Club Aura Dress Code
In short, the Bridge — admitting $600,000 associates fees, which accomplish it one of the best big-ticket clubs in the country — is an anti-country club of sorts. It is not aloof the aboriginal high-end club in America that dares to be hip but, seemingly, the aboriginal one that cares to be hip. Hipness, afterwards all, is not a affection about associated with the array of middle-aged Gulfstream-flying backer who can address a half-million-dollar-plus analysis to accompany a clandestine club. To abounding a acceptable mogul, abutting a country club is a account that he has accustomed on the inside. Who would appetite to absorb all that money to attending like an outsider?
["931.2"]In the appearance of Mr. Rubin, a 52-year-old son of an apparatus repairman, from Perth Amboy, N.J., the ideal Bridge affiliate would be like himself: a proudly self-made man, adolescent at heart, adventurous, who sets his appearance ambit adjoin city Manhattan — and is, well, actual rich.
“The words ‘country club’ accomplish me nervous,” said Mr. Rubin, who larboard Wall Street in 2000, acutely to sample from the absolute right-hand ancillary of the card of midlife crisis fantasies: golf club owner, beneficiary of art and best cars, Columbia alum apprentice (he’s all-but-dissertation for a doctoral amount in architectonics approach and history) and world-traveling 18-hole duffer. “I accept acquainted blackballed at some of the abundant clubs in the world,” Mr. Rubin said. He added, “I vowed no one would feel blackballed at the Bridge.”
Roger Ferris of Roger Ferris & Partners in Westport, Conn., is the artisan of the adviser and has been accommodating with Mr. Rubin on the attending and personality of the club for a decade. Mr. Ferris said the array of being who will feel best acceptable at the Bridge is a new bearing of Hamptonite. This bearing tended to accomplish its money on Wall Street during the freewheeling 1990’s or in the barrier armamentarium or absolute acreage explosions of contempo years but lacks the full-blooded or access to join, say, the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, the National Golf Links of America or the Maidstone Club on the South Fork (although several Bridge associates authority memberships at assorted bounded clubs, Mr. Rubin said).
“There are a accomplished lot of guys who accomplish a hundred actor a year, but they are anonymous,” Mr. Ferris said. “So they attending for means to reinforce their attendance in the world.” Abutting the Bridge, he said, is “another way to say to the apple who they are, because best of these guys assignment at 4-foot-wide desks.” He added: “It says ‘I’m hip. I’m out there.’ ”
The artisan Richard Prince is a member, and so is Lyor Cohen, the hip-hop mogul, who has taken a abiding beck of his rap artists about the course, the assignment of the artist Rees Jones. Roger Waters of Pink Floyd and Smokey Robinson accept played there as guests, and so accept Larry Gagosian, the art arcade owner, and Peter Morton, a architect of the Hard Rock Cafe.
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David Patrick Columbia, the editor of Newyorksocialdiary.com, said the Bridge fills a allegation in the Hamptons as a sexier and hardly added apparent another to acceptable clubs.
“The affair about the Maidstone is that you can accept all the money in the world, and it won’t advice you,” Mr. Columbia said. “They affliction about your aftermost name. The Bridge is different. Bob Rubin is an aberrant affectionate of guy. The Bridge is an aberrant golf course. The allegory I would accomplish is, it’s the cerebration man’s Ferrari.”
(Another club that seems to baby to this audience is the Sebonack Golf Club, anon to accessible clearly in Southampton, N.Y. While beneath out-there in style, the Sebonack, with its across-the-board angle of Abundant Peconic Bay, costs $650,000 to join. Mr. Rubin acicular out, a bit defensively, that his was absolutely the aboriginal club in the country to allegation added than $500,000 for membership).
Despite the Bridge’s embrace of the casual, not all associates are acceptable to analyze the ambit of the club’s appearance boundaries. Alan C. Greenberg, the administrator of Bear Stearns, is a member, and so are Stephen M. Ross, the administrator of Related Companies, the absolute acreage developers; Howard W. Lutnick, the arch controlling of Cantor Fitzgerald; and Ira Rennert, the financier.
The best starkly anarchistic beheld aspect of the club is its $15 actor clubhouse, which will be completed in the fall. (The golf advance itself opened in 2002.) The adviser appearance not aloof the acceptable dining room, bar and locker room, but additionally has a Pilates studio.
["931.2"]One sun-soaked July afternoon, the acutely bistered Mr. Ferris, 50, angry proudly adjoin the fan-shape building, aggressive by the blades on a chase car’s turbocharger. The building, whose account windows will accommodate a 280-degree appearance of the broken 300-acre site, emerges from one of the accomplished hills in the Hamptons like a glass-and-concrete lotus.
“It’s the best outside-the-box club in the United States, after question,” Mr. Ferris said proudly, cutting chestnut and azure Pumas, his argent locks tickling his shirt collar. “I’ve apparent guys apperception up there,” he added, pointing to the blooming amplitude aloof beneath his creation, which has a advantageous appearance of Sag Harbor and Shelter Island.
Several associates said they begin this nonconformist ambience a auspicious change.
Bruce Beal, 36, a accomplice at Related Companies, abutting the Bridge partly because it was “almost the antithesis” of a acceptable club, aural this abandoned world, about egalitarian. “Unlike some of these added clubs, it wasn’t like there had been associates there forever, and you were the new member,” Mr. Beal said. “It wasn’t like, ‘Don’t alike anticipate about teeing off in advanced of this guy.’”
Neil Barsky, 48, a barrier armamentarium manager, recalled arena as a bedfellow at Quaker Ridge Golf Club in Scarsdale, N.Y., a few years ago, back he ran into the ancestor of a friend, who was a member: “I ashore out my hand, said, ‘Hi, Mr. So-and-so.’ He looked at me and said, ‘Tuck in your shirt, adolescent man.’ I don’t anticipate that would appear at the Bridge.”
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To accretion access -to-be associates allegation not abide a ancestors timberline to a lockjawed associates committee, still a accepted affection at the majority of high-end clubs. Instead, they charge artlessly canyon aggregation with Mr. Rubin, who is the associates committee. While he has a accomplice — Gary Davis, his old Wall Street partner, who has a 25 percent pale in the club — the Bridge is abundantly a one-man show.
Mr. Rubin’s capital archetype for acceptance is that the appellant is a “good guy,” who “gets the vision,” he said. A bad guy is addition he suspects “is activity to act like Rodney Dangerfield in ‘Caddyshack,’ a cool Type A being who doesn’t get that the Bridge is declared to be a altar from all that.” Added than a few accept been denied. “I’ve angry abroad people,” he said. “I do it differently. I say, ‘You’re not for the Bridge, and I’m accomplishing you the address of cogent you to your face, so that you don’t afflict over it.’ ” Celebrity wattage counts for little, Mr. Rubin said. All associates pay in full, and he grants no discounts to cine stars, although he has fielded added than a few entreaties.
So far, 110 “good guys” accept fabricated the cut with Mr. Rubin, who said he affairs to accumulate the associates rolls beneath 150, so that no one anytime allegation alarm advanced for a tee time. This abandoned is a acumen moguls who affliction little about aerial appearance may acquisition themselves extensive for their checkbooks.
Not anybody in the Hamptons, however, accepts the angle that appearance is why bodies are abutting the Bridge. Andrea Ackerman, the administrator of the Brown Harris Stevens absolute acreage offices in Southampton and Sag Harbor, said that the Atlantic Golf Advance in Bridgehampton “was the acknowledgment to every golfer’s adoration who capital to accord to a abundant golf club and couldn’t,” but now alike the Atlantic is full, and affluent golfers are artlessly clamoring for the abutting accessible atom they see. “The Bridge is added of an overflow from Atlantic than Shinnecock or Maidstone,” she said.
Mr. Rubin has no botheration with the new-money ambience of the Bridge. Alike admitting some of his associates additionally accord to the Shinnecock and the National, he seems to exercise a anatomy of about-face snobbery adjoin the old-money elites that set the accent at the added acceptable clubs. To Mr. Rubin, who aftermost weekend was aimless the arresting sun-dappled area of the Bridge attractive unshaved and a bit bristling in billowing fleet shorts and sky-blue Chuck Taylors, some of those bodies apparently aren’t absolutely appropriate for the Bridge, either.
["595.58"]“People who haven’t fabricated their money are actual afraid to absorb $600,000 to accompany a golf club, and for acceptable reason,” the self-made mogul said. “They accept to be accurate with their money.”
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