Just returned from a few days spent with L&L at the Fire Island Pines. We stayed with friends who own a lovely beach house on the Great South bay side. For those of you unfamiliar with Fire Island, it's a long sand bar running along part of Long Island's easterly side. Properties on Cherry Grove and the Pines are pretty much gay,lesbian and liberal-straight owned--the likes of Calvin Klein owned beach houses in the Pines at one point in their lives--while properties at Sunken Forest, etc are owned by others.
On our first evening, we went for cocktails to Sharon and Michelle who'd rented a gorgeous house on the Great South Bay for a week, though given its high rent, they were very annoyed--and justifiably so when they showed us the shabby state of them--that the furniture covers were badly stained in places. In the end, they resorted to covering the sofa and dining chairs with beach towels. I mean, it doesn't take much for homeowners renting out their homes at top dollar to bleach a few chair covers once or twice during the season, does it? All that's required is not to be so goddamned greedy.
As I sipped on their ice-cold Chardonnay, I watched the sun dip ever so slowly in the sky, turning the placid waters of the Bay into a huge navy-blue blanket that seemed made of velvet and liberally crisscrossed in places with shimmering stripes of molten gold. Thereafter, we all went to one of two restaurants--in actuality, a pizza joint--in the Pines, which proved sadly (although Sharon and Michelle had pre-warned us) to be mediocre with pretensions to being an expensive Italian restaurant in possession of a spectacularly impoverished wine list. (The following evening L&L, Larry and I went to the second restaurant at the Blue Whale, which proved to equally mediocre. (The friends we stayed with informed us that there used to be a brilliant restaurant called Marco's which closed last season.) Given that the Pines is decidedly upmarket--the homes are whimsical, elegant or boastful, and the small supermarket stocks quality foodstuffs--it was surprising that the homeowners and renters would accept such shoddy offerings.
Unfortunately, the weather proved churlish and we only got to bask at our friends pool for one day. I managed to get a mild sunburn that has already begun to tan. I was looking forward to strolling along the beach--truly pristine and full of gold sand--but in the end had to settle for glimpses of the ocean from underneath the shade of my umbrella. The rain was torrential and unremitting. For a few days we read, played the game of 'Yatzee', watched videos, ate and drank cocktails. I was disappointed I hadn't brought along my laptop because I could have done some writing, but I've always been lucky with the weather on vacation and figured it would be a waste of time dragging it along.
One highlight was the tea dances which took place on Friday and Saturday evening where we danced to great music or simply chatted.
[technorati: Fire Island, Fire Island Pines, The Pines, Cherry Grove, Sunken Forest, Great South Bay
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