Tag Archives: travels

The Last Thing I’ll Say About the Hamptons This Year

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Our trip to the Hamptons a couple of weeks ago started out pretty ominously. My roommate (who prefers that I refer to him as my landlord), Jack, and I met our friend Jeff at his new apartment in Queens that has one of those old-style elevators where you have to close an outer door before the door inside the elevator will close. So we loaded our suitcases full of clothes, duffel bags full of liquor, backpacks full of Xboxes, and arms full of cameras into this 2-by-3-foot thing, let the outer door close behind us, pressed the button to go down, watch as the inner door slid closed . . . and just sat there.

It took Jeff about three seconds to silently flip out and then press every button, ring the emergency bell, and begin calling the super repeatedly. After about five seconds of that, I started looking around to figure out if any fresh air was getting into the thing while Jack, I’m sure, was contemplating which of us would be more delicious to eat if it came down to that: the kid raised on Caribbean food or the kid raised on steak and potatoes.

Eventually, Jeff and Jack pried open the inner door and figured out that the outer door just hadn’t closed all the way. So after stopping on every floor thanks to Jeff’s button-pushing, we were on our way to the loveliest dollhouse on the East coast:

The Hamptons

It was dark by the time we got there, so we spent the first night hanging out inside, but as soon as the sun rose (okay, more like 11 a.m.), we were out the door for some lemon ricotta pancakes and some buttermilk pancakes with crispy bacon:

The Hamptons

The Hamptons

As soon as we got back to the house, I walked across the street to the beach. Now, I hadn’t expected the water to actually be warm enough to swim in, but I hadn’t expected the crazy waves. These things had to be eight feet high:

The Hamptons

and green!:

The Hamptons

and coming so far up the shore in some places that they were making separate pools and cutting out big sand cliffs:

The Hamptons

I understood why some of the houses had boards on them still from the hurricane weeks before. And I hope you’re not bored yet, because here are 15 million more pictures of them:

The Hamptons

The Hamptons

The Hamptons
butterfly!

The Hamptons
closer butterfly!

The Hamptons

The Hamptons

The Hamptons

The Hamptons

The Hamptons

Jeff and Jack drove by the beach to pick me up so we could meet everyone at the grocery store to stock the house for the weekend. I found this greeting card resting on the pizza I was about to buy, and it actually did dissuade me from buying that pizza. But not the one next to it. BOO-YAH.

The Hamptons

Our friends Anthony and Chantee arrived that night, and we spent the evening eating Anthony’s cheeses on bread drizzled with honey and solving world problems.

The next day, we went on a loooooooong walk on the beach that included so much propping-Anthony’s-camera-up-on-flip-flops-and-things-to-take-pictures-of-ourselves and then went into “town”, which is a five-block strip of boutiques (that all sell ice cream in addition to whatever their actual purpose is) and restaurants on one street. We took uproarious photos that are all trapped on Anthony’s camera and stopped by a bakery where I got something so delicious it’s getting its own post on donuts4dinner.com. Just knowing that it’s in one of the bags in front of Jack and Anthony is kind of making me mouth-froth right now:

The Hamptons

While everyone else sat out on the deck reading, I got up the nerve to stick my feet in the pool for, like, a whole half an hour before they turned blue. Then, that night, we had a family dinner at the house and then drove to the end of the peninsula to see this:

The Hamptons

The Hamptons

The Hamptons

The Hamptons

And all the joy we felt can be expressed in this picture of Chantee and me:

The Hamptons

It’s just so great there, you guys. The house is three stories of plushy couches and TVs and stereo systems, so there’s always something going on somewhere, and everyone gets along when I’m not accusing someone of having bad taste in music, and everyone stays up so late talking about so much, and we walk to the beach in sweaters at midnight, and we stand out on the balcony and look at the moon and are perfect.

NYC: The Really Hot Boyfriend Who Beats Me

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The Hamptons feels so far away from New York City that I sometimes forget I’m still in the same time zone. We ride around in cars there and eat pastries on the empty patios of cafés and stock up for the weekend in grocery stores with aisles big enough to fit carts. The town has ten boutiques, and the people who live there make conversation with you for no reason.

But on the drive home, you quickly realize how close to the city you still are. On the road trips I used to make in college to South Carolina and Chicago, I remember stopping for gas at highway exits that had little else. A truck stop, an adult bookstore, and a McDonald’s perched on a hill with nothing but miles and miles of farmland as far as I could see. I always felt like I was on the prairie, even if I was really in the middle of the Appalachians. On the way back from the Hamptons, if you blink your eye, you’re in Queens. The exits all lead to neighborhoods with constantly-busy streets, strollers full of babies of every ethnicity, skateboarding teenagers, shopping bags on every arm.

There’s no rest. I feel my chest tighten as soon as the row houses come into view and a taxi cuts us off. The fact that I hold my breath all day in NYC is only noticeable after a weekend away with nothing but exhalations. It’s like I’m always bracing myself for the worst.

Brooklyn Bridge

But then we’re on the Brooklyn Bridge, and the city’s skyline is the most exciting one I’ve ever seen, and I tell my friend Jeff, “If I’m this happy to see New York after only a weekend away, imagine how I’d feel after a year.” It’s scary to imagine yourself as a tourist here, older and settled somewhere else and without any more ties to this city than to London or Tokyo. Part of the thing about living in NYC is feeling like you’re in on a special secret that no one else knows about.

Well, no one but the 18 million other people who live here.

To the Hamptons Once More

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Weekend Getaway

My friends and I have gone back to our house in the Hamptons one last time this weekend to pretend like summer didn’t end already. I guess if the ocean’s too cold, we’ll just have to spend the time in our heated pool, sipping our alcoholic beverages and peeing in the water at length to keep ourselves warm.

Look at Me, Kind of Caring About Plant Life

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San Juan Capistrano

Wild things in San Juan Capistrano:

San Juan Capistrano

San Juan Capistrano

San Juan Capistrano

The golf club where Kamran’s parents live:

San Juan Capistrano

San Juan Capistrano

Saddleback Mountain in a fake sunset:

San Juan Capistrano

Trying out my watermark . . . and not totally hating it.

Favourite Finds from The Old Barn Antique Mall

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While visiting Kamran’s parents this year and last, we visited The Old Barn Antique Mall in nearby San Juan Capistrano, a nearly block-long building split into themed rooms and stuffed with oddities and antiques from flapper dresses to cowboys’ cast iron cookpots to, well, whatever these things are:


Groin!


Really? You thought Penetrene was much better than Penorub?

Everything’s fairly overpriced for anyone used to “antiquing” at the thrift store, but really, where else are you going to find your holographic posters that morph from babies into skeletons depending on how you look at them?