DAN’S PAPERS
August 17, 2012 Page 37
Dan Rattiner
danshamptons.com
Rian White’s Work of Art
Drip Painting
Throw Buckets of Paint at My House in Springs, Please By david lion Rattiner
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hree years ago, on a snowy day in January, I was at Rian White’s house in Springs asking him why he was so mad at the Town of East Hampton. White is a well known character in Springs and it’s for one reason only: he HATES the code enforcement in East Hampton. White owns a house in Springs near Maidstone Beach, but according to him he’s a starving artist, and his home is his castle, as far as he’s concerned. He should be able to do what he wants with his house. At the time White was being fined by the
Town for having too much garbage piled up in his backyard. According to White, it was not garbage in his backyard, it was “art” and he would not remove anything. He also said that the “art” did not really bother his neighbors and that he gets along “famously” with them. While at White’s house, I could sense his passion, he strongly felt his constitutional rights were being violated, he was feeling bullied by the Town, and it was clear to me back then that this was his personal war against the Town and he wasn’t giving in. I filmed his entire house and backyard, which was scattered with various items that were clearly just trash, but had been
rearranged in ways that could be argued as representing art. For example, I recall laughing at a 1938 General Electric refrigerator that was standing in the middle of his yard and rusting away, with a wooden chair placed on top in an arguably artistic way, surrounded by rusted-out pitch forks standing upside down that had been dug into the ground. There were also aged, rusting, clearly unusable bicycles scattered in the yard, and yes, it was all in disarray. In the back of the yard was a giant statue of a hot dog that you might see outside of a hot dog stand, “Oh that…that’s been exonerated from everything else. According (Cont’d on next page)
The Hamptons Needs Its Own Special Cocktail By mr. sneiv
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he Hamptons can never be recognized as a serious challenger for elite standing among other well-recognized geographic regions until such time that it can demonstrate that it has its very own signature cocktail. Why is it that just about anywhere outside our island paradise, you can walk into a bar or restaurant and order a whiskey, sweet vermouth and bitters and they will respond, “One Manhattan Cocktail Coming Up.” That is why Manhattan is so prominent in
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the eyes of the world…because they have their own signature cocktail. Around this time, many readers are probably thinking, “Sneiv forgot about the Long Island Ice Tea Cocktail.” In fact, the Long Island Iced Tea Cocktail isn’t from New York at all. It first surfaced in the 1920’s in a community called Long Island in Kingsport, Tennessee. The inventor was a man who was known as “Old Man Bishop.” He passed the recipe on to his son Ransom, who perfected the drink in the 1940’s.
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Many restaurants and bars in the Hamptons have created their own versions of what they deem to be a signature cocktail, but their exposure is usually limited to their patrons and there is no recognized authority having granted status to The Hamptons Official Signature Drink. We really need to take a close look at this issue. We can’t rely on the politicians to solve the problem. Centuries have passed and still no signature cocktail. Perhaps they think it is not important that we be recognized in this (Cont’d on page 54) way. I beg to differ. The
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