Sagaponack resident Lilith Jacobs, however, did just that.

Ms. Jacobs placed a restraining order on a small, 1930s foursquare farmhouse on Hedges Lane, insisting the home remain at least 300 feet from her property.

The house, originally at 243 Hedges Lane in the heart of Sagaponack, the fertile nook of farmland between Bridgehampton and the Atlantic Ocean, is certainly a relic of another time, bookended even today by rambling lawns leading up to vast, gambrel-roofed second homes.

But this unassuming foursquare has been the cause of perhaps the most heated debate in the hamlet's recent history, with the Village of Sagaponack and the Peconic Land Trust on one side championing the preservation of the house, and the neighboring residents of Sagaponack pitted against them, calling the structure an eyesore.

Extreme measures have been taken and grave allegations made.

THE FOURSQUARE HOME was one of a handful of structures on the 40-acre farm at 243 Hedges Lane, a farm once owned by the Hedges family and then the Barshefsky family. Several years ago, lawyer Alan Schnurman bought the property with the intention of subdividing and developing the unused farmland. A multi-year stalemate ensued regarding the zoning and development rights of the land.

"You really couldn't sell that land to anyone with all the old houses on it," explained East Hampton Star reporter Jennifer Landes, who broke the story last December, adding that the property was overgrown and abandoned for several years while Mr. Schnurman sought the myriad zoning, development and demolition rights needed to make the land saleable.

In 2009, Mr. Schnurman found a prospective buyer, local contractor Michael Davis, who, naturally, planned to demolish the surviving structures. Before the transaction could be brokered, though, the village needed to issue the following permits: approval of the movement of an 1840s Greek revival home dubbed "the honeymoon cottage" to the front of the property to act as a gatehouse; a variance allowing Mr. Davis to have two dwellings on a single property; demolition rights for the remaining barns; and development rights for an as-yet-unbuilt main home.

The only stone left unturned was the issue of the foursquare house. Mr. Davis wanted to raze it; the Village Board resisted, arguing that it was ripe for preservation.

Here's where the he said/she said begins. According to Sagaponack residents and others involved in the deal, this is what we know: Alan Schnurman made an $85,000 donation to the Peconic Land Trust, an influential local nonprofit with the muscle to move the house. The Land Trust moved the incendiary foursquare to a plot of preserved land up the road. The Village of Sagaponack issued the necessary permits with the Zoning Board of Appeals, ruling that they were in the interest of the community.

The foursquare was moved to an 11-acre swath on the corner of Hedges and Fairfield Pond lanes, a plot that was donated to the South Fork Land Trust in the 1977 by cosmetics moguls Ronald and Leonard Lauder. (The South Fork Land Trust recently lost its 501-C3 status as a nonprofit and its affairs have since been absorbed under the umbrella of the Peconic Land Trust.) The land was donated without any development restrictions, meaning that under the current zoning, the plot could be subdivided into three developable lots.

The Land Trust planned to move the foursquare to the fallow corner of the property, across the street from Ms. Jacobs' house. She followed by placing the restraining order and then later sued the Land Trust and the Village of Sagaponack, at which point the movers picked the house back up and trotted it to the other end of the property.

One of the 11 acres has now been carved out with the farmhouse on it, and will be sold, with the profits going to the Land Trust. Peconic Land Trust president John v.H. Halsey told The Observer, "The proceeds from the sale of the house will ensure that the rest of the 11 acres will be perpetually protected. It helps us preserve more farms and more land." He was referring to the Land Trust's plan to use the profits from selling the 1-acre subdivide to fund the purchase of Hopping Farm on Sagg Main Street.

BUT COMMUNITY MEMBERS allege that the deal was not quite as clean as the above outline, drawing attention to the overlapping interests between Sagaponack Village officials and Peconic Land Trust board members. Mayor Donald Louchheim's wife, Pingree—a vocal advocate for the preservation of the foursquare—is a former Land Trust board member, and Deputy Mayor Lee Foster is a South Fork Land Trust member; her husband, Cliff, is that trust's chairman and their daughter, Marilee, is a Peconic Land Trust board member.

At a village meeting, William McCoy, a local real estate agent who lives across from the foursquare's new location, announced that 80 percent of Sagaponack's population was against the preservation and accused the village of improper involvement in the move. He suggested that the $85,000 donation to the Land Trust was really extortion on the part of the trust and the village in return for removal of the house and the issuing of needed permits. Both Mr. Halsey and Mayor Louchheim vehemently deny such allegations.

Mayor Louchheim grew angry when questioned on the subject, calling such allegations "a total falsehood" and completely erroneous. "There is absolutely no connection between the approval of the variance and the donation. I don't know how there could have been."

Though the nagging question remains: Whose idea was it to gift the house to the Land Trust?

The mayor said that the only thing the Village Board was asked to approve was the creation of the 1-acre lot as a final resting place for the forlorn foursquare.

The details of the subdivision plan were outlined at last Monday's planning board meeting. "Two of the more vociferous critics were in the audience," Mayor Louchheim said, "and they were asked if they had any comments, and they didn't!"

But there might be a reason they didn't comment. Sagaponack resident Ana Daniel, once a vocal opponent to the foursquare move, was nervous and uncommunicative when The Observer reached her by phone. "I really can't say anything about it since I have been threatened with a lawsuit by the mayor's wife and the mayor."

Of the nature of the donation, Mr. Halsey, the Land Trust president, explained, "We pointed out to [Mr. Schnurman] that there were going to be costs involved in moving it, and that we would be most appreciative of a donation. We put together a budget that took into account all conceivable expenses. We requested a gift but he certainly had no obligation to give it.

"It was really about finding a home for a homeless farmhouse."

cmalle@observer.com

It was the inaugural game of the event, which will be held for seven weeks on Saturday from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. in Bridgehampton. The VIP tent was sectioned off by a small white fence that paralyzed the Transom, who peeked tentatively over to see that PC Peterson from the infamous television reality show NYC Prep had a cast on his right arm—though he of course could still somehow hold a drink in it. Barron Hilton was right by his side. Model and star player Nacho Figueras briefly stood by the Ralph Lauren tent with his wife before joining them. The crowd also included actor Chace Crawford, former Viewster Star Jones and Howard Stern's lady love, Beth Ostrosky.

One guy refused to order a cocktail called "Pink Polo" because "my shirt is actually salmon-colored, thank you very much!" Men strolling the grounds were all dressed similarly: khaki pants or shorts and a polo shirt in a bright color. Yellow, pink, purple, green, red ... our eyes hurt.

Hours later, Mr. Figueras was spotted at a house party in Watermill, standing outside talking to his thirsty conferes, who were drinking glasses of Sangria and smoking one cigarette after another, before melting into the crowd. "What a great game that was earlier!" said one. Did he play? "Next year. I need to get my rest, but until then, cheers!"

And cheers to you, big fella!

“I tried sprinkling them with aluminum-chloride flakes,” he said woefully to the man from Hampton Irrigation. Mr. Balaban addressed him as “Steve.” Steve wore work boots, tube socks and a nametag that said “Ethan.”

Mr. Balaban, in a crisp white Banana Republic dress shirt, squired him through a tour of his unfinished country estate, a 6,000-square-foot Cape Cod that is, after five years of work, not yet fit for habitation. The lawn is flooded. The kitchen is cabinet-less. When in town, Mr. Balaban sleeps in the three-car garage.

“The ground simply doesn’t have enough aluminum in it,” he said, as if all things ultimately came back to the colors of his garden. Comedy, tragedy, horror, real estate: blue flowers, rust-colored flowers.

Mr. Balaban—an actor, writer, director, producer, children’s-book author, book-on-tape reader and all-purpose, soft-spoken, central-casting Semite—has been chronicling his domestic travails for a sporadic documentary television series. Bob Builds His Dream House airs with no warning or regularity on Plum TV, a toity cable network that broadcasts only in six of America’s luxury vacation destinations—the Hamptons, Aspen, Martha’s Vineyard, the like. It is hardly Mr. Balaban’s highest artistic achievement, and in that regard it is a perfectly representative one: understated, clever, nicely shticky like the rest of his career and also, in its way, classic. Some people buy a giant house in the Hamptons and pay cash. Bob Balaban—and his wife, the screenwriter Lynn Grossman—spent more than 20 years looking for real estate and then sacrificed five agonizing years—so far—with building it themselves.

(Before “Steve” came over, Mr. Balaban had driven NYTV about the Hamptons in his black Volkswagen sedan. There had been a falafel sandwich at Bridgehampton’s World Pie. From the driver’s seat, Mr. Balaban wandered his way through descriptions of his innumerable upcoming projects. One of them is a children’s book, disturbingly called Do Not Open This Book. He described it as “my Slaughterhouse Five for the 12-to-16 set.” He thought for a while about being the sort of man who starts more things than he finishes. “I have a fabulous—I love my ideas for certain things,” he said. “I’m sort of an idiot savant.”)

Ten years ago, he settled on a plot located just off Sagaponack Road, opposite an open field, surrounded by heavy brush and next-door to the family that built either the Suez or the Panama Canal, Mr. Balaban can’t remember which. Sometime between then and now, someone built a 20,000-square-foot spec house, the largest in the Hamptons, right across the street.

His contractors turned out to be trouble. His landscaper couldn’t agree with the irrigation specialist. Last winter, despite extensive grading, lumping and topsoil-compacting countermeasures, the swimming pool filled with mud.

“But I’m very fond of our tile people,” Mr. Balaban said. He declined to discuss many of the unaired frustrations that have delayed his construction effort. “I will just say this was not about how fun it is to build a house,” he said. “I have to be judicious about this so as not to incur any further wrath.”

The half-decade of construction has yielded so far just two half-hour episodes for Plum TV. He is “in the process of accumulating material for No. 3.”

So perhaps Ethan, or Steve, could give him some narrative for that third episode. “What seems to be the problem?” the drainage specialist asked at the start of their meeting.

“When they came to put in the irrigation line,” Mr. Balaban said, gesturing wearily at a nondescript bit of greenery by the guesthouse, “they moved the plant—I must say very badly, but that’s O.K.”

Steve nodded. George, his assistant, scuttled off to the truck to get a “sleeve,” which Steve promised would protect the irrigation tubing without disturbing the shrubs.

“I’m in a constant state of worrying about these plants,” said Mr. Balaban, who sometimes refers to his plants as “these guys.”

Mr. Balaban’s phone rang. He scrambled to untangle the headset cord and began to yank the BlackBerry out of his shirt pocket. It wouldn’t come. He gave up, then decided to try again, then gave up, then tried again. “Could you just tear off my shirt?” he asked Steve.

“Maybe pull the cord out first,” Steve said.

“That’s a brilliant idea,” Mr. Balaban said. “It’s just like irrigation.”

Steve agreed. Then several of the surrounding sprinklers clicked on, spraying Mr. Balaban and his BlackBerry and Steve. The section of grass being doused was already under an inch of water. Mr. Balaban deflated.

Steve promised to reset the timers on the irrigation system. “You’re Ethan,” Mr. Balaban said, noticing the man’s shirt. “I’ve been calling you Steve.” He apologized and apologized.

“Better than late,” Ethan said. Mr. Balaban nodded solemnly and apologized some more.

A Chicago native and permanent resident of the Upper West Side, Mr. Balaban is an entertainment-industry Renaissance man and a member of one of the great American show-business families. The seven sons of his Russian émigré grandmother came to own more than 70 movie theaters in the Midwest. Later, the eldest, Barney, ran Paramount Pictures for nearly 30 years. Elmer, Bob’s father, invented pay cable. Robert Elmer Balaban was born in 1945 and is the only member of the family to cross over to acting. He began his film career in earnest in 1969, when he played the young student who blew Jon Voigt in Midnight Cowboy.

His television career has been more wide-ranging. He has twice played the president of NBC—once as his friend Warren Littlefield in HBO’s The Late Shift, and again, as a generic network executive, during a five-episode stint on Seinfeld. He has developed countless pilots over the years, including one called Deadline, in 2000, that featured his friend Oliver Platt as a conniving but lovable New York tabloid reporter. He did an animated dating series for VH1, a postmodern love story for FX and a science-fiction project that has not yet found a home. Hopeless Pictures, a cartoon spoof of the independent-film world he did in 2005 for the Independent Film Channel, is a point of particular pride—not just for its takedown of weepy indies, but also for its sexual explicitness. “We had penetration,” he said proudly.

Mr. Balaban’s talents extend to the theater and to precisely two other areas of life: the checkout line at Costco, where he can guess the total cost of purchases, without tallying, to within a dollar; and to distance, which he said he can measure mentally to within an inch. He has a terrible sense of direction and a lousy memory. “I know only half the names of everything,” he said, “so I’m useless to an interviewer.”

This is true. His faulty memory omits the names of many of his current and former projects, co-stars, directors and favorite films. His first made-for-TV movie was The Brass Ring, or Only My Mouth Is Smiling, “one or the other.” One of his favorite movies is a Hungarian film called Time Stood Still. Or maybe Time Stands Still? Another is a French movie Toto le Héros, directed by …. “We’ll IMDb it.” He is in the process of recording a book on tape written by some guy—Lawson?—whose first book “had the color white in the title.” He has a movie coming out soon “that I think could be very good. It involves that man who’s so nice—Jim? I forget his name. He did In the Bedroom with Sissy Spacek.”

It’s not that Mr. Balaban is uncaring or oblivious; if anything, he’s over-attentive. Later that day, long after the unexpected lawn-soaking and after a dinner in Westhampton with Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen and his girlfriend Mona Ackerman, Mr. Balaban placed a call to NYTV. It was 11:30 p.m. After apologizing profusely, he asked if it would be O.K. if Jennifer Coolidge—his co-star in Best in Show and the forthcoming Christopher Guest mockumentary For Your Consideration—phoned. She called at midnight.

“I just love him to death,” she said, and went on to list Mr. Balaban’s virtues, including his modesty, charm, profound ability to multitask and the fact that he “busts ass, except he’s so much more gentlemanly than that word.”

Told of Bob Builds His Dream House, Ms. Coolidge expressed interest. “Ooh!” she exclaimed, with her trademark off-key musicality. “Does it have Bob acting all nervous with contractors?”

- Max Abelson

I wake up feeling sick today, nauseous and tired. I dry heave off the side of the bed uncontrollably. Todd rouses, "You OK?"

"I'm fine, just need to eat." I scamper to the kitchen and open the fridge. Nothing looks appealing so I grab a cold Poland Spring and head to the bathroom to get ready for the day. I close the door behind me, inexplicably crouch over, rest my head on the toilet and I cry.

Saturday Afternoon.

We are at World Pie, a yummy eatery in Bridgehampton, excited to meet a potential florist. We're seated at an oversized booth, surrounded by crispy calamari and decadent veal parmigiana. (Fortunately I've overcome my nausea.) In between bites, Laura, the cute and spunky florist, shows us her designs: Pale pink tea roses in potted in terra cotta, sunflowers brimming with joy in tall cylindrical vases.

"Let's see," she begins, "you'll need seven bridesmaid's bouquets and one for each of your mothers and will there be any grandmothers present?"

"Yes," I say, "but no need to give her a bouquet."

"Well," Laura says, "it's nice to give her a bouquet."

"Right," I add, "but I'm not going to give her one."

Laura flips her straight blonde mane to the other side as she writes down "grandmother's bouquet."

"No," I repeat, "I really mean it, no bouquet for my grandmother." Laura smiles sweetly at me as if she wants to ship me to the loony bin.

To contextualize my grandmother, we all call her "the Godfather." Last Passover she sat at the head of my parents' extra long table draped with cousins, aunts and uncles, wore sunglasses through the entire dinner and did not say one word. Her favorite saying echoes Machiavelli: "It is better to be respected than loved." She can't stand Todd, ever since she convinced herself that he didn't want to sit next to her at Rosh Hashanah dinner two years ago. As a result she no longer kisses him or me hello at family functions.

Trying to change the subject I ask, "What do you think about draping some beautiful flowers on the long tables instead of in vases?"

"That could work but August is soooo hot! It could be 100 degrees! And then the flowers would wilt. I remember my wedding in August. It was insanely hot! You could do calla lilies but even those might dry up in August." Oblivious to my mounting anxiety at the prospective heat she continues, "I think it's brave to do an outdoor wedding in August..." Todd cuts her off, "I think you're freaking Gabby out."

"Yeah--" I add, "the heat was my biggest concern about doing a wedding at the vineyard in the first place." Never mind the fact that it's NOT MY DREAM WEDDING I shriek silently to myself. "I really wanted a beach wedding," I explain, "but everyone said if it rained we'd be in trouble."

"Oh well, it will be nice even if it is hot!" Laura says smiling, as we get up to leave. "I'll email you with a quote next week." She hugs Todd and me goodbye as if we're her best friends and walks out.

Monday morning:

The phone rings. It's my little sister, who at 28 is not so little but to me she always will be.

"Hiiiiii! How are you?" she asks.

"Nauseous," I say. It's 9 am and I'm still in bed.

"You're pregnant!" she half-jokes.

"No I'm not, impossible." Although I think about the one time two months ago when Todd and I let it slide. But that was one time.

"Go get a test right now. Mom thinks you're pregnant," she adds.

"Why would she say that?"

"You spoke to Dad this weekend and told him you weren't feeling well! Go out and get a test and call me back." She hangs up the phone. My little sister was born wise, confident and whip smart.

20 minutes later.

I have just peed onto the EPT pregnancy stick. I actually peed onto my hand, the toilet seat and the bathroom floor but enough probably splashed onto the white ominous rod. The blue line becomes visible and soon a pale, pale blue line appears crossing the darker line creating a plus sign. Plus for pregnant. But it's too faint to be sure. I walk into my living room which doubles as my office and I present my stick to my assistant who's been working quietly away since 8 am.

"OK, is this positive?"

"Good morning!" she greets me with her usual youthful cheer. Looking closely she says, "Looks positive to me." She then proceeds to read the directions which I failed to bother with: "Even a light blue line is positive."

Feeling queasy and light-headed I excuse myself and head to the bathroom. I take a long hard look in the mirror. I notice the fine lines etched in the corners of my eyes. I see the raven roots peaking from my otherwise blonde hair. I am too busy to have a baby and I am not ready.

One time without protection, I think to myself. Perhaps this is meant to be. And then it dawns on me. Maybe this is Immaculate Conception. Maybe this is God's child. But then I think maybe the Virgin Mary did it once with a sheepherder that she fell in love with but was ashamed and said that she was still a Virgin. Maybe once is enough.

- Michael Calderone

New York’s cover story looks at home design throughout the city. Also, there are photos of Charlie Rose’s desk, Martha Stewart’s exercise bike, and more.

Is there really any more to say about CBGB’s? Well, if you didn’t want to save CBGB’s before, check out the bathroom?

The interpretation of this code might lead one down some very dark social alleys. Still, more objective comments might be made about changes in the world of polo. In 2002, the pert and highly evolved Natalie Portman gave out the trophies to the sweaty, hunky winners. In 2003, it was down to Kim Cattrall.

On this Saturday just past, July 16, the first day of polo season, the very first match of the 10th Annual Mercedes-Benz Polo Challenge, none other than Victoria Gotti materialized out of extremely thin air to offhandedly dispatch trophies to the tasty riders.

“It’s about as low as it can get when Victoria Gotti is giving out the award to the polo players,” said Steven Gaines, the Hamptons society chronicler and author of The Sky’s the Limit: Passion and Property in Manhattan, later. “It’s gone from being Studio 54 on a bad night to being the Mud Club, literally and figuratively. There’s nobody you want to see there, only plastic-surgery curiosities. It’s really sad, and I don’t want to go back.”

From the other side of this new-Hamptons-versus-old-Hamptons class war, one on-the-scene party person said: “No one wants to see a bunch of Stepford wives in Lilly Pulitzer dresses.”

The old guard is dead! The kids want to have fun, and they are hale of liver and hearty of wallet.

But what’s odd about this new set is that, instead of making their own rituals, they’ve assimilated the rituals of the old guard. Why, we found ourselves wondering, do the young Jews and the twentysomething Gentiles alike of the Hamptons scene desire to put on the boring mantle of yesterday’s hyper-WASP cachet? Who the hell actually wants to go to polo?

Of course, the polo match had begun just a few hours after a suicide bomber incorporated a fuel tanker into his plans in Musayyib, 60 kilometers south of Baghdad. Ninety or more people died in the explosion. So, all things considered, we can guiltlessly say it was a much happier experience to have been at the far less lethal civil war in the Hamptons.

A parade of Mercedes, Jags and Beemers—but mostly Mercedes—wound along a dirt-and-pebble path through the dung-scented fields of the Bridgehampton Polo Club. It looked something like the approach to a Renaissance Faire, where far away hung a magical tent.

“That looked like Nicole Richie and maybe a Hilton,” said a khaki-panted kid guarding the V.I.P. parking. (In fact, La Hilton herself was in Greece with her Greek, undoubtedly doing something Greek.) The parking boys had dirty-blonde hair and light eyes and looked as if they’d been cloned from some carefully preserved WASP embryo—perhaps for body parts, à la The Island?

Under the big white tent, perched on a hill above a misty pond, there were none of the following: gloves, ascots, coats of arms, genteel bonnets. There was a chap in a seersucker suit, but everyone understood that he was wearing it with more than a soupçon of irony.

Oh, there were a few pedigreed types lolling about the V.I.P. tent: a Hearst girl here, on one gentleman a fearsome pairing of peach pants, black loafers and lime-green shirt—collar up!—and a few tow-headed tykes wobbling beside their parents’ knees.

But, as expected, the patrician hordes, the feeble last waves of blue-veined aristocrats, did not show. They had long since willed this turf to the new set. Which is to say, the people who didn’t own property on Gin Lane in the 1850’s. Which is to say, to those who might be Italian or even, especially, Jewish.

And, yes, even to those who might be renters.

Like crazed archeologists desecrating a tomb, the new Hamptons set may confuse the vases for bowls, and they may crap in the sink, but they still mimic the rich meals depicted in the paintings and boldly put on the faded queer clothing. Like the soldiers in Saddam Hussein’s palace, they can’t get over just how nice it all is.

And they watch the men mount the horses, even if they don’t know why. They applaud at approximately the right times.

On this particular Sabbath, the developer David Walentas and the financier Neil Hirsch had gathered their horses and Argentines on the field that lay before the tent. Mr. Hirsch is the president of the Bridgehampton Polo Club; Mr. Walentas, besides being a maverick real-estate developer, is the owner of the local Two Trees Farm. They were the kings of the field, it’s true, which kept them in the saddle and out of social harm’s way on the sidelines.

The actor Owen Wilson, imported as ceremonial host, wore a blue baseball hat scrunched down over his surfer-dude locks, khaki pants and a pale blue button-down with cheerful flowers appliquéd across the chest. It was the kind of shirt one might find on a Swiss hausfrau. His eyes were squinty all day long, as if he were always staring into the sun.

A comet’s tail of paparazzi snapped photos of Mr. Wilson juggling the game’s ceremonial first ball.

“You guys are like a sobriety test,” Mr. Wilson said to the mob.

Woody Harrelson, in big, flappy stitched pants and a slightly Amish beard, stood behind Mr. Wilson. He held a small pool of a martini.

Mr. Wilson let go the white ball. It fell gently on the green field. The two gentile actors returned to the V.I.P. tent.

It was 4:20 p.m. The game had begun and would promptly be ignored. Piper-Heidsieck splits were sucked through straws. Fox411 gossip columnist Roger Friedman leaned against a Mercedes, his eyes slit like a pimp surveying his sweet, sweet bitches. Social Life publisher Justin Mitchell was photographed with four very, very young ladylets.

A special language floated about in the big, outrageously loud tent. “I’m holding what I have,” said a real-estate man. “I D.J.’d Raoul’s party last night,” said a hip, long-haired fellow. Apparently, a $6,000 bar tab had been left in someone else’s name the night before at this Raoul fellow’s party. A big, bald, sweaty man didn’t know from polo: “I only know horses that I can bet on. Yeah, closer to the city.”

At the V.I.P. tent, the models Ines Rivero and Karolina Kurkova were oddly tall. “Campbell,” said Jason Binn, the publisher of Gotham, Hamptons et al. He was clad all in white, like a guru or a cultist. “Jason Binn is calling,” said New York Times Boldface columnist Campbell Robertson, without any affect at all. (Mr. Robertson would go on to heartily rip Mr. Binn in the July 19 Times.) Hors d’oeuvres and petits fours were piled on three-tier trays—treif, mostly. Mr. Binn leaned over and, like a zombie, touched Woody Harrelson’s collarbone: brains, brains ….

The film director Terry George held back while the halftime stomping of the field’s divots began. Girls with their boys set out wanly across the field and then right back again. A sweet little toddler named Lauren was lost, her parents nowhere to be found. It was 5:18 p.m. Red-winged blackbirds screeched in the overgrown hedges.

Last year, Strategic Group—owned by Noah Tepperberg and Jason Strauss—took over the event management for the Bridgehampton Polo Club. They handle nightclubs—and own Marquee—vodkas, seemingly everything if one enters a certain circuit. The two boys hover on opposing sides of 30, and they couldn’t be more Hamptons New Guard if that was how they were marketing themselves. (And perhaps it is.)

But their signature is apparent at settings like this: They keep the playpen stocked with whichever vodka they’re handling; they keep a certain amount of celebrity on hand; and, through the projection of an image of the endless party, they create a whirl, a magnetically attractive cluster. And when too many young people are swept into this cluster, they simply assimilate new venues, new nightclubs, new “hot” restaurants as clients. Room for one more!

Historical remnants, however, still circulate in this orbit.

Herb Roberts held his Yorkie, Lucky Boy, in his right hand. He was dressed in classic cowboy drag—brown cowboy boots, a white Stetson, a gold belt buckle shaped like two horses’ heads, manes blowing in the wind. He looked like a kindlier Thurston Howell.

Mr. Roberts, who said he was in his 70’s, filled us in on the history of polo: Mongolians, human heads, India, the British. A horse, he said, can cost between $10,000 and $50,000. Naturally, the players aren’t nobility, by any stretch, though they do enjoy a certain fame as cocksmen and romantic heroes.

“No, many of the riders,” Mr. Roberts said, “started out as grooms.”

He recounted the pleasures of a long life with horses and waxed eloquent about the dignity of the game. A young dude with gelled brown hair and a blonde tattooed to his arm walked up and saluted old Mr. Roberts.

“I’m having a little lingerie party at midnight tonight,” he said. “You should come by.”

In a black Mercedes SLK280, a man named Shail Upadhya nestled into the cocoon-like leather seats. “I’ve been coming to polo ever since it started,” Mr. Upadhya said, “because I have a house here in Southampton, and the fact that polo really started in India, where the maharajah is, and I used to hang out with maharajahs and these princely people who used to play polo when polo was polo. It wasn’t Bridgehampton in those days.”

Mr. Upadhya was dressed, as is his infamous custom, in a wild and garish linen suit of his own design: beige, with red, green, blue and ochre oval splotches stamped all over it. His face was the color of an ancient scroll, his hair dyed a matching parchment color. He described himself as being “in exile” from the monarchy in Nepal. Mr. Upadhya was nostalgic for an era of polo long before this one, taking it back to the British Raj, bonnets and Gatsby suits.

“Here you see a lot of paparazzi,” he said. “All they want to do is take pictures of celebrities, and they want to get that one shot that will get them a million dollars. And a lot of the people I see here, they’re in T-shirts, and they really don’t know what polo is, or how to dress for polo. I’ve always dressed very elegantly for polo, because I know what it is.”

Ah, back in the Bridgehampton days. “In the beginning, there were more glamorous people here—Donald Trump, whatever anyone thinks of him—and you would see the president of Revlon here,” he said. “But those days are gone. Now, what you have here, I don’t know where they come from. There are a lot of New Jersey people here, I see.”

Next we flagged down Gwendolyn Gleason, enchanted by her large and pink feather-adorned hat. She is, it turns out, a hat designer. This was Ms. Gleason’s first time at the Bridgehampton games—she lives now in Naples, Fla., and attends polo down there.

“Naples is very conservative, and it’s old money,” she said. “And they’re a lot more understated and elegant. They’re not as showy or extravagant, like the Kentucky Derby would be or something like that—if anything, women are more old-school. And also I find, like, here it’s a lot younger crowd than it is, of course, down there.”

A horn blast came that marked the end of a chukker or match or recognized a point (we’ve never been sure as to its polo-related meaning). But whenever it sounded, it was reminiscent of nothing so much as a shofar.

Does Bridgehampton polo reek of new money? “I don’t even necessarily think it’s newer,” Ms. Gleason said. “I don’t even think that half these people have money here.”

And just where does polo fit into the new social status of the Hamptons Blank Generation? According to Brian Melzer and his friends, polo snuggles “right below Star Room in the Hamptons and above Vela in New York City. And then most people go to Vela,” Mr. Melzer said, “which is a big nightclub in Manhattan, and then they come here after Friday night, after a big party. It’s a big party on 21st Street.”

“There’s Vela and Snitch,” clarified Nick Cohn, who works at the Brooklyn Museum. “And most people that are here congregate there on Friday night, and then you see a big parade of cars coming out to the Hamptons, and then they congregate here again on Saturday during the day. So we know a lot of the people here.”

Gotcha. But we still had much to learn about polo—for instance, what were three nice Jewish boys doing on these fabled fields of goyishe glory?

“It’s a very popular sport in Argentina,” said Mr. Cohn, “which has a huge Jewish population.”

“No one watches the polo,” said another, Gavin Steinberg, who happens to be a partner in the hip-hop label Major Key.

“When I was writing this last book, I was trying to figure out where society lived,” said Steven Gaines, long after all the fuss of the day of polo was over, after all the nightclubs had been attended, more bar tabs had been left for other, richer men to pay, more women had been mounted and more stories told, until, at last, the jawing of mouths was stilled by sleep. “And then I realized that the people we used to call society are almost completely dead. And, you know, who is society? It’s very, very hard.”

“There’s new rich people,” Mr. Gaines continued. “What we call society now is not the generation upon generation of great wealth; society now is people who really made it within the last generation. I mean, I guess Alfred Taubman’s society. But, I mean, he’s really a Jewish guy who started out with shopping malls …. It’s not like he is the product of generations of some blue-blooded families. So I guess we have to consider guys like him society.”

Yow!

And what’s more, the new kids are perhaps actually displacing what’s left of the old guard. “I once said to a lady—I guess she could be considered a society lady, you know, a well-known Upper East Side figure—have you ever been to Nick and Toni’s? And she looked horrified. And she said, ‘They don’t want us there.’ Which I thought was a very telling way to put it. And I’m sure it’s true: To get a reservation at Nick and Toni’s or one of those kind of restaurants, you have to kind of be showbizzy or own a fragrance company, or be a vice president of marketing at a clothing company.

“So I mean, the complexion of the Hamptons has changed, absolutely,” Mr. Gaines concluded. “Now it’s really about money. It’s not about breeding, it’s not about class, it’s not about heritage—it’s about money. And as my mother always said, ‘Money doesn’t care who it goes to.’ She said it to me over and over again: ‘Money doesn’t care who it goes to.’ Anybody can be rich and have money and have a house in the Hamptons. And you don’t even have to have that to get into polo.”

The Scholastic Inc. embargo on the new Harry Potter book had ended that weekend, and so a messenger arrived in the Hamptons from Manhattan at midnight with 125 copies—75 in the trunk and 50 in the backseat. At exactly the same time, a car bomber in Baghdad, one of a series, propelled himself into a group of Interior Ministry soldiers, killing three and wounding 10 civilians. Ms. Rowling’s book, by the way, is reportedly very good.