Hampton Style - May 9, 2008 -

To celebrate their 13th Season, the Music Festival of the Hamptons hosted their annual Spring Gala at the Lotus Club in New York on April 24. The evening honored visionary Jack Lenor Larsen, founder of Longhouse Reserve, and some of our favorite Hamptons folk were in attendance, including Dan Rattiner, whose memoir, In the Hamptons, will roll out all summer in a series of readings beginning May 9, each chapter being read at the site where some epic incident took place. Read aloud, his stories about such local eccentrics and literary luminaries as John Steinbeck, Billy Joel and Spalding Gray will play at a prison (in the very cell where Rattiner spent a night in jail), near Andy Warhol's Eothen compound and, of course, the famed Memory Motel. He'll recount a story of George Plimpton and the bizarre night cars drove off a cliff in Montauk, his search for a 3,000-pound shark carcass and the celebrity softball game that Bill Clinton umpired before his presidency, to name a few. The readings begins on May 9 at East Hampton's BookHampton and are scheduled through September. Visit www.danrattiner.com. for schedule.

Since the season is still early enough for many of our locals to be attending New York-based parties, the following pages capture some of our best, as seen at some of the city's best parties and movie screenings.