Root canal. Food poisoning from a bad oyster. For the Hamptons beach set, there are only a few things worse than driving east on a Friday afternoon in August. Once you get to Southampton, it’s essentially one lane in and one lane out on Route 27. What is normally a two-plus-hour drive from Manhattan—depending on which Hampton you frequent—can quickly become a three-plus-hour adventure on a Friday.
Now add in a Friday evening political fundraiser for Donald Trump, whose recent assassination attempt prompted calls for increased security, and you’ve got enough gridlock to drive Hamptonites mad. On Friday, Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick hosted the Bridgehampton event, which contributed to never-ending traffic from Riverhead to Amagansett that lasted late into the night, with reports of five-plus-hour journeys in from JFK and the city and even the backroads and residential streets being full of cars.
“I just never saw anything like it,” said Alison P., who works at a Bridgehampton salon and asked that her last name not be used. “I hope there’s some kind of investigation. This was dangerous.”
That’s because vehicles on main roads, side streets, highways, and everything in between were essentially parked at a dead stop, or inching toward a destination, for hours and hours.
When President Joe Biden visited the Hamptons in late June, his plane landed at Francis S. Gabreski Airport in Westhampton. But Biden then took Marine One to East Hampton Airport, a short ride from where his fundraiser took place. However, while Trump landed in Westhampton too—at approximately 5:30 p.m.—his motorcade took him the 25-ish miles to Bridgehampton, where he arrived about an hour later.
“There was road rage and the big trucks driving on the wrong side of the road. It was a little scary,” Alison said. Still, as her usual 20-minute commute home turned into a nearly hour-and-a-half-long trip, she did the same, navigating her way on the shoulder of the opposite side of the road until she was close enough to ditch her car in a cul-de-sac and walk the rest of the way.
Riva Gruen and her husband left their Southampton Airbnb on Friday night for a 6 p.m. dinner reservation at nearby restaurant Cowfish. The map predicted a 10-minute drive, but they ended up arriving at 6:30 p.m. due to traffic. And after the couple had finished their dinner, they were faced with even worse congestion: Cars were just stopped, and there were no signs explaining the road closures, which subsequently left them with nowhere to go.
“It was just crazy,” Gruen said. “People were doing U-turns all over the place, thinking they could get around and go some other way—and there was literally no way to get through.” After trying “over and over” to get anywhere, they eventually asked a cop about the status. He directed them to a local dive bar, where they sat for some time, though they ultimately waited in the car for an hour in heavy rain after getting tired of the bar. They finally got home about two hours after finishing eating.
“I’m someone who does not like being stuck places. That’s a trigger point for me. Like, not moving, you can’t go anywhere—I don’t like that,” she said. Being Democrats, she added, made it all feel worse.
Others were excited about the ex-president’s visit. Trump fans lined the streets near the airport and surrounding area to cheer for the Republican presidential nominee as he came and went.
Some made plans to get errands done in the morning and then hunker down in order to avoid the Trump-fundraiser-induced traffic. One man who was walking his dog in the Village of East Hampton after the hoopla had died down said he wished he had known ahead of time that Trump was coming.
“I would have done a sign that said ‘Fuck Trump’ and [stood] on the side of the road and proudly displayed that.”
The Town of Southampton Police Department, whose jurisdiction is the area through which Trump traveled, issued an advisory ahead of Friday’s visit, warning of “extensive rolling road closures and heavy gridlock.” Signs were posted on roadways as well, but for security reasons, Trump’s travel details couldn’t be shared ahead of time.
