Hamptons | The New York Observer

Who's on Furst? Our Fearless Sag Harbor Correspondent Stalks Thriller Scribbler

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:25:30 -0500

5 November, East End of Long Island. The Transom is poised to commence its surveillance of the seldom-seen Alan Furst, master of the historical espionage thriller and longtime resident of Sag Harbor. Thanks to the efforts of a cunning librarian, Mr. Furst has agreed to give a talk this evening at the John Jermain Library on Main St., his first speaking engagement in years.

“He’ll probably walk to the library. Wait for...

Hamptons Summer Ends Not With a Bang, But a ... Vrooom!

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:13:05 -0400

On Saturday, Sept. 5, during the last and possibly most traffic-congested weekend of the summer, car enthusiasts ogled a parking lot full of Ferraris in front of East Hampton’s Georgica Restaurant and Lounge, as house music blasted in the background. The cars had just returned from the first annual Ferrari Hamptons Rally and were now sitting under the hot afternoon sun, the background for countless posed photographs.

“It’s a nice little reunion of friends...

Wilzig Does Woodstock: '60s-Style Sybarites Invade His Water Mill Castle

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 19:48:37 -0400

On Saturday, Aug. 22, the gates of the Castle in Water Mill were opened to select guests in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. Ivan L. Wilzig—or Sir Ivan, as he’s better known—built the 12,000-square-foot castle (which includes its own torture chamber) 12 years ago and has been throwing an annual party there ever since—“the most legendary parties in the Hamptons,” Sir Ivan said. “This one is nearest and dearest to my heart...

Take Me Out to the Baldwin: Alec Strikes Out, Writers Prevail at Herrick Park

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:39:04 -0400

It was a sunny Saturday afternoon on Aug. 15 in East Hampton’s Herrick Park as players warmed up for the 61st Annual Artists and Writers Charity Softball Game.

Actor Jean Reno prepared to throw the first pitch to start the nail-biter of a game. What kind of an artist makes the best softball player, the Transom wondered? “Human,” Mr. Reno said. “Human people that understand suffering. Laugh, also. You have to understand the global...

What Are Hampton Celebs Searching For? Love, Margaritas, Dignity

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:27:56 -0400

Publicist Peggy Siegel’s Aug. 15 screening of My One and Only, a film about extremely tanned actor George Hamilton’s childhood, starring Renée Zelleweger, was hosted at a beautiful private home in Bridgehampton. Outside, guests were ushered down a stairwell and to a large screening room with a concession stand, which many seemed to find more impressive than the screening room itself.

The film is a sweet road story in which a mother...

More of De Lesseps! It's Yet Another Hamptons "Society" Magazine

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:22:01 -0400

Add another society magazine to the growing, glossy pile! The Hampton Spy (is that a reference to Kurt Andersen and Graydon Carter's late, lamented Spy?) is a "digital publication and community" edited by former Hamptons editor and Hamptons Style contributor Cindi Cook.

The magazine was launched by Datran Media, described on its Website as a digital marketing company, which seems to muddy up the relationship between advertisers and readers even further.

The design is sort of...

At East Hampton Authors' Night, Baldwin Says Literary Theme of His Life is 'Something Dickensian'

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:02:54 -0400

On Saturday, Aug. 8, East Hampton's Main Street was packed with people making their way to the Fifth Annual Authors Night at the East Hampton Library. So long was the line of parked cars that one of the presenting authors, Allen Planz, an elderly poet and charter captain, sprawled himself out on the sidewalk, shoe in hand, taking a rest before continuing on to the event. The library party was comprised of a large...

Society-Mag Smackdown

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:01:00 -0400

Late last year, a man named Aidan Vola, a plumber by trade, decided to launch a society magazine called New York Hamptonite. Using $118,000 of his own savings, he assembled a sales team and rented a small office in Bridgehampton. At 3 a.m. on May 22, 2009, the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, his distributor delivered 15,000 copies of the inaugural issue, which had Real Housewives of New York cast member Luann de Lesseps...

A Meeting of the Median in North Fork, Hamptons 2Q Numbers

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:52:36 -0400

The Hamptons and the North Fork could tumble into the same utensil drawer, at least by price.

Less than $320,000 separates the median sales price for the Hamptons from that of the North Fork, according to a new second-quarter report from Miller Samuel and Prudential Douglas Elliman. The median in the Hamptons was $770,000; for the North Fork, it was $450,000 (Come on! 320K used to be nothing!).

The median for south of...

Higher-End Hamptons Home Prices Drop Sharply

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 07:48:07 -0400

The higher-end of Hamptons housing is suffering.

The median sales price of a home south of socio-economic demarcation Route 27 on the South Fork of Long Island was $900,000 in the second quarter of 2009, appropriately hefty but down 41.9 percent from the same period in 2008, according to a new report from Prudential Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel. (The median for the Hamptons generally was $770,000, down 20.6 percent annually.)

It’s...

Nacho! Polo!

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 07:19:18 -0400

Pucho is a sorrel-colored gelding with a white stripe down his face, big haunches and bulging leg muscles. He’s all power.

Brasita is small, dark and feminine. Notice her well-formed knees and fetlocks as she coyly paws the shavings on the floor. The mare’s got great moves.

“With her, you try get a little more sneaky,” polo sensation Nacho Figueras explained on a recent sunny afternoon in Bridgehampton. He was giving...

Bon Jovi Croons, Stahl Snoozes, Cristal Pops in Hoppin' Holiday Hamptons

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:29:46 -0400

To visit the Hamptons over Fourth of July weekend in 2009 was to enter a state of denial about any “global financial crisis.”

On Friday, July 3, business was booming at Savanna’s restaurant in Southampton—a favorite of effusive Real Housewife Ramona Singer. “The people that are running it are from T-Bar in the city, which I love,” she said. “The food, just so everybody knows, is great food now, and great service. Because that...

Tinsley Mortimer's Hamptons Plans Include 'A Lot of Meat'

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:36:29 -0400

At Tinsley Mortimer and Elizabeth Meigher’s pre-4th of July party at the Samantha Thavasa boutique on Wednesday, July 2, socialites admired Ms. Mortimer’s handbag designs while discussing weekend plans for the forthcoming mass exodus out of the city.

“I’m either going to to Bridgehampton or my place in the Adirondacks,” Ms. Meigher said. “We have a small family island with no phone and no TV in the Adirondacks. If I go to the...

Hamptons Seasonal Benchmark for High-End Renting: $295K

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:50:17 -0400

The new seasonal benchmark for renting a Hamptons spread is apparently $295,000. According to data from StreetEasy, eight Hamptons homes are leasing for the summer at that magic number, and they’re the priciest out there rental-wise.

The largest of the eight is the 10,000-square-foot home at 672 Halsey Lane in Water Mill, with seven bedrooms and 9.5 bathrooms. It has an elevator and two-story pool house, in addition to a pool, tennis court, and even...

Brrright Lights! Socialites Shiver at McInerney's Montauk Book Bash

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:05:45 -0400

On Saturday, June 6, the Accompanied Literary Society hosted a party for Jay McInerney’s new short-story collection, How It Ended, in the foggy cold of the recently reopened Montauk Yacht Club.

The actress Claire Danes ran across the green lawn, shopping bags in hand, before she came back out and joined the crowd, wearing a white blazer and white pants.

Hugh Dancy, Ms. Danes’ fiancé, looked around for his dog, frolicking somewhere on...

Infamy! Summer ’09, the Hamptons’ Sept. 15

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:10:08 -0400

“Business is down, there is no question about it,” said Brian Brady, the design director of Southampton-based Brady Design Inc., a high-end architecture and interior design company.

This time of year, Mr. Brady is usually finishing up a few building projects so that his wealthy clients can move into their new homes by Memorial Day, but 2009 has been different; he doesn’t have a single Hamptons project in the works, and the other part of...

And Now the Bad News for Hamptons Rental Market

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:23:00 -0500

Earlier this week came the news that home sales in the Hamptons plunged 41.3 percent annually in the fourth quarter. Now, The Real Deal's Candace Taylor reports that the rental market's just as dismal:

Though it's early in the season, brokers say the number of Hamptons rental transactions so far is way down in the wake of this fall's financial crisis.

Michael Daly, principal broker at True North Realty Associates in North Haven on...

Hamptons Housing Catches Cold

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:22:21 -0500

Did somebody say symbiosis? At a time when Manhattan dwellers struggle with lackluster year-end bonuses and job losses, the Hamptons has suffered its own crisis: one of real estate, the East End playground's great arbiter.

A new Miller Samuel and Prudential Douglas Elliman report shows home sales off annually over 41 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008; the median sales price is down, too. And listing inventory's up! By over 11 percent! Few Hamptons...

Ho-Ho-NO! Hamptons Housing Prices Tank

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:16:21 -0400

All is not well at the summer playground for America’s rich and famous, as home prices and sales in eastern Long Island tumbled to two-year lows in the third quarter, according to a new Hamptons/North Fork market report from real estate appraisal shop Miller Samuel and brokerage giant Prudential Douglas Elliman.

The quarterly median sales price in the tony vacation enclaves dropped to $729,000, which is the lowest since the fourth quarter of 2006...

Quogue, Quogue! North Fork-Hamptons Report Online

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:23:27 -0400

The second-quarter Miller Samuel-Douglas Elliman report on the North Fork and the Hamptons housing markets is now online as a PDF.

Another fun fact! Among the East End's luxury markets, Quogue had the highest average sales price at $15,650,000. Yes, Quogue. ...

North Fork Price Slaps Hamptons

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:01:38 -0400

The Hamptons remain much more expensive (of course) than the North Fork of Long Island's East End. Recent second-quarter 2008 numbers from appraisal firm Miller Samuel and brokerage Douglas Elliman showed an average North Fork home sales price of $921,803 based on deals closed in the quarter ending June 30. In the Hamptons, that average was $1,730,414.

The median sales prices were similarly far apart--$605,000 in the North Fork and $970,000 in the Hamptons....

Hamptons Mimic Manhattan with Home Sales Plunge

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:17:49 -0400

Like in Manhattan (and Brooklyn and Queens), home sales in the Hamptons plunged annually in the second quarter of 2008. At the same time, the average home sales price dropped annually and quarterly as well to $1,730,414, according to a new report from appraisal firm Miller Samuel and brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman. The report covers closed deals for the quarter ending June 30.

The 26.2 percent sales drop from the second quarter of 2007 mirrors...

Hamptons Detox

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:16:28 -0400

A toxic mixture of dread, fear, panic, paranoia and self-doubt was brewing in my head on my way out to the Hamptons the last weekend in June.

On the train, I sat on a fold-up chair next to the bathroom and listened to the contents of the bowl swish and swirl around, like the economy and the Bush administration. From time to time, I looked up from my novel (about a sleazy opportunistic journalist in...

More Riders Taking New York-Hamptons LIRR Routes

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:36:05 -0400

Maybe people wanted to beat the holiday weekend traffic this year or perhaps they were put off by higher gas prices. Whatever the reasons, the Long Island Railroad lines running between New York City and the Hamptons got a boost in ridership this Memorial Day Weekend compared to 2007.

This year, 44,618 passengers left Penn Station or Jamaica on eastbound trains on Friday, May 23, between 11:30 a.m. and 8:53...

Everything To Be 'Hample' in The Hamptons This Summer

Fri, 23 May 2008 15:57:05 -0400

Last summer, when Miles Jaffe released his 170-page lexicon of all things luxe and worthy of mockery in the South Fork, The Hamptons Dictionary, recession was still a retro economic condition associated with the tech bubble and Wall Street was still rolling in money.

Even though Americans are ringing in Memorial Day 2007 in a much chillier climate, Mr. Jaffe’s dictionary of skewering bon mots will surely be as appropriate this summer as back in...

The Local: Condo Crazy in the Hamptons

Tue, 20 May 2008 20:18:14 -0400

Coke Anne and Jarvis Wilcox wanted to sell their East Hampton inn, the Maidstone Arms, all along. During the summer season, the famed, 1850’s inn is fully booked, but the winter dry spell sends year-round occupancy rates plunging to around 40 percent.

When no acceptable offers came in, the Wilcoxes decided to begin what was ultimately an “arduous” and unfruitful condo-conversion process. Mrs. Wilcox, a trained architect and mother of...

Stat of The Day: East End Inventory Up

Tue, 06 May 2008 10:18:45 -0400

Need to buy in the Hamptons soon? There should be plenty to choose from. The inventory of unsold homes on the market there was up 4.6 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the first of 2008 (and a remarkable 27.2 percent from the first quarter of 2007), according to a report from Miller Samuel and Prudential Douglas Elliman.

In the North Fork, inventory was up 10.2 percent quarterly and nearly 20 percent...

Stat of The Day: Hamptons Home Sales Drop

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:05:24 -0400

The number of Hamptons home sales dropped 28.8 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 through the first quarter of 2008, according to a new report from appraisal firm Miller Samuel. Sales dropped 42.4 percent annually in the first quarter.

At the same time, both median and average Hamptons home prices increased annually; and the inventory of unsold homes on the sales market increased both quarterly and annually....

Stat of The Day: How The Hamptons Started '08

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 13:58:57 -0400

As the summer Hamptons season creeps closer, here's how housing prices there started 2008.

The luxury numbers below are taken from a fourth quarter 2007 report (PDF) authored by Jonathan Miller for Prudential Douglas Elliman.

Sagaponack was the most expensive Hamptons enclave. The average sales price for a luxury home there rose in 2007 from $7.3 million to $13.7 million.East Hampton was the second most expensive with an average luxury price of $8,538,333 in...

Manhattan Masochists in Spankin’ Hamptons

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 07:29:50 -0400

[Ed. note: this article was originally published on June 3, 1996.]

Every five minutes during the Jitney ride out to the Hamptons on Memorial Day weekend, Janey Wilcox wanted to stand up and scream, “I’m Janey Wilcox, the model, and I’m spending the weekend with Zack Manners, the English billionaire record producer. So fuck you. All of you.” Just to make herself feel better.

She was wearing a baseball cap...

Frisky Sexual Freeloader Makes Hamptons Plans

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 11:50:00 -0400

Model seeks place, puts up with boob-squeezing enthusiast.[Ed. note: this article was originally published on May 20, 1996.]

Janey Wilcox spent every summer for the last 10 years in the Hamptons, and she'd never once rented a house or paid for anything, save for the occasional Jitney ticket.

In the early 80's, Janey was enough of a model to become a sort of lukewarm celebrity, and the lukewarm celebrity got her a...

Dan of Dan's Papers Working on Hamptons Memoir

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 09:15:20 -0400

The New York Sun reports this morning that Dan Rattiner, who recently sold his iconic Hamptons magazine Dan's Papers to News Communications, Inc., is preparing his memoirs for publication next spring:

Yesterday, Mr. Rattiner said he had recently settled on a title, "In the Hamptons: My 50 Years With the Fisherman, Farmers, Artists, Billionaires and Celebrities." Each of its chapters will focus on a Hamptons experience he has had or a person...

Liv Free or Die!

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 12:52:28 -0400

Speaking of Liv Tyler (and when aren’t we?), her husband Royston Langdon, along with so-cool-you-can’t-pronounce-them artists like Ne-Yo and band Arckid, kicks off the Hennessy Artistry tour. Hot sibling Paul Sevigny will take a night off from his duties at Beatrice Inn (the new Bungalow 8, and just as silly-willy-Wonka!) to D.J. Anyone else miss the name Spacehog? Moving on to Brian Williams (and when aren’t we?), the NBC News anchor will be bringing...