Ooh la la, the Hamptons. Aren’t you in with the chichi crowd, hobnobbing with the rich and famous, the movers and the shakers. Whenever I mention that I spend time in the Hamptons to friends, family, and acquaintances from anywhere, instantly an image pops into their heads and invariably a snarky comment follows from anyone who hasn’t visited. The press, gossip columns, television, movies, and social media have painted an image of “the Hamptons” that, from where I sit, isn’t really there there.
Yes, the rich, the famous, and the infamous are here, or so I have heard. Summer weekends ooze with charitable events, dinners, and blowouts attended by celebrities, the in-crowd, the well-to-do, the A-listers who are duly noted in glossy magazines with photos and blurbs, giving everyone their 15 seconds of posing-in-the-sunlight fame. The large estates abound as well, with perfectly manicured and pruned lawns, with tall, dense hedges obscuring spectacular gardens, sparkling pools, bubbling hot tubs, and lush over-the-top lifestyles.
The multimillion-dollar yachts are here too, glistening in the marinas, anchored in the harbors, and cruising the waterways — gawked at by those on shore hoping for a peek at glamour or a well-known face. Not to mention a slew of luxury retail and dining outposts from the city and beyond, including the newest and hottest exercise meccas that pop up, stick around for a season or two with new menus, noted chefs, and much-tweeted trainers, and which then close up and go dark as the summer fades into autumn.
All of that’s here, but the Hamptons as I know them are none of that at all. That’s an illusion, a sensationalized creation; there is no there there here. The Hamptons are something else and something different to each and every person out here. The Hamptons are in fact made up of a cross-section of people from everywhere and from right here, involved in all manner of pursuits and activities. They are an exaggerated microcosm of America, squished into a 30-mile or so stretch of land and sea at the eastern end of Long Island. We are the haves, the have-nots, the wannabes, the has-beens, the somebodies, the nobodies. We are locals, Bubs, Bonackers, African-Americans, Native Americans, a growing population of legal and illegal immigrants from points South as well as all those city people who flock eastward come Memorial Day.
There’s old money, new money, loads of money, some money, and, far more than most take notice of, people and families with no money at all, with each of these social circles dividing into subgroups of which each of us is keenly aware — of where everyone else sits on the economic social ladder, where and how we shop and dine and spend our free time. And in spite of how obvious it may seem as to “who is who,” everyone, as crazy as it sounds, sees themselves as the “us” and everyone else as the “them.” The us, the them, the ours, and the theirs . . . who are “they” anyway?
Let’s face it, city people, as far as locals are concerned, are all the same; they’re city people, outsiders — they’re definitely a them. In fact, they don’t even have to be from the city to be a them, they just have to be from anywhere west of the Shinnecock Canal. And to be clear, as far as true locals are concerned, if your family doesn’t go back five or 10 generations to the original settlers, there’s no getting around it, you are by default a them. The refrain oft repeated by the locals come May as the traffic heats up, parking spaces dwindle, and prices skyrocket is “Theeeeyyy’re back! Theeeeyyy’re here!”
On the other side of the coin, in this insider-outsider realm, the city people also consider themselves to be the us’es when in the Hamptons, and regard the local residents out here as them. How wild is that? A few years back I heard one of them utter in the line at the grocery store, “Why do they have to do their shopping on weekends? They live here. Can’t they shop during the week?” Wait a sec, if we are all “thems,” then who are they?
Well, the truth is everyone has their own unspoken, but clearly understood, system of measuring and comparing where everyone else falls in the Hamptons food chain, regardless of whether they think of themselves as an us or a them. How and what they drive and where they hang out are dead giveaways. Are they sporting a fedora, faux-shredded jeans, flip-flops, Crocs, work boots? Are they influencers posting on social media at various much-touted spots? Is that a dog or a lawn mower in the back of their pickup? Is that pickup a beater or a shiny, refurbished vintage truck, casually parked in the middle of town by someone posing as a local — a one of us, if you will, or would that be one of them?
Each grocery, liquor, or hardware store, farm stand or deli, also has its own loyal following of them and us’es, sometimes both, and we can all instinctively tell who is who in the blink of an eye. Which beaches do they have access to with a pass — town or village? Are they a member of a tennis, golf, or yacht club? Do they surf, paddleboard, kayak, fish, kickbox, practice yoga and spin in a formal setting with a pro or just out on their own winging it like the rest of us? It’s darn-right dizzying to think of the multitude of layers of us’es and thems that permeate the Hamptons.
Oddly enough, I have found myself in the unique position of having landed smack dab in the middle of the us and them arena. You see, I’m a city person, that’s where I reside in the winter months, and ordinarily that would most definitely make me a them by any local measure. But for many decades during the summer I have lived on the water on my sailboat. And by virtue of having lived in both worlds I have come to be friends and acquaintances with people from all walks of life and circumstances — from the tippy top of the one-percenters down to the lowest rungs of the no-percenters.
The waterfront, as it turns out, is a no man’s land where the us’es and thems, the locals and the city folk, are just “us” — the boating community. It doesn’t matter if your boat is a rowboat or a mega-yacht, we are kin and there isn’t an us or a them among us. We share the oceans, bays, and marinas with no regard to anyone’s wealth, social standing, or fame. It’s about nature, the water, and fresh air. There is always a friendly wave as we pass each other on the waterways, and casual dockside exchanges are the rule. “Any wind out there?” “When is low tide?” “Whitecaps out there, careful!” “Catch anything?” We just are.
(I will concede that boaters can fall into the trap, though not at all in the same context. On the waterfront, sailors and power boaters do on occasion refer to each other as the us or them “blow-boaters” and the us or them “stinkpots,” but even then we are still just boaters.)
The reality in the there there here is that the Hamptons are living communities of everyday people. We are teachers, builders, lawyers, plumbers, landscapers, fishermen, accountants, small-business owners, big-business owners, real estate agents, retirees, and workers of all kinds from all over. Some of us born and raised here for generations, others transplants from the city or elsewhere trying out a new life. Some of us making a living by catering to the summer residents, and some of us are just here for weekends.
But in the end, all of us are simply living our lives and enjoying our time in this beautiful, peaceful, and exceptionally special spot in the world. We are all us’es and thems.
Gina Stone, a part-time resident of East Hampton, lives on a boat in the summertime.