Mr. Grammer and his wife Camille, a blond bombshell wearing a precariously short sequined skirt who’s become a champion of irritable-bowel syndrome, have a home in Water Mill. “I know more and more people are living out here full time,” he said. “Our commute is really from California when we come out here. We just skip the city …. We get everything we need here.”
Howard Stern and his fiancée, Beth Ostrosky, may soon be skipping the city, too. “We’re most comfortable here,” said Ms. Ostrosky, in a colorful Missoni blouse and white Hudson jeans, at the Fierce People after-party. “We love everything about the Hamptons, the nature first and foremost. It’s the most magnificent, beautiful spot in the world to us, and we just feel so at home and so at peace here.”
Mr. Stern and his future missus are a year away from completing their enormous dream home in Southampton. “We have our place in the city and we always will,” Ms. Ostrosky said. “But we would be more than happy to be out here and never go back to the city again.”
The king of all media indeed appears at ease in Southampton. That night he drove his black Cadillac Escalade to the front of the mile-long line of cars waiting to be valet-parked, demanded that the check-in table blocking the driveway be moved, and rumbled straight up to the house to drop off Ms. Ostrovsky. He repeated this process when he returned to pick her up. “He said he didn’t want to walk,” said another party guest.
Naturally, not everyone is pleased that the rich folks who used to stop by the Hamptons on the weekend are now leaving deeper footprints.
“This is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and what’s happened to it is slightly sad,” said Susan Forristal, a former model who lives in East Hampton. “Now there are too many young, rich people who have no manners. It’s a very different place now. Too much money. Too many bad manners. It’s not the same place.”
Ms. Forristal, the ex-wife of SNL producer Lorne Michaels, fondly recalled when the towns were populated with “old Jews in Sansabelt pants.”
“My favorite thing was watching Ron and Ellen Delsner fight in line for the movies,” she said. “You could still find a place to buy a needle and thread.” Now there’s an overrun of chic boutiques like Stefani Greenfield’s Scoop. “Which I will boycott until the end of my dying days,” Ms. Forristal said, “because they destroyed our last hardware store.”
But for people like Mr. Grammer and Mr. Stern and, say, Gwyneth Paltrow (who recently annoyed her new neighbors in Amagansett by erecting a giant wall around her manse)—people who aren’t running out to pick up a Philips screwdriver—the Hamptons does have everything. They can trot down to Loaves and Fishes in Bridgehampton and pick up some lobster salad for $100 a pound, or pick up a cappuccino for $6 at Sant Ambroeus. They can peruse the couture produce at the Green Thumb. “Howard and I only eat organic,” Ms. Ostrosky said.
Then again, not everyone is so devoted to clean living.
It was around 2 a.m. on the morning of June 24 at the Pink Elephant nightclub along the Montauk highway. The joint was jumping with pink-cheeked, thirtysomething young men in brightly colored button-down shirts and their female counterparts in this summer’s ubiquitous, unflattering baby-doll dresses, along with Jergens tans.
Owner Rocco Ancarola bragged that numbers for the club are up 30 percent from last year. “I think people are moving out here and they’re finding that they can work out here because everyone has the Internet nowadays, and an apartment on the Bowery—like a one-bedroom apartment—can go for a million or two million!” he said. “Whereas they can come out here and get a really decent house with quality of living. Which is really what life is all about.”
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