Dispatch: Montauk Mayhem; ArtHamptons; Parrish Midsummer Party; and Further Lane Fêtes
July 17, 2012 | Talk of the Town
Debra Halpert, Kelly Killoren Bensimon, and Samantha Yanks at the Hamptons Clambake
The Crackup: Countdown to Gatsby and the 2020s
The 1920s may have been roaring, but Montauk was seriously overheated this weekend as The Ronjo Motel has now been updated and converted into the chichi Montauk Beach House. For the grand opening of its members-only beach club, the hotel hired Paul Oakenfold, one of the most popular DJs on the planet, to spin on Saturday night.
Blame East Hampton town supervisor Bill Wilkinson and his, ahem, “pro-business” stance, tantamount to Biff Tannen running Hill Valley in Back to the Future. He has transformed the sleepy getaway into a kind of Pleasure Island.
Mid-weekend, I ran into a nightlife reporter who was staying at The Montauk Beach House, and she quietly mentioned she was nervous to drive through town for fear some reveler would step in front of her car at 55 mph on Route 27.
I drove with caution to the luxe Hamptons magazine clambake at the Montauk Yacht Club on Sunday, where I ended up sitting with Kelly Killoren Bensimon and Ramona Singer and her pretty plastic surgeon friend.
But en route to Montauk a car gunned by my mine and barely missed oncoming traffic. A mile later we were both inching past a fresh accident. Four crumpled cars spun out as if they were beer cans tossed from a car window. Smoke rose from the hood of a car that had pulverized a telephone pole. A tall man lay face down on the ground. The victims and their cars were circled by other motorists, who had stopped to phone 911. Police and fire truck sirens pulsed throughout the rest of the drive to Montauk. It was a passage plucked out of The Great Gatsby and the 1920s, which so happens to have been the advent of the party age in Montauk.
Friday, Dispatches celebrated the centennial of the birth of Jackson Pollock at a fundraiser for the Pollock-Krasner House & Study Center at ArtHamptons 2012. Held in a field at Nova’s Ark, the tented art fair included a photographic reproduction of the paint-splattered floor at Pollock-Krasner House. Lest we forget, Pollock was on his way to The Creeks, now owned by Ron Perelman, when a drunken crash ended his life on August 11, 1956.
Jean Shafiroff and Angela Hearst at the Parrish Art Museum's Midsummer Party
Saturday night, Dispatches attended what may well be the final Midsummer Party at the old-school Parrish Art Museum space on Jobs Lane in Southampton. Fingers crossed, the new Parrish, in a field on Route 27, will be completed by next summer. The head-spinning list of art-world notables in the grassy tent with a tree growing through it included Beth Rudin DeWoody, Ed Moses, Donald Sultan, Christophe de Minil, Chuck Close, Dorothy Lichtenstein, and Eric Fischl.
Dispatches then switched gears and gunned it for the Further Lane estate of Bill and Michelle Nuti. (Bill is the CEO of NCR and chairman of Sprint in East Hampton.) It was a battle of the Further Lane estates as I passed a Gatsby-esque fête at a friend’s white wedding cake of a historic house with golf carts and a van working the long, circular drive and Further Lane. A half-mile down Further, I spotted a behemoth tent in Nuti’s colorful gardens.
Ne-Yo was seated in a booth with George Lucas and his beautiful wife, Melanie Hobson-Lucas. And just hours before Knicks point guard Jason Kidd crashed his Escalade into a Water Mill light pole and was arrested for an allegedly high blood alcohol level, he ponied up and bought four balloons to help kids in foster care. Ne-Yo’s Compound Foundation is run by his hot mom H. Loraine Smith. Hence, Lucas, who was honored, gave a shout-out to black moms, such as Loraine. “I know, I married my own six years ago," he informed the crowd, which included Paula Abdul.
—JEFFREY SLONIM
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