The Surf Lodge starts to fill up around 4 p.m. on weekends in the summer. Black Escalades with tinted windows and Mercedes-Benz vans line up to drop off groups of mainly 20 and early-30-somethings, mostly in town for the weekend. Men wear the same straight-leg pant, T-shirt uniform as they do in any other club on the South Fork (albeit with more fedoras). Women curate their look specifically for the Surf Lodge “vibe”: lacy white dresses and two-piece sets revealing luxury swimwear underneath.
An intimidatingly good-looking staff helmed by Jayma Cardoso holds court at a counter near the entrance and partitions guests into three lines. Dinner reservation holders follow a maître d’ to the dining area. Individuals with general admission tickets, which range from free to over $500 depending on the talent booked, shuffle to the bar for margaritas and vodka sodas. The third group doesn’t actually wait in line — they’re whisked past velvet ropes to their own spot for the evening. These are the guests who have a “table.”
A table at the Surf Lodge is a small, whitewashed box with a wooden banquette along one or two sides. It’s lined with canned beverages, sliced limes and oranges, plastic cups and straws, and an ice bucket. Although all tables offer the same basic amenities, guests in the know understand the chasm that divides “beach” tables and “deck” tables.
To book a beach table this Saturday, during Labor Day weekend, groups must spend a minimum of $5,000. The fee buys entry for up to 10 guests to the beach area, main inside bar, and the upper deck (although access to this section sometimes closes because of fire code issues). On the beach, guests can sit under umbrellas, lounge on cushioned chairs, and relax inside shaded cabanas.
But guests with a beach table cannot get inside the main deck. They may look at it longingly, standing on benches right outside the barrier, swaying just out of reach of the dance party. But a tight security team with hawk-like eyes, armed with walkie-talkies, quickly and quietly squash any attempts to wander into the promised land. As one TikTok user put it, “If you’re not on the deck, you’re giving nothing but peasant. Go cry about it.” Another wrote: “$5k for a beach table to be treated like a second class citizen. Go for the deck or go to Talkhouse.”
A table on the deck this weekend costs a minimum of $10,000. For the price of a semester at a state school or a used car, eight guests (entry for additional guests is subject to the discretion of staff) get access to the best of the Surf Lodge for five hours, from 4 to 9 p.m.
To reach their “minimum,” guests order from a high-priced menu. A bottle of Clase Azul Tequila Añejo, which retails for around $450, is sold at $2,500. A Patron Blanco, usually around $40, goes for $950. The chicken finger tower, a favorite among influencers who call it the “chicken tendies,” costs $145.
With prices so high, is the Surf Lodge worth it?
Parth Dalal, a venture capitalist in New York City, regularly buys tables. “We have a lot of guy friends. They’re never going to let us through the front door if we don’t buy a table,” he said. “We’re at a roadside motel by a man-made pond, but they get good D.J.s.”
A.J. Bruno, a realtor from New Jersey, recently got an invite to a pair of tables behind the D.J. booth onstage with a group of about 20 friends. “We got a couple bottles of 1942, Grey Goose, and champagne,” he said. “The sun went down and everyone was dancing. It’s really fun.”
On TikTok, the mega-influencer Alix Earle told her 7.5 million followers that the Surf Lodge is “our favorite place to go.” Another influencer, Jenny Narciso, took a video of the club with the caption “Everyones hotter in the Hamptons idc.” Isabella Lauren, who reported that staff denied her and her friends a promised table because they were “supposed to be eight skinny, tall models,” went back the following week and got a wristband, writing of “surf lodge redemption.”
Most regulars seem to feel similarly: When you’re on the deck, the Surf Lodge can offer a genuinely good time, with scenic views, danceable music, and beautiful people.
In this way, the Surf Lodge functions like a microcosm of the area itself. “The playground for the rich and famous” presents opportunities to experience real pleasure. But this pleasure is sold at a price that warps the meaning of money: $10,000 means a couple hours of drinking for one, and a couple months of labor for another.
Possibly that’s part of the appeal: the hedonism of blowing through cash and not making a dent in your fortune, of displaying impenetrable financial security. Or maybe enjoying the Surf Lodge, and “the Hamptons” generally, requires a suspension of the discomfort of heavy spending, achieved through cocktails and loud music.
On a Subreddit called “fatFIRE,” where millionaires post about retiring “with a fat stash,” a conversation about the “hedonic treadmill,” or the unintentional adaptation to luxury, often comes up. “I am aware intellectually of my cash flows and net worth, but I am having a really hard time psychologically suddenly caring about expenses that were always a non-factor,” wrote one user. Excesses stop feeling like excesses. Going to the Surf Lodge is just what you do when you’re young and rich — it’s a default, similar to going to Times Square as a tourist. And while it’s possible that an essential element of fun gets lost when the only thing that draws a group together is merely the ability to pay to get through the door, the opposite could also be true. To be young and rich and partying together is an aspiration so cemented that it seems intrinsic. But is there a limit?
When the night grows dark and the D.J. stops playing tracks like “Dirty Cash (Money Talks)” and “No Broke Boys” at 9 on the dot, guests will file out. Many will continue to chase fun at tables at Montauk Project or Bounce. But the remnants of excess will remain: Silence will fall upon bottles of neglected luxury booze, still half full inside their ultra-size carcasses, and on uneaten fries, wilting in their chicken finger towers.
