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.