No Accounting For Good Taste

The bumper sticker showing where you summer is rubbing it in our faces and besides which, is totally obnoxious:

You might think it would be enough for someone who vacations in one of the elite communities of the Northeast to slip away quietly on weekends, to recuperate and laze in peace without heckling the less fortunate.

But certain vacationers, apparently, cannot fully enjoy themselves unless they lord their summer plans over those left to swelter in less idyllic realms. Look around on the Long Island Expressway on any Friday evening in summer, and you’ll see Range Rovers by the dozens ghosting by, bearing small oval European-style bumper stickers that announce in clipped code the drivers’ destinations: EH for East Hampton, SGH for Sag Harbor, BH for Bridgehampton. Stroll the Upper East Side, and you’ll see the hot item this summer is a canvas tote bag by Steven Stolman, embroidered with the numbers 11968. Don’t know what that means? Why it’s the ZIP code for Southampton, you poor soul.

Pretty straightforward, right? Not so fast, bub — it wouldn’t be a Sunday Styles Article That Makes You Want To Flee New York without some tidbit that sheds light on all that is truly disturbing about the 7.5 percent that can afford what the Times advertises:

Perhaps the most arcane version of this game, played among the old-money residents of East Hampton and Southampton – and by those who want to be perceived as old-money residents – is the battle to obtain prestigious telephone exchanges for summer homes. Certain exchanges – 283 in Southampton and 324 in East Hampton – have been around for decades, while exchanges like 259, 204 and 907 were created more recently. Eighty percent of the numbers in the Blue Book, the social directory for established Southampton residents, are 283 or 324.

Andrea Ackerman, the manager of the Southampton and Sag Harbor offices of Brown Harris Stevens, the real estate brokerage, said that it is common for buyers of old Hamptons homes to ask sellers to include the older telephone numbers. And for some newer residents, getting stuck with a new-money exchange is a gnawing source of shame.

“I hate to say it, but I’m a 204 guy,” said Jason Binn, the chief executive of Niche Media, which owns the Hamptons and Gotham magazines, and a relatively new Hamptons homeowner. “It was something I had to face up to.”