Is Irma Herzog Really Renting The DASH Space For Free?

We're not sure if this could possibly be true, but Page Six is reporting (while in the process of reporting a silly non-story about Kourtney Kardashian not tipping the wait staff at the Driver's Seat) that the Kardashians are renting their space from Driver's Seat owner Irma Herzog for free.

Is this true? Man, that's some hippie shit right there. We're going to try and reach out to Herzog for comment, but that would seem like an odd business strategy. Sure having them there brings foot traffic to the Driver's Seat for hungry stalkers, but renting out an entire space on Jobs Lane for nary a dime? How could she swing that?

Let us know if there's any truth to this, or if the New York Post is doing what the New York Post is good at doing. Making shit up.

As for the main part of the story: in all likelihood, if they were filming a scene for their stupid show, the production staff probably handled the bill and tip, so that whoever was being shot in the scene didn't have to reach into their wallet and go through all the rigmarole. Calm down people.

Kardashian's Landlord Hounded For Trying To Earn A Buck

So once again we are faced with the completely illogical phenomenon that is the Kardashians. Specifically we're referring to how successful their TV show is, despite the fact that seemingly the whole world wants them to pretty much die.

Fresh off totally reliable news outlet  Page Six of the New York Post, the villagers of Southampton are sharpening their pitchforks and lighting their torches to snuff out Irma Herzog. Her crime? Not responsibly going on welfare for the greater good of Keeping Out With the Kardashians. Herzog is the owner of The Driver's Seat and apparently the space adjacent to the long-standing eatery, which she rented out to the Kardashian girls for their pop-up store "Dash," which they'll be running for the duration of their reality TV show: "Muppets Take The Hamptons." 

Come on. Girl gotta eat.

Ever since word got out that Herzog dared to make a buck by leasing the space, she's been the subject of "harassment and torment," according to the article, which also quoted Jerry Della Femina, who oddly enough didn't blame Obama for the rented space. "She should be brought up on charges," said Della Femina, the Hamptons' resident right-wing lunatic. Suddenly he's anti-capitalism. Funny how that works.

[Hand raised]
-Yes, Hamptonyte Blog, do you have a question?

HB: We do...um...did the people of Southampton honestly think the entire production, public relations, advertising and network team that runs the Kardashian TV franchise would just pack up their trailers and cameras and leave because they couldn't find a place to rent?

-Yes, Hamptonyte Blog, yes, they apparently did.

[Face palm]

SIDEBAR:

We don't watch any of the Kardashian shows, so could someone tell us if Kourtney has trouble walking or something? Why is it that every picture of the two girls in the Hamptons shows Khloe leading her sister around like a pet Orangutan?

Observe:

Did Bruce Buschel's douche chills contribute to his shuttered restaurant?

We'd like to think so, and so do the good folks at Curbed Hamptons, who reported a few weeks ago that Buschel's Southfork Kitchens on the Bridgehampton Turnpike is up for sale for $3.8m.

Buschel, no stranger to this blog, is somehow a complete stranger to the idea that shitting on your target demographic often makes your target demographic suddenly hungry for McDonalds. Although, in fairness to Buschel, McDonalds is probably where Buschel figured his demographic eats anyway.

Buschel is a rare and interesing character in that, it's rare for people to want to see someone's dreams battered like Private Pyle in Full Metal Jacket, yet sooo many people wanted to see that with him (peep the comments in the link). It's rare for someone to see their dream fulfilled and then completely undermine it by publicly attacking his own patrons in all his New York Times-contributing what-the-fuckery. It's rare for a New York entrepreneur to be so vaginally thin-skinned as to respond to relatively obscure blogs that criticize said what-the-fuckery, and it's rare for a massive amount of people to take glee in someone else's demise. Yet that is what Buschel and all the douche chills he invokes, has done.

Look at it this way: his restaurant closing is the equivalent of people saying 'I would rather starve than eat at your place.' Ah Buschel. The douche is strong in this one.

So Southfork Kitchens has shuttered. And that's a good thing. And Buschel may walk away with $3.8 million. And that's a bad thing.

See. We don't even want you to have money!

Special election to decide if we should save homes built on sand

This isn't so much a class warfare piece, because the taxes it would affect are only for those who are directly effected by erosion, but Newsday ran an interesting news story about a vote coming up in February to decide on two $13 million plus tax levies that would pay for emergency sand drops on properties threatening to wash away in future storms.

The two votes are for districts in Bridgehampton and Sagaponack, each calling for a little over 13 million in tax increases.

Question: Where are they getting the sand from?
Answer: Beaches where poor people live.

OK, now it's a class warfare piece.

Unintended hilarity of the story: the amount of absentee ballots that will need to be sent because the vote is being held in February and rich people don't exist in the Hamptons in February.

Right-Wing Jabrone of the story: This guy-- Snafu803: Of course they should get it. They work hard and everyone is jealous they get nicer things then the average person. Who wants to go to jones beach with all the drunks and city trash. I say close jones beach and give it all to the hamptons where it will be appreciated

Hamptons homeless now visible without leaves to hide behind

We're not sure how to take this 2-page feature by the Associated Press, which was republished by ABC.com. On one hand there's the WhatTheFuckery of this:

It's not that the homeless don't exist in the string of famously exclusive waterfront communities on the eastern end of Long Island — they just blend in more easily when it's warm.

But then there's the delicious, CueTheGuillotinesery of this:

"The privet hedges, the beaches, the resort community, the gigantic homes that are used 12 weekends out of the year," she said. "Every time I drive past one of these homes that for the most part are empty, I'm thinking, wow, how many people could we house in this place?"

The profile is of Maureen's Haven, a nonprofit organization that provides shelter to homeless people on the east end. Their home base is in Riverhead, but appparently they house a lot of day laborers and minimum-wage workers in the Hamptons.

The story is interesting in that it addresses something that all of us here on the east end know already: that folks is brokes. I'm not sure what camoflogue the homeless are using in the summer, but I will admit I've never seen a homeless person the way you see them in New York City, where, for the record, you can spot them year-round.

Ours don't lay on benches I guess? Ours don't lean against buildings or sit on the ground? Ours know better? Hmmm.

Getting back to the last statement in the story, we love the idea of raiding these beachfront houses and stocking them with smelly poors. We already have one douchebag on our list of whose home to invade first.

Jerry Della Femina's Problems Would Make Jesus Christ Want To Murder Him

Jerry Della Femina's idea of poverty is so rage inducing we saw the Dalai Lama read this Business Insider article and then immediately turn around and punch an infant in the face.

Della Femina, the sleazy, slimy lying gold-toothed creep ad man was one of the few Madison Avenue execs who amassed his fortune and didn't manage to blow it on a coke habit in the 80s. He's been a permanent fixture in the Hamptons since forever and even opened up a successful restaurant with the money he made convincing people with money they don't have to buy shit they don't need.

Now he's sold his house because, well, because his poor unborn great grandchildren may not be able to sit by a pool lined with the skin of Mexican day laborers while doing lines off a blonde co-ed's back. Or as we used to call it: The American Dream.

That's right, a man who lives in America in 2012, with full knowledge of how high the unemployment rate is, who no doubt had to lay off some of his own workers at his various business ventures, who flies his helicopter over thousands of foreclosed homes, has the balls to complain that he's selling because he refuses to pay more taxes under the Obama administration.

Taxes? Really? Taxes? You do realize, Della Femina, that your tax bill is probably quadruple the monthly mortgage of the average home just west of where you live, right?

Instead of feeling fortunate that he even has the money to PAY those taxes, he's selling low just to avoid them. His ginormous, disgustingly lavish, and grossly unnecessary oceanfront house went for $25 million. He wanted $40 million. But he's settling for 25. A fact that makes us just...so sad.

“I want the proceeds of this sale to go to my kids and my grandkids,” he told The Post's Jennifer Gould Keil and Selim Algar. “I don’t want my money going to Obama, and that’s what’s going to happen in the New Year. That’s why I sold right now, that’s why I wanted to get this done.”
“I’m basically the loser in Obama’s class warfare,” he added.

Wow. That really gets us...right around...the chest/heart region or thereabouts. Another loser in Obama's class warfare, according the article, is Discovery Networks CEO David Zaslav, who inherited Della Femina's meager 8 bedroom, 6.5 bathroom, heated pool-even-though-there's-a-literal-ocean-500-feet-away, mansion that sits on 1.7 acres.

On a side note, we'd like to know how an advertising/marketing guru can be this culturally tone-deaf. On a sider note, we'd like to know how Della Femina's brain didn't say to him: 'please don't call the NY Post and...say anything like what you're about to say.' On an even sider note, we'd like Della Femina to eat a bag of dicks.

Battle Over Who Owns God Headed For Courts

One would think that in the age of "Occupy," the 1% would just pipe down a little bit. We're sort of delighted that they haven't.

Homeowners in Napeague (aka, the 1%) are in the middle of a legal fight with the Town of East Hampton over their desire to keep all the poors off the beach they feel is rightfully theirs because they purchased it years ago from God.

The Town says the parcels along that stretch of beach were sold under the condition that beach access would not be restricted to anybody. At the time, the beach was mainly accessed by east end baymen who parked on the street and walked down to the water to go to work in the morning. As the baymen died off, and they began to gradually be replaced by fucking assholes wealthier residents, those residents decided they didn't want barnacly, old, raggedy and completely not fabulous poors wandering their beaches.

The residents of Napeague of course are arguing that the beachgoers leave behind broken bottles, and burned out cars, and dead bodies, and zombies, but nobody is buying that to date. Bottom line is, God gave them the right to close off the beaches to the stinky public and the town should honor God.

Their appeals have fallen on deaf ears in the local courts and now it's headed to another court. So the residents said, "well, can you at least temporarily bar the poors from coming here?" and the courts said...not so much.

So yeah. The public says by principle nobody should own the beach, nobody should own nature. Shut up public.

*God did not immediately return calls for comment.

Why We Hate (cough,cough Love) The French

Because they spend two days in a "luxury" rental house in the Hamptons and then dash out of there before paying.

According to Reuters, Real Estate Pimps Kandinksy Escape LLC is suing a senior executive at Lazard Ltd. for allegedly pulling a two-day dine & dash on the house they rented out to him.

French citizen, Matthieu Pigasse (pronounced "Pig-Ass," we're pretty unsure) is accused of leaving the Southampton premises (without paying a deposit or security) only two days into a three-week agreement to rent the place . The way it went down is, apparently, Pimp Kandinsky pimped out the property to lesser pimps Prudential Douglas Elliman, who then turned the keys over to Pigasse without asking for a dime. Sure, they figured he was good for it; he's Lazard's Vice Chairman for Europe for God's sake.

But such is the state of the way we live now: even the rich have to crash on couches and keep moving to the next opportunity.

Apparently Pigasse left the house because he claimed the house didn't look like it did in the pictures. Duh! Of course it didn't, they're real estate pictures! My house looked like a doll house with a football field in the back yard until I pulled up to it and thought I'd reached the set of the Addams Family.

Jay Flagg, Inventor of Real Estate, Can Not Be Stopped

You might slow him down. But he'll catch up. And when he does, he will drag your soul through the slime, flame, and ash of Hades. You will bargain with his red face, but his grinning maw will force you to surrender all hope.

We can now officially say "mogul." This is the mogul we blogged about back in July. Jay Flagg dared to fly too close to the sun, and the powers that be at Prudential Douglas Elliman melted his wings and he plummeted to the earth to live among us mortals. But the folks at PDE were not aware that, like Rocky Balboa, he spent his time down here lifting logs and trudging through snow, and chasing chickens. And now, like the phoenix of old, he has risen from the ashes.

According to this press release from Saunders & Associates, Flagg was discovered cowering behind their building, using the dumpster cover to shelter him from the falling rain. Founder Andrew Saunders was holding the Wall Street Journal over his head and skipping quickly to his Jag when he saw Flagg.

"Are you lost?" he asked. "Do you know where your parents are?" Flagg wiped his runny nose with a dirty sleeve and said nothing. Saunders reached out to grab Flagg's hand, but Flagg quickly bit him and slithered deeper into the recess of the alleyway.

Eventually he was lured out with some warm milk and given a desk, and a new tie, and a hot towel shave, and a Rolodex.

Now the world must prepare, for he is back! Jay Flagg is back! And ready to put his name as big as he wants on as many advertisements as he wants! But Andrew Saunders doesn't know this yet. No one does. Andrew Saunders does not realize the demon he has unleashed. The wrath he has loosed upon the four corners of the earth. He doesn't realize his own doom. The doom of his advertisements. And when the time comes, he may be powerless to do anything.

Said Jay Flagg: "I have decided to join Saunders because of their proven ability to provide superior experiences for clients and customers but most of all for how their talented marketing and technology team empowers their agents and anticipates their needs. Saunders has become 'the' luxury real estate brand and it will be refreshing to work in a company that is entirely focused on the Hamptons instead of an after-thought which is typical of the New York City centric brokerages."

Not a word about how he was shitcanned for boldfacing his name on PDE's ads. Such is the genius of this magnificent bastard!

When Good Fameballing Goes Bad

A Hamptons cautionary tale has reached the pages of the NY Post. In the world of Hamptons real estate, one can only imagine the amount of fameballing and namewhoring that goes on between one agent and the next, or between an agent and the press corps, as each one battles it out to achieve the completely made-up title of "guru." Sure, if you can say you sold 50 acres to Madonna, or helped Lady Gaga pick her estate in Bridgehampton, you can achieve something of a god status among your ilk. Be invited to the hottest parties. Get photographed by that Patrick McMullan dude, arm wrapped around the slender waist of the latest starlet or reality show diva. Not to mention the commission is no kick in the jabumbas either. The motivation is intoxicating and high-end luxury service providers everywhere succumb to the need to be as large in personality as the celebrities they're trying to namewhore.

This can be dangerous. Just ask Jay Flagg. Oh, how he was seduced by the power of power. How he dared to out-personality personality. Lulled by sycophancy into the notion that he, a Prudential Douglas Elliman, Southampton broker had somehow become bigger than his office, nay, bigger than Prudential Douglas Elliman! Bigger than God! In his Faustian arrogance he took out an ad in Hamptons Magazine whereby his name was in bold red lettering, while the name of his employer/agency appeared at the bottom in smaller print! Why not? After all, he's Jay Flagg, real estate guru!

But the hand of God can be heavy, and when it falls...

According to this NY Post article, PDE Chairman Howard Lorber smote his ruins by the mountainside. Yup. Shitcanned him for this bit of hubris. Now Flagg's camp is saying this is all because of some personal beef between Flagg and Lorber, and an anonymous source seems to back that theory. Is there a lesson we can take from this?

Beware of masturbatory self-promotion in your ads. Be humble before your creator. Remember that heavy is the head that wears the crown. Oh and...don't have personal beef with your boss. It will not end well for you.

A Property Owner's Guide To Being A Prick

We're still waiting for Hamptons.com to print a typo correction for this article from a real estate advisor who actually suggests charging your neighbor a fee to cut across your property to get to the beach, or threaten litigation if he doesn't.



The article is entitled "Why Would I Give A Neighbor Permission To Walk Across My Property? They spelled "Wouldn't" wrong.

Wall Street Banks To Employees: Have Fun, But Don't Be A Dick About It

The recession has done nothing to deter the well-heeled from kicking off their business shoes and dipping them in the sands of the Hamptons. But now from Reuters comes this warning apparently handed down from Wall Street banks to its bevy of toolbag employees licking their chops to get out east, roll up their trousers, and hit on the waitresses. Go buy your $15 million homes. But do it secretly. Use a fake name, maybe. Or, aha, the name of a rival! This will seriously keep you from our guillotine.

This is the problem with unsourced material in journalism: the "some people say" approach to sourcing. Employers have probably sent no such warning to its staff. But it's fun to think they have!

Things are much better," [ Judi Desiderio, CEO,Town & Country Real Estate] said. "People feel more secure about their jobs. They feel more secure that the world isn't going to crack wide open and suck them in."

Yes, but just to be safe from the business end of our pitchforks, wear dark sunglasses and a big hat when you walk into her office.

Hamptons Homes: Not Cheap Anymore. Boo!

According to Business Week, the average price of homes in the Hamptons is on the rise. After an agonizing half-year hiatus in which opportunistic Wall Street and Hollywood types (See: vultures) had to forego the third home, they're now smelling blood in the water, which has increased sales on the east end to the biggest annual jump in seven years.

Jonathan Miller smells bullshit: "You had a lot more high-end properties in the mix and that skewed the indicators. I’d still characterize the housing prices in general as stable."

What does seem apparent is that buyers and sellers are engaging in a classic poker game staring contest. The sellers know what they're holding. The buyers know the sellers are shitting themselves to sell. They cancel each other out and meet half-way. Must have been tough, that long, hot summer of 09, but congrats everyone! You made it through!

In other news: Mastic Beach is still poor.