Not So Lonelyville...

Every spring, New Yorkers come out of hibernation and eagerly await Memorial Day weekend. This is when it becomes acceptable to schlep an hour and a half on the train, then take a cab to the ferry terminal and wrestle your overpacked weekend bag, groceries and possibly a small mammal onto the boat and be transported to another world in only 20 minutes.

Fire Island is one of my favorite summer hobbies; it really allows one to get back to the basics: bikes, booze, board games, and sand in your butt. I am lucky enough to have chosen a man friend whose family owns two houses over there so I get to squeeze in a pretty fair amount of beach time every summer.

When visiting Fire Island, most people head to the party towns (The Pines, Cherry Grove, Ocean Beach etc.), but I frequent Lonelyville. Yes, you read that right. Lonelyville. With the exception of holiday weekends, the beach here is pretty laid back and not crowded. Lonelyville is a place of freedom (in Ocean Beach it's against the rules to walk around with no shirt on. please...)

On Fire Island, everything seems okay. It's perfectly fine to ride your bike past Tina Fey's summer house on your way to Pioneer Market in Fair Harbor where you will spend upwards of $30 on Tate's Cookies, corn, asparagus, and olive oil. No big deal on both counts. We're all barefoot and I can eat as many hot dogs as I want and not feel guilty because I have my high waisted bathing suit bottoms.

That's me running backwards on the beach.

On Fire Island, you will find lots of stressed out New Yorkers not stressed out. Inevitably, we get bored and need to win at something. This weekend, I chose to attempt to catch up on my Game of Thrones reading so that I can be caught up by the time season 4 comes out next year. As I paired this task with spiked blueberry lemonade, I made it about 15 pages before falling asleep.

Fire Island is also a time for grills. I discovered that one can grill things even though the cooking instructions say not to (take note, Trader Joe's). Feast your eyes on our final dinner: apple almond stuffed pork chops, asparagus, tomatoes, crispy polenta cakes, bread (all of the above on the grill), red wine and salad. And yes, those are lobster xmas lights.

The morning after, it was time to take the ferry back (which is always much less exciting), go back to Brooklyn and settle into a post-Lonelyville depression of looking for new jobs. I still have not unpacked.