15 Best Things About Living On Long Island During The Summer
1. You have your damn choice of beaches. Most people have to travel hours to visit the beach, but between the big landmarks and the other random beaches you find scattered throughout neighborhoods, it’s like you’re living on vacation.
2. The city. Yes, it’s hot, but it’s also a breeding ground for anything from clam fests to music festivals, and all the random events that now, questionably, take place on rooftops. Despite being known for actively avoiding the city, save for the few occasions we put on our bandage dresses and drink beer from a paper bag on the LIRR, without the cold weather stopping us there’s no reason not to bring our class and repertoire of dance moves to some grimy club a promoter invited us to on Facebook.
3. Ralph’s. Anything else is unbelievably subpar.
4. You can pretend you’re living the great Gatsby fantasy life — people don’t understand Long Island anyway. And by that I mean, you can just convince your out-of-state friends your life is infinitely cooler than it is — they’ll believe it.
5. You’ll either laugh when you talk to someone with a heavy accent, or you’ll have it/pick up on it yourself and completely not realize. “Accent? What accent. I do not have an ACCENT.”
6. You either date a rich girl from the north shore or a cool girl from the south shore. Or you are one of the two.
7. Montauk and The Hamptons, in case all of the other beaches don’t do it for you. There’s nothing more #bougie than saying you just got back from a weekend in the Hamptons, take a cue from the prep school kids and own it.
8. Speaking of, everyone worth knowing, from the rich and successful to the Lindsay Lohans of the world (repping us right, Linds) to all the people you grew up with who are still drinking in the woods, you’re right back where you belong as soon as you cross over the Throgs Neck bridge.
9. Fire Island, Coney Island, The Lonely Island… all relevant for your summer on Long Island. If you don’t have a friend who has a dad with a boat you can anchor on that bit of water outside the Jones Beach Amphitheatre, what are you even doing? Not to mention “I’m On A Boat” was probably the theme song for your prom night if you had it on a damn boat like some schools did (you don’t get more classic Long Island than that).
10. You’re amidst a capitalist wet dream. From Roosevelt Field to Walt Whitman, the Miracle Mile, all of the hundreds of strips and towns in between (and lest we forget the city) there’s essentially no overpriced, ridiculous item you cannot buy.
11. The beach at night. It’s especially awesome when you go do this with someone special, or a group of friends. Bonus points if a fire is involved. Extra bonus points if you’re doing it legally.
12. You get bragging rights. For example, like the Jersey folk, we do not have to pump our own gas if we don’t want to. But we don’t run around bragging about it because we actually have more to claim for fame. We can also tell tales of recent natural disasters and how long we waited in line for said gas.
13. You can virtually get anywhere by either the Seaford Oyster Bay or the LIE (which you don’t call 495) and once you figure that out, you’re golden for travel if you’re not just taking the train. Because the LIRR is convenient until you find out there’s a change at Jamaica because that is The Absolute Worst Thing Ever.
14. Concerts at the Jones Beach amphitheater. Classic Long Island summer, most notably when everybody you have ever met in your life goes to OAR.
15. Pizza, bagels, iced coffee and anything you can get at the deli: the summer diet of Long Islanders. Just kidding, it’s our diet always. 