Feature

The Boys of Summer

On the Make: Mike Heller and Candice Levy at Bamboo.

(Photo: Nathaniel Welch)

For Cheban, branding may mean bright-orange Veuve Clicquot buckets on the tables at Resort, but for Tepperberg, Strauss, and a third partner, Tony Berger, clubbing is little more than a front for their marketing arm, Strategic Group. “What Strategic sells to companies is access to influencers and high-end people, and to get that access we run the places where those people go,” explains Tepperberg. “Companies always want to know how to make their product cool—well, we know how to make an old potato barn on North Sea Road cool, so cool that there are tons of celebrities and 1,000 people want to get in.”

Like Ural and Resort promoter Alex Wilson, who once ran the Synergy Spa—a strange hybrid of product placement and celebrity share house in Bridgehampton—Tepperberg and Strauss converted their house into the “Stuff-magazine house” and then into the “Playstation 2 house” (this year, they’re coordinating the “Playstation 2 hotel” at the Bentley in Southampton). They also do “product seeding” for alcohol and tobacco companies, like Allied Domecq and Zino Platinum Cigars (trotted out at the Giuliani-Nathan wedding). Smirnoff was a client, too, and for months Tepperberg could be seen with his beefy hand wrapped around a bottle of Smirnoff Ice, the “malternative” Strategic positioned at its clubs—the campaign was a success, leading to copycat high-end malternatives like Skyy Blue. “That’s going into the marketing textbooks,” says Tepperberg proudly.

Last weekend, at Jet East, the Smirnoff Ice campaign has given way to Perrier-Jouët’s new champagne, Blanc de Blanc. Tepperberg and Strauss arrive around midnight from Sasson’s house in Bridgehampton, where they had dinner with Tao owner Marc Packer. There’s a two-to-one ratio of models to men at the table; Packer’s crowd of older models and Tepperberg and Strauss’s gaggle of teenage ones wear this summer’s uniform of neon toga tops and dish-drain-size silver hoop earrings. A half-dozen of them arrived earlier in the day with model wrangler—he prefers “entrepreneur”Â—Danny A, whose Mercedes convertible couldn’t hold them all, so they grabbed a ride in the Royal Elastic sneaker van. “I don’t know how I got here,” says a soft-spoken 19-year-old from Iowa, her blond hair cut in a mohawk from a recent shoot. “But it is nice.”

Inside the low-ceilinged club, full to capacity, with the A/C on the blink, knots of high-end people sit at the coveted bottle-only tables drinking Blanc de Blanc. 50 Cent’s song “In Da Club” blasts into the humid, quiet night; Tara Reid is, naturally, dancing on a banquette. She steps down to greet Charlotte Ronson.

“I was wearing one of your T-shirts last night!” Reid tells Ronson. The shirt in question is belly-baring and white, covered with rhinestones and emblazoned with the word GUINNESS. Guinness was one of Tepperberg and Strauss’s first clients, and they have it on tap at their house. “Guinness,” says Tepperberg, “is a great brand.”

With all the changes to the Hamptons-nightlife scene, it’s something of a surprise to see Lizzie, buff and supertan, making the rounds at Jason Binn’s annual Memorial Day party. She’s repping restaurants instead of nightclubs now, like East Hampton’s country-cute Farmhouse; tonight, she’s organized a dinner there for some “high-end friends.” “We’re getting older,” she says. “Now it’s more about dinners and staying out until midnight, not 4 a.m.” As far as the new guard of the Hamptons goes, she’s not terribly optimistic: “There’s not enough room for all of them,” she says. “It’s physically impossible to go to five nightclubs in one night. They all want one type of crowd, the high-end celebrity-driven crowd, and in the Hamptons, there aren’t that many celebs.”

With territory so tight, the claws come out. “Butch doesn’t get out of bed before 11:30 p.m.,” says Resort organizing partner Wilson, half-jokingly, of his former compatriot Ural. “And not for less than $11,000.” The scene at the Star Room has been contentious as well, with Goldstein passed over this summer for Akiva and Sartiano, who now are partners in the place with former Swamp owners Scott Storbo and Scott Gray. Claiming responsibility for last year’s celebrity clientele, Goldstein even tried to trademark the “Star Room” name (with Heller’s legal expertise), but he soon dropped the bid. “We had our share of celebrities before Jeff came along,” retorts Scott Gray. “We had Christie Brinkley.”

Then, just before Memorial Day, seven out of eight patio cushions for the Star Room’s outdoor terrace were stolen—the very same cushions that Goldstein purchased for the place last summer. Gray and Starbo say Goldstein had contributed a fifth of the cash for the cushions and they paid the remaining money. “In Jeff’s contract, it said we would reimburse him for all of the pillows if we were happy with his performance, but we weren’t so we didn’t, and then they were gone,” says Gray. Goldstein had no comment, except to say that the pillows have been returned. Indeed, as this story went to press, Gray called to say that the pillows had, miraculously enough, appeared in the Star Room’s parking lot.

Branding and pillow-stealing are exciting stuff, certainly, but there’s one other thing that somewhat vertically challenged guys in their mid-twenties tend to enjoy. “It’s not about the girls,” Tepperberg says often and solemnly. “Yeah, right!” says Sasson, embracing his jeans-clad date, Playmate of the Year Christina Santiago. “I don’t care about girls at all,” he says, nibbling on her ear.

On the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, the thermometer may have dropped below 50, but the tables at the Star Room are full, so full that a series of anxious-looking managers keep approaching Sartiano’s table for advice on how to accommodate all the reservations. At the bar, two forty-something women in skimpy Dior blouses compare carats—“I told him it wasn’t big enough,” complains one. In the middle of the room, Tepperberg and Strauss sit at a long table for twenty, flanked on either side by the models who seem not to have left their side all weekend. It is all very fabulous, but it does not seem very fun; models and men are hardly talking to each other, and a willowy brunette in riding boots even takes out a pack of cards and starts to play solitaire.

But it seems glamorous, and that’s what matters. A night before, in front of the VIP room’s red rope, a group of people whom the unpleasant bouncer won’t let in peer over his square shoulders. “That’s the one and only girl my boyfriend would ever cheat on me with,” says a woman in a tight black pantsuit, pointing at starlet Eliza Dushku, of Buffy and Bring It On fame. “I was the Sears baby, you know,” she adds. “Twenty-four years ago. Called back for a part in Al Pacino’s Scent of a Woman, too, but I had to go to my high-school prom.”

“I love you anyway,” slurs her friend, a JCPenney model in tinted sunglasses.

On the soaking-wet terrace, Akiva and Sartiano hang out with their crowd. Carson Daly, in a Yankees cap, bobs up and down to the music’s beat. “How come everybody’s got a chick but me?” he asks.

Kass, in response, throws her arms around him. “Why’s my girlfriend all over Carson?” asks Akiva.

“Hey, she’s not the first, and she won’t be the last,” jokes Daly, grinning broadly.

Sartiano kisses Dushku’s shoulder. The next day he chauffeurs her to LaGuardia in the driving rain, and later that night she calls to tell him about a song she likes. But you never know when there might be a better opportunity—branding or otherwise—around the bend. “Eliza’s a friend,” says Sartiano, his lips curling into a smile. “Just a friend.”