myhamptons mag

Police Corruption in Southampton

Have you read the latest article on the internecine workings of hirings, promotions, demotions and what to some would appear to be actual criminal activities in the Southampton Police Dept. An expose written in the Soho Journal this week by Christopher Boich a highly decorated, 19 year veteran of the police force should make all ordinary citizens tremble with the twisted, avaricious manipulations of certain members of the police force to maximize their own personal gain. The endemic corruption was revealed during an attempt at fixing the decision of who to promote to the position of Chief. 

Chief of Police is a highly coveted role in any small town. The salary and perks and usually quite high for a relatively easy job. After all how stressful can the role of police chief be in a tourist town. It would seem that is doubly true in Southampton. Rigging the selection process, associating with pornography sites, running unlicensed security companies, fixing traffic tickets, providing private security to large events while at the same time being on duty. These are just a handful of the allegations - some proven - some not.

I think it all points to too much money being thrown at this guys, too little to do, too many cars and officers, and a philosophy of omnipotence that showers down on all the residents. Be it police traffic blockades asking people for documents to incessant speed traps,  and organizing raids of traditional businesses, i.e. the recent alcohol raids on galleries. The police culture has gone from there to help the community, to catching the community. Power has gone to their heads and someone needs to clean them up and get them behaving as respectful civil servants - not mad max disciples. 

 

www.myhamptons.us - kara.

Thinspiration Videos: Promotion or Deterrence

 
Disturbing images and videos are now everywhere available on the internet. Art, exploitation, disturbing celebration - we seem to have come a long way from the shock at heroin chic first seen in Nan Goldin's widespread Vogue spread decades ago. There are now production companies which proliferate these videos. Granted on youtube there are the occasional comments vilifying the proliferation of these videos but more often the videos and web sites seem to be an outright celebration of anorexia. To any sane healthy person the images are incredibly disturbing but to young impressionable minds the images are glamorous and encourage unhealthy body image among our young. And by the way they aren't limited to women although the great majority are female images but there is even male thinspo.

www.myhamptons.us - kara

Like Rt. 27 a Highway to Nirvana

One woman who suffered a stroke on the left side of her brain has discovered Nirvana. If you don't remember the left side of the brain is the one that analyses, adds, reasons. The right side is the creative more emotional side. Apparently if you get rid of all that worrying, analysing and adding life becomes more joyful. I for one am sure of this. After all isn't that what all those kids were taking xtc for in the 80's before it became illegal. Wasn't it the psychologist's ultimate prozac (taken in the right doses not at open air concerts or midnight raves) . Here is an accounting of Dr. Jill Bolte's experience taken from the New York Times:

On Dec. 10, 1996, Dr. Taylor, then 37, woke up in her apartment near Boston with a piercing pain behind her eye. A blood vessel in her brain had popped. Within minutes, her left lobe — the source of ego, analysis, judgment and context — began to fail her. Oddly, it felt great.

The incessant chatter that normally filled her mind disappeared. Her everyday worries — about a brother with

schizophrenia

 and her high-powered job — untethered themselves from her and slid away.

Her perceptions changed, too. She could see that the atoms and molecules making up her body blended with the space around her; the whole world and the creatures in it were all part of the same magnificent field of shimmering energy.

“My perception of physical boundaries was no longer limited to where my skin met air,” she has written in her memoir, “My Stroke of Insight,” which was just published by Viking.

After experiencing intense pain, she said, her body disconnected from her mind. “I felt like a genie liberated from its bottle,” she wrote in her book. “The energy of my spirit seemed to flow like a great whale gliding through a sea of silent euphoria.”

"A great whale gliding through a sea of silent euphoria" She found it with a stroke - many others found it in college at a Grateful Dead concert.

www.myhamptons.us - kara

Facebook Uncovers Benefits of Traditional Social Networks

 The phenomenal surge in popularity of Facebook, Myspace, the profligacy of smaller, more socially specific networks like Myhamptons have encouraged social scientists to examine the effects of traditional social networks on their members. What they are finding is startling. Apparently the activities of members within a network directly affect the activities of the other members. Thus obese people don't just hang out together more often because they are more comfortable with each other. Its not a matter of like minded people attracted to each other but rather a thin person in a network of a majority of obese people will begin to become obese. Of course its not absolute but tendential. Similiarly smokers tend to stay closer to other smokers as people in the network begin to quit there is a greater chance for others to quit as well. According to the New York Times:

Another intriguing -- and disturbing -- finding was that as more people quit, the remaining smokers tended to wind up on the edges of society, with fewer and fewer social connections.

"In 1971, you have this crowd of people, and smokers are dispersed among them. But eventually by 2003, the smokers have been pushed to the periphery of the crowd," Christakis said.

That indicates that the remaining hard-core smokers are more socially isolated, which by itself has been shown by other research to have negative health consequences.

"So at the same time we are trying to help smokers to quit, we have unintentionally been hurting them by wreaking havoc on their social lives," Fowler said. "One of the implications is it's harder to reach smokers. Increasingly, they are huddled together in groups that are not connected to other people who don't smoke."

The findings could also have implications for the obesity epidemic.

"If we use these norms to fight the obesity epidemic, we may, in the process of stigmatizing the state of being overweight, further stigmatize obese people," Fowler said. "Smoking is an example of how we can create problems at the same time we solve others."

Social Networks changing the world!!!!

 

www.myhamptons.us - kara

Gotcha'!!

Welcome to the Hamptons! Have our leaders become so  immersed in the day to day stress of their lives that they don't see that they are creating the sensation of a police state. This past week alone I've seen police helicopters and three squad cars circling all around Bridgehampton Village, a blockade of Main St. in East Hampton by police to check any passing motorist's papers, a cop in the exact pose of this sign trying to catch unsuspecting parents as they drove on a 25 mph zone on the way to baseball practice (actually the disappointment on his face as car after car went by at 25 mph  was quite humorous) and now this marvelous bit of photography as all our visitors arrive for their weekend of relaxation. At least Linda Kabot has said the town will think about taking the horrible things down if enough people complain. Please everybody complain - we want to be known as a friendly, hospitable place. 

Interestingly, I've been talking about the pervasive presence of traffic police out here for the last month but I thought maybe I'm out of touch since no one seems to think its such a big deal. But last week I did my own informal survey of  people who spend a lot of time in their cars, driving in the suburbs and small towns etc. I asked if police ever did blockades to check for vehicle documents etc. like they do here. To a person they looked at me as if I was crazy and reminded me that this wasn't stalinist Russia, the Berlin wall was torn down, we were living in America. So I repeat why are our police encouraged to overdo it like this. Traffic laws are meant to make everyone live together more easily not to scare us or provide a source of revenue. The vast majority of citizens follow the laws and they should feel comfortable with the police and not subjected to threatening signs or scary blockades. 

 

www.myhamptons.us - kara

Sex, Mom and Apple Pie?

A new survey of moms in America was just done and one of the questions was Have you or Do you cheat. Apparently 1 out of 3 moms admitted to getting a bit on the side. Great finally a way to pass the time at the next christmas concert or school play. After you catch your progeny's 10 minutes on stage you can play spot the mommy most likely to be enjoying extracurricular activities. Personally don't know where all these moms find the time. 1 in 3 is a huge number. Where are the kids while all the fun is going on? Can you think of any moms you know that have been having an affair. They're out there. I can't think of one. Well, maybe one but she doesn't live in America so she doesn't count. But I bet its the least likely mom on your list. Actually if you look around at the next assembly just think a third of us are playing out of school. Where do they find the time, the partners, the energy!!

www.myhamptons.us - kara

Hamptons Rentals Look for Surge in European Clients

The Euro has turned the tables on the Dollar and Europeans are enjoying their new found buying power. According to the Daily News this weekend, German, French and British vacationeers are picking up Hamptons rentals at what feels like bargain prices. $125,000 for an East Hampton or Southampton rental used to mean around 175,000 euros to our overseas friends but with the dollars reversal of fortune it now means 75,000 euros and foreigners are filling the void created by the banking fiasco's effect on the Hampton's usually reliable and money-laden New York banker.

Of course this just adds to the curious and little known dilemna of the Hampton's overseas visitor. They can't drive in the two biggest villages, East Hampton and Southampton. So now not only will the villages clean up on their new permit and tax regimen on rentals but just think of all the increased traffic violation revenues. But I still ask what about the insurance repercussions of the bizarre US driver's license-only rules. Now the really rich celebrity foreigners don't pose a problem after all a car accident victim can go after american assets but what about all the other normal foreigners here just for two weeks what recourse will an accident victim have with them when the insurance company won't pay up because they were, in fact, unlicensed drivers.

Is it just me that sees the problem here.

www.myhamptons.us - kara

Hamptons Artist Goes to Madison Ave

The East End has historically been a great nurturer be it potatoes, fish, grapes, books or art. The huge farms fed New York in the 1800's, The fishing and whaling industries grew here and were hugely successful. I believe all these industries which are so close to the rythymns of the earth and sea create an environment, an ambience even a karma that interweaves into the soul of the place and its people and nurtures and respects innate talents. Giving them an opportunity to grow and develop and the marvelous thing is here on our East End these talents get recognized.

This past weekend I saw the result of that tradition. An artist, Philip Letts who first began showing publicly only a year ago at my little gallery that I opened the first time last summer on Shelter Island has landed in one short year a major exhibit at a big contemporary gallery, Gallery Mark Hachem, on Madison Ave. in NY, just two blocks from the Whitney. This is a true Hamptons tale. I know because the artist is my husband and I know his story.

For many years, Philip had looked at his art as an indulgence, a wonderful pasttime that he couldn't afford to spend too much time on. But three years ago we decided to get off the hamster wheel and move out to Shelter Island. I admit I lured him with the promise that I was bringing him to a place where he could develop and grow as an artist. I probably overdid it on the line about how many great artists lived and thrived here. So we came and Philip began an intense journey as artist. he developed his craft and I turned an old cottage office on our property into a studio/gallery where he could display his work. He found a community in Amagansett where he put his working studio that supported and encouraged him.

People came to the gallery and talked about his work. Locals and New Yorkers bought it. Some of our clients introduced him further on to important dealers and bingo fast forward nine months and he's primetime Madison Avenue - the stuff of dreams or the luck of the Hamptons!!!

I'll keep you posted....

Philip Letts Solo Exhibition at Gallery Mark Hachem, NY

Leading Madison Avenue contemporary gallery, Gallery Mark Hachem has announced the inaugural US exhibition of British abstractionist photographer Philip Letts - who also has a studio and house in the Hamptons. A pioneer in the field of ‘blur photography’, Letts creates work that merges the realism inherent in the photographic medium with the painterly and abstractionist possibilities of brush and oil. Born in 1966 and educated in England (Durham and Buckingham University), Letts transformed his early success in revolutionizing product and graphic design into a commitment to using the technological possibilities of the digital revolution as a tool for personal creative fulfillment and expression. The camera was transformed into the paintbrush and with it the destruction of the limitations and expectations of what it meant to create a digital photograph. ‘Blurred Vision: Selections of a Moment’ is designed to highlight the innovative scope at work in both Letts’ style and subject matter. Choosing to focus on images from ordinary daily life, Letts’ explores the implications of the erasure of objectivity in vision and evincing a more complex and ambiguous understanding of physical and visual realities. Whether that be through the figure of a boy running along a beach or the fading light of dusk, Letts challenges not only our vision of reality but the overriding obsession of the majority of contemporary art to serve only as a tool of visual and social shock. The opening is on May 20, 6-8pm, at Gallery Mark Hachem on the corner of 77th and Madison - and Hamptons Mag readers are invited! The exhibition runs from May 21 to June 1.

www.myhamptons.us - kara

East Hampton Police and Foreign Drivers

This is a follow up to our previous post "Paul McCartney Arrested in the Hamptons???". Several people have commented and questioned the veracity of the story. I don't blame them. It seems unbelievable that a village that depends on the tourist trade and summer visitors and touts itself as an international vacation nirvana up there with the French Riviera would enact such an obviously xenophobic law. But I assure you it is true. I watched as an East Hampton Village Police Sergeant very cordially explained the law to my friend as he wrote him up a ticket for being an unlicensed driver even though his driving license issued in a friendly european country was up to date. Even though the policeman admitted the ludicrous nature of the law he said it was a law and he was sworn to enforce it.

He recounted several stories of europeans arrested and ticketed for violating the aforesaid restriction on driving. He especially got a kick out of one story: a wealthy englishman who having rented a beachfront home for over a hundred thousand dollars flew into Kennedy picked up his $1000 a week Mercedes rental and drove into East Hampton Village to pick up the house keys from the agency whereupon he was stopped by the police and issued a ticket for unlicensed driving. Now the officer didn't say why the guy was stopped originally. The police don't lie in wait in some kind of rental agency speed trap hoping to overhear a foreign accent and follow them out to their cars. I don't think?.

Foreign Nationals can drive in the villages if they get US issued licenses. A pretty impractical solution. Is this legal? Would it hold up in a higher court if challenged? I don't know. I assume the US must have some kind of treaties about driver privileges between allies but I don't know for sure. And who is going to pursue it - not the hispanic worker (I suspect it was meant to harass) and not the vacationing european who will either pay the fine and be done with it or skip court and just never come back.