I know this will shock you, but for the first three and a half centuries or so of our English speaking history not one person one here ever uttered the words “luxury goods.” Even thirty years ago, our Main Streets were still home to local shops. In those days, believe it or not, it was actually easier to buy some fishing line or plumbing supplies on Main Street than it was to buy an emerald or diamond, and easier to drop off your laundry and pick up a newspaper than to pick up some cashmere that probably costs as much as my first house.
It’s true. Thirty years ago shopping had not yet become an obsession for some, a spectator sport for others, in the Hamptons. And the idea of a publication like Hamptons Magazine filled with ads aimed at consumers of these high-end items was unheard of. Most of us did not have money then, and the few that did were not conspicuous consumers. Extravagance, excess, indulgence, affluence—they were all concepts that belonged to urban centers, Hollywood, and resorts like Cap D’Antibes. They had no natural roots in eastern Long Island. But, as we see, they transplanted uncannily well and have flourished mightily. Who could have predicted that even the natural defenses of the Shinnecock Canal would be no barrier to the incursions of endless hordes with outrageous amounts of money to spend?
It seems visionary now, but thirty years ago a start-up magazine with the name Hamptons was more risky than you might guess. For one thing, the term, “the Hamptons” was not commonly used. Local residents knew this area as “the South Fork” or “the East End” and people in the estate areas were still referred to (particularly by themselves) as “the Summer Colony.” To a new generation, these variants may sound a bit quaint and dated, but they carried a lot of meaning in their time. Among the benefits of that simpler life, you never had metonymic worries about whether the term “Hamptons,” a collective noun, takes a plural verb—for example, the Hamptons are—a usage the British and your spellchecker prefer, or takes a singular verb—the Hamptons is—the more ordinary and natural expression.
Syntax aside, life here was not better or worse than it is today. But it was different. There was virtually no traffic congestion or slow-downs. In practical terms, it meant that you could easily zip from East Hampton to Southampton for dinner, then stop at the Bull’s Head Inn in Bridgehampton for a drink on the way home (drinking and driving was not yet seriously taboo) and maybe even have a nightcap on the Main Street terrace of Chez Labatt. Nothing French about Chez Labatt, by the way, except the name.
I’ve now gotten used to defensively planning my trips between villages in the summer, but I will never get used to all the lines and arrows and swoops and dashes painted along our roads—hieroglyphics that only traffic engineers could conceive of. The purpose might be to keep us from straying where we don’t belong, to keep us on the straight and narrow, but it perversely makes me long for a quiet retreat at the end of a long country road unsullied by paint and signs—pretty much the way things were thirty years ago.
The miles of potato fields south and north of the highway were mostly untouched by development as well as traffic then. The vistas were panoramic, broken only by the occasional farmhouse and barn, with a mildly intrusive modern house here and there.
We no longer have endless potato fields and small, traditional villages. But we still have great natural beauty—the sea and sky and beaches and a relatively good amount of open space—and significant manmade beauty in the architecture and landscapes of our village centers and most residential areas. Perhaps the greatest gain in the last thirty years has been less tangible. We have a terrifically interesting, more culturally diverse community now. We have, in short, an abundance of the good life. And who reflects this uniquely Hamptons lifestyle better than Hamptons Magazine as it enters its thirty-first year?