Nouveau Beach.(the Hamptons)(Brief Article)

Ah, the Hamptons. Warm, desultory days by the pristine beaches, surrounded by the rich and famous. A summer playground for affluent New Yorkers that attracts the cream of Hollywood and the peripatetic aristocracy of Europe.

There's Southampton, nouveau riche, with its multimillion-dollar homes on Gin Lane. (Not to mention scandals, at least one each summer. This year it's publicist Lizzie Grubman, who "inadvertently" drove her car in reverse at 2 in the morning at the Conscience Point Inn in early July and ran into more than a dozen people.) And Sagaponack, with its mansions of 20,000, 30,000 and even 100,000 square feet. East Hampton, with its boutiques, $1,200 Ralph Lauren sweaters, the Maidstone Club, Nick & Toni's restaurant and Steven Spielberg. Sag Harbor, a sleepy town no more, filled to the brim with African-American bourgeoisie and a bevy of authors and publishers. The Hamptons, with Gwyneth Paltrow, billionaire Ron Perlman and inamorata Ellen Barkin, equestrian events and fund-raisers galore.

And, well, I've seen none of it. That isn't my Hamptons. I've been coming here on and off (more off than on) for 20 years. I don't drive a Mercedes, a Jaguar, a Porsche or a BMW, the preferred vehicle in the public parking lots. I drive a rented Chevy Malibu. I don't live in a Charles Gwathmy house, or a cute little "cottage" with flora from Bora Bora and fauna from Belize. I'm just a guest in a sprawling place in East Hampton that hasn't been altered since the 1950s, with a tennis court and pool. The beach is half a mile away, a gorgeous stretch of white that goes on for miles.

The beaches made the Hamptons, natural expanses with moderate surf and endless silica. All along the South Fork of Long Island, there are hundreds of miles of it, next to sheltered bays or the open sea. Even on a crowded day, when the traffic is so jammed on the two-lane Route 27 that it can take a hour to go the 12 miles that separate East Hampton and Southampton, with the Land Rovers honking angrily at each other through titanium sunglasses and ultrathin Nokia mobile phones, even then it's possible to find quiet stretches of beach and stare out to the ocean.

This isn't the American version of the Riviera or the Costa del Sol. For all the celebrity and the buzz, the Hamptons have remained relatively undeveloped. There are no multistory buildings and no large hotels by the beach, only mansions, many of which are ...