Jason Binn and Selita Ebanks at Marquee. (Patrick McMullan)

When describing Marquee, the recently reopened upper-Chelsea nightclub, you might find yourself falling back on that Talking Heads song “Heaven.” You know, the bar where nothing, nothing ever happens? When a nightclub reopens exactly one decade after its first inauguration, in the exact same spot, with the exact same owners and the exact same name, it’s hard not to drift back to the verse: “When this party is over, it will start again; it won’t be any different, it’ll be exactly the same.”

Marquee, located in the dead zone of 27th Street and 10th Avenue, might not be exactly the same as it ever was, but it’s close. It’s also not heaven—and neither is it Heaven, the gay club on Sixth Avenue. Instead, it is a beacon of not-quite-old-enough-to-be-nostalgic New York, which had its heyday in the early to mid-2000s. Founded in 2003 by the then-newly minted Strategic Group, launched by party promoters Jason Strauss and Noah Tepperberg, Marquee took the space of a former taxi warehouse at a time when Chelsea was the place to be, and not yet the place to avoid at all costs. (Today, it should be said, the reasons for avoiding Chelsea at night are quite different from those in the pre-Marquee era: it’s no longer dangerous, but simply full of misguided gents who still think bottle service is a fine way to impress women.) Stars and scenesters mingled at Marquee, forging a tentative detente with the gossip columnists who lurked in the shadows, avoiding the pulsating lights and straining to hear anything at all above the din of a deejay with oversized electronics.

But by 2008, the scene at Marquee grew stale, and even its owners got bored, preoccupied with their new Marquee outposts in Las Vegas and Australia. (Not to mention LAVO, AVENUE, TAO and the Venetian.) Six years in the running, four years dormant, and now: rebirth. And it won’t be any different, it will be exactly the same. More or less.

As Mr. Tepperberg wrote in an email to The Observer via email:

A lot of people, not just in New York, had a real fondness for Marquee - it was a special place to so many of us and we wanted to preserve that. At the same time, we knew we needed to update it and make it a place that spoke to today's nightlife culture, which is why we completely redid the entire space... At the opening, we were astounded by the feedback we got from everyone. People just went crazy. We knew there was a nostalgia there associated with the old Marquee, which is why we had the doormen greet everyone with "Welcome Back to Marquee," but what really blew us away was how much people loved the new concept. You could tell that people have been missing that in New York, which is why I think the response was so overwhelming.

Outside the new/old Marquee on opening night, guests were greeted by a collection of golf carts topped by with luminescent toadstool roofs like something out of Alice in Wonderland. Whether these decorative flourishes were also functional was a topic of conversation among those waiting in line. We never found out.

Tall, muscular drag queens—a once-prevalent local bird sighted less and less frequently over the past several years, since high-profile Chelsea clubs like Marquee were shuttered or forgotten—were peacocking at the entrance. The imposing bouncers seemed to know each of these ladies personally, and opened the black velvet rope (so much more chic than its red counterpart) to let them pass.

But there was also an element of new: the door “list” was no longer a physical entity, but a “constantly updated spreadsheet,” according to the slim-lipped man at the door. “If anyone ‘just put you on’ on their list, I would know,” he replied curtly to the people ahead of us, who were apparently trying to talk their way into the opening-night festivities. His eyes never left his iPad mini, which was so small we wondered how he could read any names off it at all. “Now, when you’re not on the list, there’s no excuses. If you call someone who can add you on the list, I’ll see it updated in 10 seconds.” The group stood to one side, dejected.

It had just turned 10, the official start time of the party, but already an assortment of hipsters, aging club kids, Jersey boys, models and celebrities was arriving. Legendary nightlife photographer Patrick McMullan was snapping the beautiful people, who that evening included Tyson Beckford, Timbaland, Nicky Hilton, Brandon Davis, Eve, Swizz Beatz, Akon, Busta Rhymes and Patricia Field. If Messrs. Tepperberg and Strauss couldn’t exactly rewind the clock, they could certainly make their guest list (for one night at least), look like it had back in 2003.

Inside, we ran into Mr. Tepperberg at coat check. We asked what he most hoped to see in the crowd that evening.

“A lot of old friends,” said the Strategic Group co-founder, who really looked as if he had just walked off the set of The Shield, or possibly The Sopranos. It was an odd choice of words, since Marquee seemed packed with young faces: models danced on the catwalks crisscrossing the vast two-story structure, while pulsing lights and a giant—God, is that? Yes it is!—disco ball in the middle of the room kept us pleasantly disoriented. One young-looking man named Jensen was particularly eager to walk us through the difference between old nightlife and new nightlife, as he was developing a “social networking service for models and events.” (Woof, there’s something that we don’t miss.) “What people are looking for in models has changed, although it’s kind of the same,” he said. “They’re always looking for tall women who you know, stand out. But today you also want to see a girl with good skin.” Skin? Really? Pushing aside images of Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs, we convinced ourselves this new focus on the epidermis was due to upgrades in lighting over the past decade.

“Also, people didn’t use to be on their cellphones this much,” he complained, pulling out his cellphone and to dash off a text. “People used to actually talk to each other.”

At least we think that’s what he said. The music was so loud we couldn’t be sure.

After admiring the view from the second story—where hundreds of books were stacked along the wall next to the black couches, a nice, classy touch—we scooted downstairs, where we ran into man-about-town Justin Rocket Silverman.

“This place looks exactly the same,” he said.

Downstairs, we ran into Du Jour’s Jason Binn, who told us, “This place looks completely different.”

“I guess there might have been a different staircase over there,” Mr. Silverman conceded.

Unlike the relaunch of, say, the Beatrice Inn, there was no judgment passed over the changes or lack thereof at Marquee that night. Everyone just went with it: a party was happening, and everyone was there.

And, as we found out during the stampede toward the coat check, Marquee had another thing in common with the bar in “Heaven”: Everyone will leave at exactly the same time.

dgrant@observer.com

Jason Binn celebrates with DuJour's digital cover girl, Nicole Richie (PcM)

There were a lot of nontraditional elements to Jason Binn's new quarterly, DuJour magazine: It was partnered with online flash-sale site Gilt Groupe, had two co-editors, and launched earlier this month as both an online property for Gilt's members and a direct-mail glossy sent to 250,000 of the country's 1 percenters. Any one of these qualities would be enough to raise eyebrows ... especially for a brand that sought to woo luxury advertisers, many of whom are still wary of anything that strays too far from the Vogue norm.

But Mr. Binn—founder and former CEO of Niche media (the company behind Hamptons and Gotham magazines) who resigned in 2010 to work as a consultant for Gilt as chief adviser—had a plan to create an autonomous brand that would partner with his former employer to mine its membership data on one end, while creating a totally autonomous product on the other. And amazingly, he seems to have pulled it off.

"DuJour is a self-contained business," Mr. Binn told Off the Record proudly. "It's funny, people think that because I worked with Gilt and now they are our strategic partner, that there's something more there. Kevin [Ryan, Gilt's CEO and founder] and I joke about it. What really happened was that I sat down with Kevin for 30 minutes after working there a year, and said, 'What do you think about this business proposal?' And he thought it was a great idea. But he gives us complete autonomy: I was flattered when Mr.Ryan agreed to join board."

"But it's a company that I manage and run. Gilt is a distribution vehicle for the magazine, as well as being a shareholder. They are a limited partner. They're a strategic alliance for us, since they have such an amazing database. They are instrumental to the worlds we celebrate editorially."

In addition to Gilt, DuJour also partnered with James Cohen of Hudson News and Dufry. Both Gilt and Hudson get options in the DuJour for their role in the distribution. Mr. Binn has options in Gilt Groupe, as he maintains his position as chief adviser.

DuJour's model for its coveted print readership demo can be found in pie-chart form on the magazine's website: There are seven "filters" that factor into the top 10 markets in the United States, where approximately 80 percent of luxury goods and products are sold. In order to receive DuJour at your home, you have to fit at least five of these criteria, "whether that's a home valued at a million and a half, or a quarter of a million dollar income, or a $5,000,000 net worth, or a charitable donation of $10,000," Mr. Binn ticked off. "We hired about 30 mining companies to get us that information, as well as the email addresses of those people."

Another possible criteria were that they were not already Gilt subscribers, as a separate database was composed of Gilt's top 3 million members, who all receive an exclusive early edition of the virtual monthly magazine.

The first issue had Christy Turlington on the cover, and it surprised critics, who were ready to brush off DuJour as a Gilt advertorial catalog, with the quality of its content. Contributors in the inaugural issue included the photographer Bruce Weber, Vanity Fair’s Patricia Bosworth, and Vogue and Bazaar veteran Kate Betts. To share the role of editor in chief, Mr. Binn chose Elle.com's editorial director, Keith Pollock, and InStyle’s senior editor of entertainment and features, Nicole Vecchiarelli. They both admitted to Off the Record to having hesitations about sharing the masthead.

"I think we both thought it seemed a little unconventional," Ms. Vecchiarelli said. "Jason wanted us to meet before we decided whether to come on board. I think Jason thought he'd be part of that conversation, but Keith and I discussed it and decided to meet, just the two of us. We ended up meeting three of four more times, but it was pretty obvious within the first 10 minutes that it was going to work out."

"Jason approached me, and he approached Nicole, and only in the second or third conversation did I realize he was actually talking to other people for a co-editorship," Mr. Pollock said. But he quickly fell in love with the arrangement. "It doesn't sound real, but it we haven't disagreed on one area of the website or paper," he gushed.

"For me, I've been working on websites for 10 years; the prospect of launching a new website was not appealing whatsoever. But to cross into print was incredibly exciting. And I think for Nicole, the most exciting part was to launch a website. We'd get together and I'd say 'I have an idea for the magazine,' and she'd say, 'Forget the magazine, I have an idea for the site!' We were attracted to such different parts."

Despite their differing interests, the two editors collaborate on both the print and online properties equally. "We do everything together," Ms. Vecchiarelli said. "We went to the meetings with Code + Theory—who developed our website—together, and we did all the editing together, made the lineup together, picked the stories together ..."

Mr. Binn said of the duo's relationship, "It took several months to get used to, but now they are literally best friends who talk several times a day, probably."

One thing all three agree on is that there's never been a product quite like DuJour. "It's really a new world we're creating," Mr. Binn said. "If you look at the brands who bought advertising with us for the first issue, they didn't buy this as a launch, they bought it as a business model and a concept."

"Even though we've only have one issue under our belt, going into our second it feels like we've already created a brand," Mr. Pollock noted. "Looking at stories, we can say 'This feels very DuJour.' It feels like a magazine that's been around for much longer."

In terms of tone, Ms. Vecchiarelli chimed in, "Just because it was luxury lifestyle magazine, we didn't want it to sound stuffy or dry. There's definitely a sense of irony that runs throughout the magazine, and also addresses a younger audience than other luxury publications. It was a great opportunity to bring in more of a voice."

Now that the first issue has sailed, and Kim Kardashian has shown up at its launch party, DuJour has a while before its next print edition. But that doesn't mean the editorial staff can relax. In the months they don't produce a physical product, they still have an entire magazine to run online. Next month's virtual cover features Nicole Richie.

"We've gotten a lot of great feedback on that," said Mr. Pollock.

Jason Binn with Kim Kardashian at a Golden Globes party.

When Jason Binn announced his return to the publishing business on Monday—with a multi-platform luxury lifestyle magazine sponsored by Gilt Groupe, Hudson News and Dufry duty free—the response was so big it crashed his computer.

“I tend to go out and meet people and I’m very engaging socially and it’s never happened before,” the Niche Media founder told Off the Record, from his home office in Manhattan. “I’ve had three tech people to my house and I’ve got Gilt people helping me out...it’s great because it’s horrible.”

The new magazine, a glossy, oversize quarterly called Du Jour, is Mr. Binn’s first major media launch since he sold Niche Media Holdings to the Greenspun Media Group in 2006. At Niche, Mr. Binn mastered the pre-recession game of controlled circulation with local luxury titles like Hamptons, Gotham and Ocean Drive. Du Jour follows similar principles. The magazine will print specialized editions for each market—New York, L.A., D.C., Dallas, Martha's Vineyard, Jackson Hole, etc.—with up to 50 percent local content. The 235,000 print run will target readers in those markets who meet five of seven criteria, which include “average net worth of $5 M.” and “liquid assets over $1 M.”

When a magazine announces a partnership with Gilt Groupe—the flash sale giant whose star rose as magazines struggled to survive the recession—one would think it's looking to implement e-commerce, or to get a revenue-share slice of Gilt's $1 B. pie.

Not Du Jour. Mr. Binn is after Gilt Groupe’s user data, a more finely calibrated tool for determining a reader's disposable income (i.e. the likelihood they will actually buy from the magazine's advertisers) than the stone-age business of flooding wealthy zip codes.

Monthly digital editions of Du Jour, in addition to its weekly newsletter, will be sent out to Gilt Groupe’s 3 million biggest spenders, who will also be able to opt-in to special Du Jour offerings and events, according to Mr. Binn. (As of July, Gilt Groupe reportedly had 3.5 million users.) Although the digital edition will be click-to-shop, Mr. Binn said he will not pursue any revenue-share partnerships during the magazine’s first year.

Mr. Binn will hire between 20 and 25 people, not counting developers, and has already procured 100 pages of advertising. Gilt creative VP Leah Park (formerly designer of the Bergdorf Goodman catalog) will oversee the templates, so the book looks  “super luxury,” he added.

After twenty years on the Hamptons-Miami-Aspen circuit, one imagines Mr. Binn’s Filofax brims with unlisted numbers. Off the Record wondered who was on Mr. Binn’s dream Du Jour cover.

“I think celebrities are really important, it’s a a lot of what I do with my cover parties and what I’ve done at events through the years,” he said. But for Du Jour, he’s looking for someone with “the power to move the needle and make a difference when they’re off-screen.”

Think Bono, Angelina Jolie...

“Even like a Christy Turlington is amazing, the time she puts into her causes,” he said. “When you’re married with three kids you’re always worried about where things will be in ten to fifteen years.”

Speaking of needle-movers, Mr. Binn told Off the Record that Goldman Sachs head of European financing James Esposito had been instrumental to the development of Du Jour.

“Our kids are friends and we spend a lot of time together,” he said. “He knows me very well.”

Mr. Binn was serving as adviser in chief to Gilt CEO Kevin Ryan when Goldman invested in the company.  Mr. Binn said Mr. Esposito suggested he use his media experience to leverage Gilt's “amazing” data on transactions.

“He’s a big mentor,” Mr. Binn said.

The last time we saw Mr. Binn, he’d been hosting a party at Capitale to welcome then-newlyweds Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries to New York City.

Off the Record asked how he was taking the whole divorce thing.

“I not only hosted that event but I went to the wedding, with the high excitement as she was getting married and everything,” Mr. Binn said. “Yeah, I was disappointed but obviously it wasn’t working. But yeah, that was something that was surprising.”

Mr. Vola and his fiancé, Jennifer Lee, a real estate broker in Manhattan, didn’t sleep that night. At 7:15 that morning, they drank Red Bulls and excitedly drove the hour and a half from Sayville to the Hamptons to look at how their little magazine was doing. They hoped to see someone picking it up. Maybe even reading it.

When Mr. Vola and Ms. Lee arrived in East Hampton, all the magazines were gone. It was the same situation in Bridgehampton and Southampton. Mr. Vola, a large, bald, friendly-faced man who grew up in East New York, reading about high society in the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, was thrilled.

“I was like, ‘Holy cow, we got really well received!’” he said. “Everyone must really like it!”

Then one of his writers, Tony Vargas, stopped by the Southampton Inn—the hotel’s new restaurant, OSO, was reviewed in the issue—and was told that someone had come in and picked up the stacks of Hamptonite. Mr. Vola started hearing the same thing from store clerks in East Hampton.

“You see where you dropped your magazine there?” one told him. “Well, who’s there now?” The stack of magazines contained the June issue of Social Life, with Rolling Stone scion Alexandra Richards on the cover. Mr. Vola’s distributor, Keith Husain, who works for Green Heart Trucking, told The Observer that he had noticed a “dark blue or black van” with an older gentleman at the wheel following him around while he was dropping off the magazines, but hadn’t thought anything of it.

Clearly, Mr. Vola had no idea what he was getting into.

THE FREE SOCIETY MAGAZINES THAT YOU'LL find in wire baskets outside Book Hampton in Southampton or Tiffany and Co. on Main Street in East Hampton—Social Life, Hamptons, Hampton Sheet, the recently defunct Hamptons Style (published by Dan’s Papers) and even Mr. Vola’s Hamptonite—are like the jostling little cousins of Town and Country and W. They all look pretty identical, with gushy profiles and page after page of flattering party photos. They also reflect the very thing that society likes to impose on itself: a certain caste system. Which is perhaps why so many of these magazines have managed to co-exist: If you increase the number of party pictures, more people can get into them. And the only people who find that objectionable are the ones who remember when getting attention was a more elusive thing.

“They’re kind of like yearbooks for the summer,” said socialite Minnie Mortimer (sister of Topper; sister-in-law of Tinsley). “You flip through and you’re like, ‘Remember that?’ And then you see everybody who was there.”

“It’s the first thing people look for when they come to town,” said Cristina Greeven Cuomo, the editor of Niche Media’s Hamptons and its city counterpart, Gotham. “They’re looking for their friends, they’re looking for themselves.”

“Every Hamptons publication during the summer is very important because that’s what everyone is reading,” said Lizzie Grubman, the publicist (whose SUV-powered brush with infamy eight years ago isn’t likely something you’d read about in any of these publications).

But what, exactly, is everyone reading? 

On a recent Thursday, the society chronicler David Patrick Columbia sat down at his corner table and ordered a beet soup and two cobs of buttered corn at Swifty’s on the Upper East Side. The waitress brought over his usual iced tea without asking. “I got my eyes done,” an elderly lady in a pastel green suit and straw hat was telling her lunch companion at the table nearby. “Twice!” Mr. Columbia nodded hello to her.

Mr. Columbia moved to New York in the early ’90s. He took a job writing a column called New York Social Diary (now his Web site) for Quest magazine; then edited Avenue, its competitor; and in 2001 returned to Quest and Q, Quest’s quarterly fashion offshoot, with the honorary title of editor in chief. (Elizabeth Meigher, the daughter of publisher Chris Meigher, technically runs the daily operations at Q, and Georgina Schaeffer is executive editor at Quest.)

The formula for a society magazine, according to Mr. Columbia, has always been rather simple: a social column and a generous dose of party pictures at the front and a couple of profiles in the back. Quest and Avenue, Mr. Columbia asserts, are the authentic society magazines because they are put together by members of the world they cover.

“The Meighers, for example, are part of the New York and Palm Beach society,” said Mr. Columbia, who himself grew up middle-class in Massachusetts. “Elizabeth and Georgina grew up in New York and went to private schools here. All their friends belong to this world.

“With the great bubble of prosperity, you had all these aspirants to that world,” Mr. Columbia continued. “But since they are not part of it, they’ve actually created their own world—a satellite world which they call society, which it absolutely is not. They’re trying to create a hierarchy based on publicity, which is something that follows hierarchy—it doesn’t precede it.”

And he is not optimistic about the aspirants’ chances.

“They’ll be wiped out,” said Mr. Columbia. He was sinking his teeth into the buttered corn. “They’re almost all going to go.”

WHEN THE OBSERVER FIRST REACHED Justin Mitchell, the publisher of Social Life, to ask about the case of the disappearing Hamptonites, he said the fledgling magazine came out and folded. (“Of course he’d tell you that,” Mr. Vola said later.)

Social Life’s editor is a thin, pouty-lipped young woman named Devorah Rose, who has had guest spots on Bravo’s The Real Housewives of New York and NYC Prep.

“The whole sabotage rumor is hilarious,” Ms. Rose said. “Because literally we were so busy planning a dinner, hand-holding our talent and hosting an event that there is no time to sabotage anyone else!”

The day Mr. Vola found his magazines stolen, Ms. Rose and Mr. Mitchell were indeed preparing to host a soirée, at Solé East in Montauk. The magazine maintains two estates in the Hamptons: one in Watermill, where the parties take place; the other in Southampton, where they put up the advertisers that come to the parties.

“It’s completely fabricated—a total lie,” Mr. Mitchell said of Mr. Vola’s story. He suggested the incident might’ve been concocted to get attention from Page Six, where it was duly reported the week after.

“It was like Olivia Palermo versus Tinsley,” Ms. Rose chimed in. “They were trying to Olivia Palermo us!”

Yet John Wegorzewski, a press representative for the Southampton Inn, confirmed that a few hours after Mr. Vola’s magazines were dropped off, the hotel’s employees noticed them missing, replaced by copies of Social Life. He added that a colleague later reported copies of Hamptonite found in Sag Harbor and Southampton dumpsters.

Whoever is responsible for this malfeasance, it’s just the latest twist in a larger narrative of competition that has long existed among society magazines. 

Joan Jedell, a former commercial photography agent, has been snapping pictures of celebrities, billionaires and their wives in the Hamptons for almost 12 years for her magazine, Hampton Sheet.

“I am a survivor!” Ms. Jedell told The Observer. “There are so many copycats. I was the first person who started the whole thing with the party photos, and then Jason Binn bought Hamptons magazine and now he believes he took over.”

One time, Ms. Jedell ran into Mr. Binn on the steps of a store in East Hampton.

“He always kisses me hello,” said Ms. Jedell. “But then he slipped my magazine into his as if to say, you should dissolve into mine.” (Mr. Binn didn’t recall doing this.)

Still, she holds Mr. Binn in higher esteem than the most recent arrivistes. “Social Life doesn’t interest me,” Ms. Jedell said, “because it’s like, ‘Who are these people?’”

Another new magazine, she thought, just smelled bad. “Like maybe it was mosquito poison.”

Ms. Greeven Cuomo, sister-in-law of Andrew, detached herself from the fray, but did remark: “The problem with the other ones is there is no regularity. Is it every month? Every other week? It’s very confusing.”

She told an anecdote about the actress Drew Barrymore getting shot for the cover of Gotham, then requesting to be on the cover of Hamptons instead.

“I said, ‘Ha! O.K.!’” Ms. Greeven Cuomo said.

According to Ms. Grubman, who admitted she is a “dear friend” of Mr. Binn’s, the taxonomy of these magazines goes like this: Avenue, Quest and Q feature an older society set and the many charity balls they attend; Hamptons and Gotham are more celebrity-oriented but still devote a fair amount of pictures to society; Hampton Sheet is mostly party photos; Social Life is younger and covers a sector of society that is more aspirational; and Hamptonite, well, it’s not clear yet.

One of Ms. Grubman’s clients is the model Jessica Hart, who was on the cover of Social Life’s June issue.  She did not suggest Ms. Hart as a feature to Mr. Binn.

“It depends on what level of celebrity they’re at,” said Ms. Grubman of her pitch process.

ON A RECENT SUNDAY, Minnie Mortimer was at a dinner in Montauk to celebrate the fall collection of her clothing line. Kelly Bensimon, an editor at large for Gotham and Hamptons, was also present.

Ms. Mortimer proclaimed the two society magazines her favorite. “Cristina grew up here so she really knows everybody and not just like studied them and knows who they are,” she said. “She’s friends with so many people that she really understands the vibe and the feeling of being out here.”

Indeed, Ms. Cuomo is not just an editor—she’s also a subject, this month on the cover of Avenue, her ostensible competitor, which lists socialite Debbie Bancroft and Lacey Tisch-Sidney as contributing writers. Socialites Barbara Bancroft and Gillian Hearst Simonds are contributors to Q. Social Life has publicist Kristian Laliberte listed as an editor, but then ranks his social status inside. Hamptonite’s cover girl, Ms. De Lesseps, is a contributing writer. And—perhaps taking their cue from Vanity Fair—Ms. Cuomo’s Hamptons has Christie Brinkley and Katie Lee Joel; Gotham Damon Dash and Judith Giuliani.

“When Pamela [Gross, Avenue’s editor] asked me to be on the cover, I asked her, ‘Don’t you see this as competition?’” Ms. Cuomo recalled. “And she said, ‘No, we only cover society. You cover affluence.’”

What does that mean, exactly?

“Affluence is someone with money and the means,” Ms. Cuomo replied. “Society is a very exclusive, elite group of individuals who do or do not have the means and carry the weight of tradition and family rooted in the community.”

There are, of course, advantages to having a magazine that is written by the very people it covers. Earlier this year, when Tinsley and Topper Mortimer were rumored to be splitting up, every New York publication immediately requested a Tinsley profile. The only magazine that got it was Avenue.

“Tinsley Mortimer is a very good idea,” said Mr. Columbia. “She’s a good-looking girl in a classic sense—she’s the blue-eyed, blond white girl. And now, she’s been around long enough that they also assign personality to her about her marriage and her husband.” 

Of course, in this economic climate, even magazines shot through with blue blood are experiencing red ink.

Advertising for Mr. Binn’s magazines is down more than 30 percent, and there were recently layoffs at Niche Media.

As for Mr. Vola: The fate of Hamptonite’s second issue, scheduled to come out Labor Day weekend, is still uncertain; he’d like to find a private investor but doesn’t know where to look.

“I try not to think about it,” said Mr. Vola, who is still working as a plumber. “I’m not going to give up. I put everything I have into it. I’m hoping that by next summer it can turn a profit. But for right now, I just hope it pays for itself, because I am not a bottomless pit.”

ialeksander@observer.com, jkoblin@observer.com

“This [book] is not a prescription,” Mr. Berland told The Observer at the intimate gathering in the magazine company's futuristic Executive Dining Room. “It’s not a how-to-be-successful. That’s such a B.S. concept of how can you be successful; there is no formula.”

Instead, the book, written by Mr. Berland and fellow strategic adviser Douglas Schoen, gathers some of their most prestigious clientele, who shared their stories, and then looked for a common denominators and dividing them up in five archetypes. “We’re pollsters,” Mr. Berland explained.

“The theme through all of these stories is that early on in their career they were introspective of what they were good at and what they found satisfying and leverage their strength.”

Among those featured in the book are Forbes Magazine publisher Steve Forbes; NBC Universal's president and CEO, Jeff Zucker; Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan; Playboy CEO Christie Heffner; and model–turned–reality TV hostess Heidi Klum. Also included, Condé Nast group president David Carey, who was played host of the party.

If there is one thing Mr. Carey had achieved, it was filling the room with these highly successful people—and getting them to wear name tags. So without any PR assistance, a reporter was able to spot Niche Media’s Jason Binn chatting to Mont Blanc’s Jan-Patrick Schmitz, Parade magazine editor Janice Kaplan being captivated by Yale University’s CFO Gwendolyn Sykes and Gary Bettman, the NHL's commissioner, just by furtively glancing at their lapels.

“I’m in the do-gooder category,” Ms. Sykes told The Observer. “I think they categorized me quite well, what do you think?” The former NASA CFO, however, claims she was not introspective from an early age. “I can’t honestly say that I was,” she mused.

“As a wee lass, I wanted to be an attorney, a lawyer, I wrote my grandmother notes about it. I’m as far away from an attorney you can get!”

“I don’t introspect a lot,” said Mr. Bettman. “Michael’s view of the world, that it’s all about introspection—I think that was really his conclusion after doing the interview.”

The archetypes, however, proved to be spot-on in some cases.

“I think [the book] is actually not about the people in it,” said Mr. Schmitz. “I think the country’s looking for leadership, and that’s what the book talks about, 'cause leadership is not a single, one-fits-all formula, and leaders come with very different skills that they have, so there are examples that are needed to lead, and that’s what I think the book is all about.”

Mr. Schmitz was asked which archetype he saw himself in. “A natural-born leader," he said with a smile.

In 2005 things took a turn for Mr. Essex. He was hired to be editor in chief of a magazine called Absolute—one of those shiny luxury publications that straddle the line between advertisements and editorial and leave the reader (flipping through it idly in a shiny luxury condo lobby, perhaps) feeling glazed and hollow, not sure exactly why. The gig was short-lived. And a year later he decided to leave the field altogether. Mr. Essex, 43, is now CEO of Droga5, a boutique ad agency.

In a way, given today’s media climate, this career trajectory makes perfect sense. Mr. Essex is still working with ideas and concepts, after all. “What is an editor’s role?” he said rhetorically the other day. “Is it to fix some semicolons? Or go out and sell some fucking ads?”

It’s ugly out there in the magazine world: titles shuttering, meager profits, no one talking excitedly about starting the next Spy. And yet … in September, a fat stack of very pretty publications will launch, with heavy paper stock, big perfectly bound spines, and shiny pictures of spinnakers and gourmet chocolate. The Wall Street Journal will launch its new business magazine, WSJ.; The Washington Post will introduce its own glossy about fashion, FW; the Los Angeles Times will reintroduce its magazine under the aegis of the publishing side. Also: A company called Modern Luxury will begin a bimonthly magazine, Manhattan. Yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of a downturn.

“Anyone who has a pulse knows that the long-term prognosis for print is troubled,” said Mr. Essex. “Luxury books are the one thing immune to this.”

“If you look at the industries that are doing well, certainly luxury is the top-top end of the business market, and the top-top consumer continues to spend,” said Ellen Asmodeo-Giglio, the publisher of WSJ. “Our economy has grown so much through the luxury space that it just makes sense that there is more of a highlight on that sector in [publishing] as well.”

The New York Times was at the forefront of the trend in 2004 when it first published T: The New York Times Style Magazine, which has become the embattled company’s cash cow. While profits at the paper continue to shrink, ad pages at T, which Mr. Essex praised as “the best-done luxury book,” grew 12 percent last year, and revenues increased 9 percent to $45.7 million in 2007, from $41.8 million in 2005. Earlier this year, chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. awarded T with The Times’ prized internal honor, the Punch Sulzberger Award, because, as he put in a memo, “It has become a “compelling advertising proposition for traditional and new customers, as well as an engaging read for astute audiences around the world.”

These compelling advertising propositions are where the jobs are. Scores of editors and assistants are fleeing 4 Times Square and the Hearst Tower, draining talent from somewhat less overtly ad-baiting places like Men’s Vogue, Maxim, Lucky, Domino, InStyle, House & Garden.

“Fifteen years ago, the experience of employees I had to hire was very limited,” said Jason Binn, the CEO of Niche Media, which publishes the established luxury magazines Gotham and Hamptons. “Now if you look at people from Condé Nast, or Hachette, or The New York Times, a lot of them have moved into this category of employment. Now we’re constantly having these bigger companies trying to hire our staff. And vice versa.”

And the traditional, cozily amorphous job of the editor—rumpled visionary, bold procurer, acid social critic, lover of words!—is starting to look very different. Sort of...crisper.

“You’re looking at the inevitable loss of print ad revenue,” Mr. Essex said. “The editor’s role is to figure out where the ad revenue is to keep a book alive. That is the primary function of the editor. It is not to massage semicolons. Now some people at ASME or Mr. Ross or Mr. Shawn may vomit at that statement, but it’s better than not having any book at all. I’m talking about shrewd recognition of what world we live in.”

‘EDITORS ARE GREAT’

As envisioned by businesspeople, the New Editor seems a kind of bland, affable and well-connected creature … much like, well, a businessperson.

“I think editors are very important because obviously I couldn’t write the magazine without my editors,” said Seth Semilof, the publisher of Haute Living, a bimonthly luxury magazine for the jet set, on the phone. “Editors are great.”

Mr. Binn had high praise for Cristina Greeven Cuomo, the editor of Gotham and Hamptons. “Cristina lives the life she celebrates,” he said. “She is our reader. She’s very socially active, she’s very respected in her community, she knows many of the people who are leaders who are in the city and are very experienced.”

“They’re all ambassadors to your brand,” he remarked, of editors in general. “They know the consumers. They know the influencers of their market. They’re very involved in the community.”

The businesspeople scoffed at the idea that, as Mr. Essex put it, “there’s going to be an inevitable erosion of church and state as magazines become the marketing expense for their Web sites.”

“We have such a divided line between editor and advertising that we sign a code of conduct,” said Ms. Asmodeo-Giglio, the publisher of WSJ. “We take that very seriously here. If my advertisers get to dictate the topic, they might as well create their own magazine, and that’s the last thing we want to do.”

“As you grow you really need to get that line clearly defined,” said Stephen Kong, the publisher of Modern Luxury magazines. “And frankly, I can tell you it is really a relief when you can tell your clients when they want to pitch a story, ‘Listen, you know what, that’s not really what I do, but I’d be happy to set up a phone call with [Manhattan editor] Richard [Martin] so your PR person or your representative can pitch the story to Richard.”

It’s just that, you see, luxury publishers sometimes like to have a nice little chat with their editors.

“I’ll have a client and they’ll say, ‘Hey, by the way, do you know that there’s a new watch we’re launching in January of ’09 in Geneva,’” said Mr. Kong. “And I’ll say, ‘Oh, really? What’s the watch?’ That information I can bring back to Rich and say, ‘Hey, by the way, I heard about this really hot thing, you may want to check it out.’ But it’s really for the best when you do not have the pressure of being so tied to the editorial.”

But what if they commission a story about, say, a regular advertiser that turns out to be not so flattering?

“I would frankly rather write on what people could go get that’s really great rather than spend time on what not to get, because nobody really has the time,” said Mr. Kong. “Like, for example, if we’re gonna write on one restaurant per issue, that’s only six restaurants per year. I’d rather tell them where to go than where not to go, because I feel like where not to go has limited reader service. Because then there’s people going, ‘Well where do I go?’”

Mr. Semilof took it a step further. “I believe in training my editors,” he said. “I believe in getting them and adhering to them, and now we’re in a position where I train someone like Stephanie [Wilson, the editorial director], and she’s been with the company for a long time, and now she’s become very good at the job, and so forth, and she’s learned on the job, but like I believe editors are very, very important and they’re very great.”

In the early days of his publication, Mr. Semilof hired editors with “great résumés,” but they sometimes could be a pain, so he found a new method for recruiting. “Basically, we have a couple that come in as interns and they start working and then we see their writing, and then Stephanie works with them and then I review them, and then they start moving forward. We just brought a young lady on that was an intern, and now she’s working, and one worked at Teen Vogue, and another one worked for her school newspaper.”

He’s able to score some of the top interviews himself because of his own nocturnal adventures—running into Russell Simmons at Rose Bar, for example, and later inviting him to be on the cover. “At the end of the day, this is a results-oriented business,” Mr. Semilof said. Everyone’s saying, ‘We’re luxury, we’re luxury,’ but the reality is, if you don’t offer results for your advertisers, then pretty much the game’s gonna be over. For example, Rolls Royce is an advertiser of ours, and through our magazine and through events we’ve sold more Rolls Royces than any other publication in the world. … We’d rather talk about the success part of the business. Our job is not to be like The New York Times and talk about the doom part of the business.”

One way The New York Times is fighting doom is by selling every page of advertising in its glossy Aug. 3 sports supplement, Play, to the Nielsen Media Research company, which recalls the slightly queasy feeling one got in 2005 when The New Yorker teamed up with Target. But Mr. Essex, at least, is sanguine about such innovations. “If you accept the proposition that it’s luxurious to page through a magazine, something luxurious and slow about it, then magazines can lend themselves to that luxurious experience,” he said. “People who are smart enough to get that will invest in that and defend that. That’s what I’m trying to get at. Editors will defend magazines as the luxurious experience.”

jkoblin@observer.com

Braden Keil provides an update on a previous story of the sale of a $90 million mansion in the Hamptons. The deal is still not done, but there are some hints that it could be in the works. Regardless, the buyer and seller are denying it.

Jason Binn has a new neighbor to spruce up the luxurious River Lofts. Supermodel Karolina Kurkova just dropped $2.3 million on a new apartment, according to New York magazine.

After his well-documented losses on the stock market, David Denby is trying to make some money in real estate, according to the New York Times.

On Sunday, The Daily News cover story declared a “War At Ground Zero.” In a candid interview, Mayor Bloomberg said that progress cannot be made at Ground Zero with Larry Silverstein hanging around. Today, The Times follows up.

And lastly, the L-Ification of Brooklyn. Next stop, Jefferson Street.

-Michael Calderone

With a recent purchase, the couple found a way to pool their talents. The Binns bought a loft in a new Tribeca development for $2.074 million, according to deed-transfer records. A contract was signed on May 15, with the deal closing three months later.

LB Group, a joint company between Uzbeki-born Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev and developer Shaya Boymelgreen, purchased the two properties that make up the Tribeca complex in 2002. The architectural firm Tsao & McKown spearheaded the project, which consists of a converted 19th-century warehouse on Washington Street and a brand-new 13-story building on Laight Street (which is where the Binns’ condo is located).

The full-service building includes a 24-hour concierge, landscaped garden, smart-card secure elevators, indoor garage and state-of-the-art fitness center. The kitchen is equipped with sparkling amenities by Sub-Zero, Bosch and Miele.

The Binns are not the first notable buyers to scoop up one of these lofts from spec sheets, long before the construction was complete. Actress Meryl Streep made headlines last year when she purchased the 4,000-square-foot penthouse for $9.95 million. Now, buyers can move in immediately.

In 1998, Mr. Binn founded Niche Media, which currently publishes six titles geared toward wealthy consumers. An N.Y.U. graduate, Ms. Binn followed in her parents footsteps—both are involved in real estate—and has previously worked with high-profile clients like restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow and Madison Avenue jeweler David Yurman. In December 2003, the couple was married in a ceremony at the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach, and had their first child, Penny Olivia, in late August.

Mr. Binn declined to comment.

Over the past few months, the move by Jane Pauley and her husband Garry Trudeau across Manhattan has been closely watched. Now, as the couple heads to Beekman Place, they have also completed a deal on their former home. Ms. Pauley and Ms. Trudeau have sold their $13 million Central Park West duplex to financier Kevin Davis and his wife Susan.

The spacious co-op went on the market on May 20, and a contract was signed less than two weeks later. However, despite the signed contract—which The Observer reported in June—the deal didn’t close until recently. Brokers Lee Summers and Caroline Rocco of Sotheby’s International Realty listed the property. Ms. Summers declined to comment on the transaction.

Obviously, since the couple was selling their West Side home, they would need another place to live. Also in June, The Observer reported that Ms. Pauley and Mr. Trudeau were outbid on a $3.85 million Beekman Place triplex. Estranged couple Angela Rich and Jeffrey Siger previously owned the maisonette, which was listed with broker Patricia Cliff of the Corcoran Group. Ms. Cliff declined to comment.

But circumstances have apparently changed, and the powerful couple have indeed bought the triplex, according to The New York Times. Although fortunate to get their desired residence, Ms. Pauley and Mr. Trudeau leave behind an exceptional apartment that includes seven bedrooms, five and a half bathrooms and park views.

The Central Park West building has housed numerous celebrities over the years, including Lucille Ball, Robin Williams, Chuck Close and the aforementioned Ms. Streep—who recently sold her East Village townhouse and is presumably heading for the River Lofts.

Mr. Davis is the managing director of Man Financial, a global brokerage firm dealing in futures and options. A spokesman for Mr. Davis confirmed the deal but declined to comment.

Not long ago, a well-placed campaign contribution might have led to a good night’s sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom. But there’s an easier (and perfectly legal) way to get close to the 16th President’s legacy.

The Todd Lincoln House on 38th Street, commissioned by his son, Robert Todd Lincoln, recently dropped in price by $1.15 million to a more market-friendly $5.35 million.

The 5,500-square-foot home is far more grand than a log cabin. Built in 1893-94, the 14-foot-wide landmarked townhouse comes with many of its original details, including a spiral staircase, moldings, Corinthian columns and seven wood-burning fireplaces.

The townhouse is listed with Susan Postman, Jane Koryn and Eileen Teich of the Corcoran Group. Ms. Postman declined to comment.

After selling their lavish apartment at 640 Park Avenue to J. Crew chief executive Millard Drexler for close to $20 million, Jonathan and Caroline Sack had to find another place to live. Mr. Drexler managed to pass muster with the strict co-op board, which once turned down a Saudi Arabian prince, and the deal was done. And having purchased the apartment for $11.7 million in 2001, the Sacks ended up making a hefty profit to put toward a new place.

Heading north, the wealthy couple purchased a 15-room duplex at 895 Park Avenue for $12.5 million, according to a source with knowledge of the deal. The luxurious co-op includes five bedrooms, five and a half bathrooms and two maid’s rooms.

Sloan & Robertson designed the 19-story Art Deco building in 1930. The opulent structure features a 24-hour concierge, a wine cellar, a gym and squash courts.

Laurance Kaiser IV, president of Key-Ventures Realty, represented the buyers; he declined to comment on the transaction. Angel Joseph and Arlene Reed of Warburg Realty represented the seller, who passed away during the summer, shortly after the deal was completed.

High-end developer Dominion Management continues to reap big profits on the Upper East Side, recently selling a 74th Street townhouse to investment banker Eric Gleacher for just over $11.1 million, according to deed-transfer records.

The 8,000-square-foot-mansion, now converted into a single-family home with 15 rooms, has changed hands three times in recent years.

In 2003, mega-developer (and contemporary-art enthusiast) Aby Rosen purchased the property for $5.5 million. About a year later, Mr. Rosen flipped it for a quick profit, selling to Dominion for $6.7 million through Richard Steinberg, senior managing director of Warburg Realty. Mr. Steinberg represented Dominion again on this deal, but declined to comment.

The 20-foot-wide townhouse originally listed at $12 million and lingered on the market for about 10 months. Patricia Patterson of Sotheby’s International Reality represented the buyer.

Although Dominion profited nicely, a lot of work went into the townhouse. Dominion secured approval from the landmarks commission to add a sixth floor and garden, a process that took nearly six months.

Dominion’s first renovation project was at 12 East 73rd Street. The company’s growing portfolio now includes 115 East 70th Street, 20 East 65th Street, the Henry T. Sloane House at 18 East 68th Street, and the massive, 50-foot Beaux-Arts townhouse at 3 East 75th Street, which is now undergoing a condo conversion.

Mr. Gleacher previously worked as an executive at Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers, and is currently a trustee at the University of Chicago and New York University. In 1990, he formed Gleacher Partners, a boutique investment-banking and asset-management firm. Mr. Gleacher declined to comment about the purchase.

Recent Transactions in the Real Estate Market

Tribeca

132 Duane Street

Two-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom condo.

Asking: $1.975 million. Selling: $1.975 million.

Charges: $766. Taxes: $957.

Time on the market: ten months.

THE STRETCH IS WHEN YOU GO TO THE WHIP AND SPURS Persistence can pay off in real estate. A single investment banker was so taken with this Tribeca loft that he waited out the current tenant and dealt with other contractual issues for seven months. In February, the buyer uttered the words most sellers love to hear: all cash and non-contingent. Unfortunately, issues surfaced that complicated the deal. There were approximately 300 square feet of roof rights that had to be dealt with, as well as a renter currently occupying the space. Eventually, the condo title was amended to withdraw the roof rights, and the tenant moved up to a higher floor. After months of waiting, the buyer can finally enjoy the 1,986-square-foot loft that includes a security system, key-locked elevator and 12-foot ceilings. Other amenities include a Sub-Zero refrigerator, Bosch dishwasher and Viking Stove. Francine Hunter McGivern of Prudential Douglas Elliman represented the buyer. Her colleague, Joseph Race, represented the seller.

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.

Anyway.

In today's magazine mail comes August's Tatler, that tasty mag that always turns our minds to London emigration. (We do love the Brits! Although it's true that, in these quarters, some love them a little more carnally than others.)

Tatler—whose cover story is "How I Fell In Love With Tom Cruise: The Very Lucky Katie Holmes"— features a "100 Most Invited Top Party People" list, and it is making The Transom absolutely seethe with jealousy over the comparative state of society circuits.

A few fave excerpts:

Also: Elton John and his lover, at number 51, beat out Madonna and her lover, who are down at number 54. Goodness.

Those entranced will be happy to know there's time enough to book on The Transom's favorite flight, American Airlines number 132, which is the 9:30 p.m. from JFK to LHR. There doesn't appear to be anything up front, unfortunately, but there's a number of empty aisle seats left for tonight.
—Choire Sicha