The Bridge: "more of an overflow from Atlantic"

Alex Williams writes about The Bridge for the New York Times' Sunday Styles section. The story focuses on The Bridge's anti-country club attitude, complete with appearances by rappers and Smokey Robinson and a hideous looking clubhouse to prove the point.

(Yes that's it in the top half of the photos linked from NYTimes.com.) Williams writes:

The 18-hole golf course gets an arty, postmodern treatment: ruins of the old racetrack, including guardrails and flag stations, pop up around the lush fairways. Discarded tires line the cart paths.

And forget about blue blazers. At the Bridge backward ball caps, jeans and even tattoos or face piercings (typically on guests in the music business) attract no steely stares.

In short, the Bridge — despite $600,000 membership fees, which make it one of the most expensive clubs in the country — is an anti-country club of sorts. It is not just the first high-end club in America that dares to be hip but, seemingly, the first one that cares to be hip. Hipness, after all, is not a sensibility typically associated with the sort of middle-aged Gulfstream-flying plutocrat who can write a half-million-dollar-plus check to join a private club. To many a traditional mogul, joining a country club is a statement that he has arrived on the inside. Who would want to spend all that money to look like an outsider?

And this is debunks the myth created by the story...

Not everyone in the Hamptons, however, accepts the notion that style is why people are joining the Bridge. Andrea Ackerman, the manager of the Brown Harris Stevens real estate offices in Southampton and Sag Harbor, said that the Atlantic Golf Course in Bridgehampton “was the answer to every golfer’s prayer who wanted to belong to a great golf club and couldn’t,” but now even the Atlantic is full, and moneyed golfers are simply clamoring for the next open spot they see. “The Bridge is more of an overflow from Atlantic than Shinnecock or Maidstone,” she said.

Sadly missing online is the photo of the driving range cigar holders.

But thanks to my scanner, I've included the coyote turd holder for your viewing pleasure.