SEASON: Summer. This place can be a ghost town between Labor Day and Memorial Day.
IDEAL CONDITIONS: A balmy summer eve, half naked in the back of a stretch limousine with Moët champagne cascading down your tits. DAYTIME ACTIVITY: Check Montauk.
LODGING RECOMMENDATIONS: Beach rentals are popular but sell out quickly. Seedy hotels are available and cost way less when you stuff eight of your most intoxicated friends into one room. Best bet? Find a celebrity, seduce them, and spend the night at their mansion. INGESTIBLES: Local wine by day, Blue Point Blueberry Beer by night, bagels after 1:00 A.M. and $22 Montauk lobster rolls.
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Like the swallows of Capistrano, native New Yorkers flee the stench- filled streets of Manhattan each summer for fresh air in the Hamptons. Don’t let the socialites fool you however; the East End of Long Island may seem swanky on TV and in movies, but it’s really trashy as fuck.
Trendy vineyards dotted around Long Island’s East End make it the ideal place to pretend like you’re a Napa Valley wine snob. Really though, Long Islanders turn the formal art of wine tasting into a binge drinking free-for-all at places like Martha Clara Vineyards, Baiting Hollow Farm, and the Jamesport Vineyard/Oyster Bar. Those little flights of booze are deceiving—seventeen “tastes” later and your friends will stumble upon you lying facedown in the middle of a vineyard row at Pindar, Long Island’s largest winery.
In the Hamptons, the biggest shit show happens at the Boardy Barn. This place is only open on Sundays between 2:00 and 8:00 p.m., and charges a $20 cover fee, but college kids with fake IDs still flock to this outdoor bar in search of $2 beers and summer love. Don’t let the two-hour queue to get in deter you—pre-gaming in line is half the fun before entering a giant pigpen of sluts and guido douchebags.
Nassau County has a few towns that are “sleepy” by guidebook standards, but any Long Islander will turn your idea of suburban perfection into a total trashville drunkfest. Floral Park closes its streets for a town-wide, pedestrian party to celebrate the Belmont Stakes (see the race yourself at nearby Belmont Park). Join locals at bars like J Fallon’s Taproom and Jack Duggan’s Pub, open from the early morning until the last person pukes into their jockey cap.
The Irish population of Rockville Centre loves drinking so much that they even throw their own Saint Patrick’s Parade a full week after the actual holiday. The historic event gets extra sloppy with the overwhelming amount of freckle-faced, ginger-haired townies gulping down green beer from red SOLO cups. Both cities are an easy thirty-minute ride by train from the City.
If you want instant drunken gratification instead of a “drink-all- day” tour, your best alternative is a ride on the infamous Long Is- land Rail Road (LIRR) “drunk train.” Leaving from New York City’s Penn Station between 2:30 and 4:30 a.m., you’ll discover the Island’s biggest lushes heading home from a raucous night in the city.
What you’ll encounter on the LIRR drunk train:
Exhibitionist porn from smashed couples hooking up between the seats.
Vomit. Lots and lots of vomit.
Screeching banshee women with too much makeup reeking of hairspray.
Forty-ounce cans of beer stuffed into paper sacks guzzled by folks who can’t admit the party’s over.
FUCKED UP FIRSTHAND
The plan was to get Ann Marie drunk before her “big day” but really, it was a mutual goal for all of us to get inebriated and raunchy. Don’t judge us—who wouldn’t want to get bombed and hit on celebrities at swanky Hamptons’ nightclubs? Except, I’d never been wine tasting before. Is it like “tasting” raw cake batter before you bake it, to make sure it doesn’t suck? How could wine suck? It’s just fancy alcohol. . . .
I was expecting a little medicine cup holding a pitiable amount of booze but behold, I was given a glass filled up halfway—for each tasting. Skeptical about the whole process, I shot down the first sample—that’s how you “taste” wine, right? I didn’t know the difference between “aromatic, oaky flavor” and “hints of apricot and summer air.” With my extreme lack of wine-tasting etiquette, I demanded my second glass. I was shitfaced by my fourth.
Winery patrons didn’t seem to mind our raucous laughter, rude phallic jewelry, or skinned knees from stumbling through vineyards filled with little grapes. Locally made Merlot? Sure. A “meritage of Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon?” Whatever, I’m fucking drunk and it looks pretty. Do I want to buy a bottle? Hells yeah, I do! Give me five. I started uncorking on the ride home.
VERDICT
Residents do a fine job of taking the “class” out of “upper-class.”
From 101 Places to Get F*cked Up Before You Die: The Ultimate Travel Guide to Partying Around the World by Matador Network and edited by David S. Miller. Copyright © 2013 by Matador Network and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press.
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