Rage Of The Hamptons

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atching from the sidewalk was Gayle Willson, owner of a neighboring gallery. "I've been here for 25 years, and I have never been so aware of the rudeness, the anger, the incivility," she says. In the '90s, as the crowd got bigger, younger and wealthier, the locals started staying at home on weekends. A few days ago, says Linda Batiancela, maitre d' at a fashionable restaurant, a customer laid into her when she looked at her watch and apologized for running 10 minutes late with his table. "Maybe it's 10 minutes on your cheap American watch, but it's 20 minutes on mine," he hissed.

Whatever happens to Grubman in court, she has been sacrificed in public, taking perhaps more than her share of blame. "What she did was inexcusable, but it's a bigger issue," says Joan Jedell, publisher of the Hampton Sheet, a local party-roundup magazine. "She's a pawn in this." A grand jury will be convened in the next several weeks, according to the D.A.'s office. Grubman faces a maximum of 25 years, though some charges will probably be dropped. Meanwhile, the multimillion-dollar civil suits have already started stacking up.

Some have declared that such behavior will mark the end of the Hamptons as New York's "it" vacation spot--a constant prediction over the past decade. But the Hamptons is not only famous for attracting people who try to outdo each other in opulence; it also draws people who love to complain about a place they can't stop visiting. Manhattan ad exec Neilan Tyree, 42, says the Grubman fiasco shows how unpleasant the Hamptons has become since his youthful summers. It is now, he says, like "Los Angeles without a job. Greenwich, Connecticut, on crystal meth." Of course, he will be there this weekend, but, he says, "I'm practically hyperventilating at the thought."