and this time, I mean it! Well, actually, it's gone better than I expected. I've taken off some weight - just enough to force me to buy all new clothes, such a horror - and I've started an exercise plan. For some reason, and maybe it's the perceived peer pressure of all these disturbingly fit people around me or the nearly weekly charity 5ks that happen on the East End, I decided I needed to start running.

The reason this makes no sense is that while I've never been seriously overweight, I've also never been in anything like good physical condition since maybe my college days. We're talking getting winded on long flights of stairs, here. No excuse, I just never liked to exercise. But here I am in the Hamptons, with all those miles of beaches to walk on and all that. People come out here for the weekend from The City and can't wait to go for a run outside.

Well, the village is really very scenic. There are many things that are blooming at the moment (which makes me sneeze). There is also a vast array of insect and other life (prone to attack at any moment) living in the flowers and privet hedges (which are doing their best to take over the sidewalks). And it's social - there are lots of (slow moving and hazardous) walkers out to enjoy the day, often walking their (alternately yappy, excitable, or downright frightening) dogs. There are even bicyclists (who, contrary to local law, like to ride on the sidewalks, probably to avoid the potentially homocidal drivers) along the way.

Nonetheless, compared to the average treadmill/cardio room of your average NYC gym - think rats on a wheel, except sweatier - this probably seems like pure runner's bliss. And, unlike a NYC taxi, the drivers here are just oblivious, rather than actively aggressive.

But all that is just training for the Main Event, because somehow I decided along the way that I needed a Goal. So that's how I found myself with several hundred fitness nuts and athletes out at Cooper's Beach a few weeks back for that runner's rite of passage known as the 5k. For $20, you get the fun of getting up early on a Saturday morning to go running down the road and back for just over three miles with a bunch of people who can move much, much faster than you. And you get a t-shirt.

The course started at the beach and proceeded down Dune Road for just over a mile and a half, then turning and returning to the start (which seems a little depressing and pointless if you think about it too much). This gave me and my running companion ample opportunity to watch the leaders zoom past us, and the long stream of folks who were way ahead of us in the pack.

We made it, and we contributed our $20 to what I'm sure was a very worthy cause. The endorphins are clearly affecting my thinking, as I'm beginning to have fantasies of a 10k. I can only hope that sanity or maybe cold weather will stop me.

Election Day

The following is not a paid political announcement or endorsement. It's just that I had a beer with these guys last week, and today I get to decide whether I should vote for them in the local Village election.

Washington DC has nothing on local politics. They can sling mud with the best of them. Depending on who you listen to, this side or that side is in cahoots with the local police force, or is stealing sombody's campaign signs, or is covering up shady dealings among the Powers That Be here in the Village. It's not Republican vs Democrat, either, which usually allows us to simplify our political ideology to something easily managed - we have the Citizens With Integrity versus the Good Sense Party. I mean, how do you pick between Integrity and Good Sense? Are they mutually exclusive? It all gets very confusing.

But what I love about this is how involved you can be with the process. Candidates here really do go from door to door, shaking hands and kissing babies and asking for your vote. Local residents host parties in their home, which is how it came to pass that I had that beer with the Mayor. And every vote really does count - in the last local election, the winners and losers were separated by maybe 10 or 12 votes.

People get really deeply involved in the campaigns here and can take it all very personally, too. I had a bit of a collection of direct mail pieces developing on my desk over the past few weeks, which I didn't think to put away before a meeting with a client recently. Turns out this guy is active in local politics. Naturally, the brochure on top was from the opposing party. The client didn't say anything at the time, and I didn't learn of my misstep until I happened to meet him socially later on, when he made a joke about it. I have learned a very important lesson about discretion.

It makes me think that if we could sit down with all of our candidates in someone's living room -not at a $1000 per plate fundraiser, just to hang out and chat and raise a glass - well, it might not fix everything, but it would be awfully cool if everyone felt as involved as I do. Whoever gets my vote today, it will be a real person that I met and spoke to and got to know something about. Not a plastic TV image and sound bite.

How In The World Did This Happen?

Wisconsin, to Ohio, to Kentucky, to New Jersey (ew!), to New York City, to the Hamptons. I've had to explain that chain many times over the years and it always goes something like this:

"So how did you end up here?"

To which I invariably reply: "I have absolutely no idea."

That's more or less true. Most of that progression really doesn't make sense, from here. I suppose each step made sense at the time. Even the left turn to New Jersey, which had no place in my southward migration, has a perfectly logical explanation - but let's not dwell on that since the guy is long gone now. But by then, I was very seriously in love with New York City.

I think it's interesting that my love affair with New York has lasted longer than the one with the guy who dragged me there.

New York City and I... we're still very much an item, but it's a long-distance thing now. And I have this little thing on the side, with the Hamptons. And why shouldn't I? New York has 8 million other people taking up its time and attention, after all. All I want is miles of beautiful beaches, country roads, quaint and historic towns, privet hedges, maybe a few movie stars... is that too much to ask?

When I lived in New York, we spent a lot of time together. I made a point of visiting as many of the local landmarks as I could, both the ones for the tourists and the locals. After all, I was living in a place that people regularly visit as a vacation destination and it seemed downright rude to ignore it. I have a rather impressive collection of ticket stubs and programs to show for it.

Now I'm doing the same thing in the Hamptons. I've declared this summer to be my Hamptons Summer, and I'm on a mission to see and do as much of it as I can. Naturally I'll do this in my own very unique way (and if you know me at all, you understand that statement). So keep an eye on things here if you want to look over my shoulder at the Hectic Hampty-Hamps.