Wednesday, July 13
Hoisted by Your Own Petanque
We’re in those post-Fourth doldrums, in which it seems the sticky heat won’t ever end—we miss our blazers! We used to look professional! But at least we’re one up on the men in sandals, waggling their ill-kept toes at us as we skulk over to the Mister Softee truck, playing its siren song … While we spend our weeks dreaming of weekend getaways (if anyone asks, we have a standing therapist appointment at 3 p.m. on Friday that we simply can’t miss, and we won’t be making it back to the office after that), those for whom getaway is a way of life dream of France, apparently. It’s Bastille Day on Shelter Island! The hotel La Maison Blanche hosts a petanque tournament co-hosted by hotelier Alistair MacLean. But what is petanque? We asked the hotel’s front desk. “It’s like you have small balls, and first you throw the smallest one and the other ones have to get close to it,” said the clerk, whom we thought had a French lilt to her voice (she was, she informed us, Polish). In any case, we’ll probably leave the playing field for the athletes and park ourselves in front of a bowl of moules marinieres. Remember, just because Bastille Day commemorates the storming of a French prison doesn’t mean that noshing on French food and playing French games implies support for the release of a certain Frenchman!
La Maison Blanche, 11 Stearns Point Road (Shelter Island Heights), 12 p.m., $30 entry fee to benefit Shelter Island Lions Club; call (631) 749-1633 for more details.
Thursday, July 14
Student Housing
We too were young once, and we remember that first New York apartment—we squatted in a cramped lair we found through a friend of a friend. (Everyone has to start somewhere! But don’t worry: that building’s a Whole Foods now.) Would that we’d known of The Next Step Realty, a brokerish for young would-be New Yorkers seeking a location to while away the post-Cornell years. “Our ideal client is someone who’s graduated from an Ivy League, NESCAC, or top Southern school. They’ve got a well-established job at a high paying company, media, fashion, a bank, corporate securities … Apple, Google … and moving to the city for the first time,” says co-founder Blair Brandt, a 2010 Richmond graduate. The company is by and for young masters of the universe: its founders are two prep-school types, with the non-Blair Brandt half still in college, the little darling! The Next Step is throwing past and future clients a party tonight on the patio of a rental building called, somehow, Truffles Tribeca. (Delicious! Could it be the Gilded Age once more, so soon?) Nothing but the best for these kids! Truffles has a staff, roof garden, courtyard, views of the Statue of Liberty—and we hear it’s all booked up! But never fear, “things will open up according to the market,” says a flack.
Truffles Tribeca, 34 Desbrosses Street, 6 p.m., with “surprise musical performance”; private event.
Friday, July 15
To MRKT, to MRKT
Is there such a thing as too much art? We started going to the Hamptons to drink a little rosé, maybe hang out with Ina Garten—and suddenly we’re getting phone calls from friends (sadly, not Ina) asking if we’re going to check out the paintings at the Bridgehampton Biennial or artHamptons. Um, that’s what Chelsea’s for? But we must stay culturally literate (that’s what the still-unread copy of Freedom on our coffee table is for—we should do something about that), so we’re dragging ourselves to the inaugural artMRKT Hamptons. The fair, organized by a Brooklyn-based group that’s bringing contemporary art to the grounds of the Bridgehampton Historical Society, opens today; last night was the Cadillac-sponsored preview party to benefit Southampton Hospital. Well, it’s for a good cause … “I just got a press release for the East Hampton Arts Show!” a pal Gchatted as we wrote this item. That settles it; we’re going to stay home and finish Freedom.
artMRKT Hamptons Preview Party, 5:30-7 p.m. with VIP Preview Party Thursday from 7-9:30 p.m., show to run Friday through Sunday, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. (closes at 5 p.m. Sunday), at Bridgehampton Historical Society, 2368 Montauk Highway (Bridgehampton); visit art-mrkt.com/hamptons for tickets and information.
Saturday, July 16
I.A.Sea
If you thought the “Zombie Diana” cover of Newsweek, featuring an aged, hypothetically alive Princess of Wales, was bad, you should hear what former staffers are saying about the magazine since Tina Brown took over! (Let’s put it this way—the regal cover girl isn’t the only one who looks like the walking dead.) There’s a booze cruise of pre-Tina Newsweek-ers tonight to celebrate what was once the heavily trafficked Newsweek.com, before its beastification. A glory-days employee (Well, were they really glory days?) indicated that an Osama bin Laden-style burial at sea was planned for the domain name, which is being officially retired Tuesday. It’s the hottest ticket in town—catch all the refugees and ask them if the old covers about Jesus and Mary were really that much better!
Somewhere on the Hudson …
Sunday, July 17
Dancers From the Dance
Fire Island’s abuzz—and not from the usual chemical mélange that keeps the tea dances running past 3 a.m. No, this is all for charity—the Fire Island Dance Festival, home to lithe, hunky ballerinos and ignored-for-once-in-their-lives ballerinas—concludes its weekend-long run today at one of those schmancy shared homes. Cocktails to follow, of course! (It all raises money for Dancers Responding to AIDS, which is exactly the worthy cause it sounds like.) This is the second-biggest weekend on the island, after August’s Ascension bacchanal of men who only look like well-built dancers. Which event is better? You can spend “one watching dancers,” an F.I.-loving publicist told us, or “the other … yourself.” We’d rather watch the dancers—we’ve had a bit too much Mister Softee lately!
Festival concludes tonight with 5 p.m. performance, after performances at 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday, 236 Beach Hill Walk; visit dradance.org/fireisland for tickets and information.
Monday, July 18
French Twist
Now, we know New York in the summer is bad—earlier this week we went to Shelter Island just to pretend we were in France. But some people can withstand even more travel than our L.I.R.R.-weary bones can, it seems: BAMtravel guests are bringing their tote bags and their hand-me-down opera glasses to Versailles, for a four-day jaunt to see the Baroque opera Atys in surroundings even nicer than Lafayette Avenue. (Our main source on operatic apocrypha, Wikipedia, tells us that Atys was “met with indifference” in its 17th-century bow, but, honey, times have changed.) The whole package includes, per BAM, “sumptuous treats, intimate meals, and private tours.” Sounds great, but wait for Atys to come to BAM in September. In the meantime, we’ll pop a DVD of Marie Antoinette into the laptop and eat some petits-fours from ChikaLicious in front of the full-blast air conditioner …
BAMtravel’s four-day trip to France runs from July 16 to 20; email travel@BAM.org for details.
Tuesday, July 19
Easy A
Gay marriage is now legal-ish, but we have to wait until July 24 to actually attend the first gay nuptials (We’ve already bought the gift—enjoy your Crock-Pot, boys!—though we’d be more enthusiastic about these weddings in a less icky-sticky season. What are the rules about wearing seersucker shorts to a gay wedding?). We’ll fill the nuptial-shape hole in our lives at the premiere party for season two of Logo TV’s A-List: New York, the reality show about so-called “gay housewives of New York” who pass the time between serious relationships by getting in fights and going to glam parties at one another’s grotesquely minimalist apartments. “Each cast member has really helped this cause,” a flack emails us about marriage equality, though we’re not going to this premiere for political discourse. We’re going to start some arguments and throw a few drinks, our TV-release signing pen at the ready.
District 36, 29 West 36th Street, 7 p.m.; tickets available at giltcity.com/newyork/logomtv.
Wednesday, July 20
Tables for Two Bits
Why is it called Restaurant Week if it runs for a fortnight? That’s a koan we could never hope to solve, as is the reason for the two pennies and a nickel we add onto our Restaurant Week-dictated $24.07 lunch bill. (As if calculating the tip weren’t already mathematically challenging enough!) For all those wondering why the Palm Court at the Plaza is suddenly swarmed with the besandaled madding crowd (Some diners just don’t respect a business casual dress code! We just lost our appetite—waiter, take back our beef carpaccio!), well, the two-week, citywide Groupon ends July 24, at which point you may stop going to nice restaurants—or choose to start going to them again.
Visit nycgo.com/restaurantweek for a list of participating restaurants.