With the August sun now withering the corn stalks, the high-rollers of the Hamptons brave the smouldering heat on a quest to see and be seen. The summer invaders descend on towns at the eastern end of Long Island with the force of the Napoleonic army. They stake outposts and claim land, sidewalks, and coveted tables as if they were looting Europe’s riches.
New Yorkers and the random rich are on a quest for social gold: the next hottest restaurant, nightclub or party. So where do you suppose is their first port of call? Maybe Nick & Toni’s, at the tables preferred by Jon Bon Jovi or Ron Perelman? Or the counter at Loaves & Fishes, where you can purchase lobster salad for $100 a pound — preferably smacking your Black Amex on the counter without a hint of sticker shock?
Nope, wrong on both counts. The whitest of the white-hot — for rich, poor or somewhere in between — is none other than the Kmart megastore in the Bridgehampton mall. In these times of grave inequality, the haves and the have-nots smash up against each other in a bargain store.
Down one aisle, fluorescent lights flickering overhead, I see a harried mother in a waitress uniform trying on Buzz Lightyear sandals with her young sons, a workman in worn Timberland boots grabbing a cooler for his fishing night with buddies, and a posh blonde in pink Hermès lizard sandals, matched by her stylist to her blush-coloured Brunello Cucinelli scarf.
I watch as she stuffs her grocery cart with “adorable” orange wine goblets for the private beach party she’ll have in front of her $40m oceanfront estate. There’s a spike on the bottom of the wine goblet so you can stick it in the sand — so cute and useful! She’s thinner than a praying mantis, and I follow her as her impossibly toned arms grab at co-ordinating pink and orange tablecloths, candles and teeny umbrellas for drinks. She seems so thrilled with herself she might burst.
Down another aisle, I spy a banker — the type who has already shipped in his $99 bacon-wrapped Wagyu steak from Manhattan’s Lobel’s market. Of course, he’ll be cooking it on his $24,845 Kalamazoo grill, de rigueur among the Wall Street set. But as he walks past the $119 Kmart version he stops and thinks: Amazing how opportunity allows everyone in America to cook how they want and what they want. I bet my cabinet guy has a Kmart model. Pleased that he really understands people of all incomes, he picks up a $19 Mr Bar-B-Q tool kit to help him feel like just another regular guy flipping his burgers.
Of course, the local population loathes the transient trespassers for their entitlement and unspeakably rude manners. Summer people, when they get in line at any store, deli or bar, all think the same thing: I really should be able to cut. As they try to lock eyes with someone in charge here, they huff in frustration at having to stand in a line for seven minutes like some Soviet citizen in 1970.
Why is the fancy housewife taking up space in line with people who can barely find time to put food on the table and finish at work? It’s not enough to answer that rich people want a bargain, or that rich people are cheap. Both are true. It’s also a form of inverse snobbery to giggle with the girls that you found your cute napkins for $3.49 at Kmart, instead of that store on Madison with those divine $180 Venetian water glasses.
But there’s another reason rich people are there, says society watcher and NewYorkSocialDiary.com editor David Patrick Columbia. “They are so distanced from actual working people, that being at Kmart connects them up with reality,” he explains.
What’s more, the socialite and the banker are packing into Kmart to prove to themselves they don’t need to be super-deluxe all the time. Hanes underwear is Hanes underwear, after all, and it works great with tennis shorts at the club. Or, as the lawyer and talk show host James Zirin notes, “At a higher level of wealth, you have nothing to prove, so you go to Kmart.”
Like being nice to their Park Avenue doorman, shopping at Kmart gives the one-percenters assurance that, phew!, they are physically and mentally able to wait in an actual checkout line. Even snobby, out-of-touch people don’t want to be so refined as to be cut off.
In these dangerous times of class warfare, Kmart is reassuring to the rich. In the same manner, they take the subway once a year to a baseball game, just to prove they can get to Yankee Stadium without their driver. You’ll spot these pretenders at the turnstiles in the heart of the Upper East Side, the tell-tale novice clad in a bespoke suit or holding a Celine tote, asking someone, anyone, Excuse me, how does this damn MetroCard work again?
