Photos: Huseyin Erturk, Michael Foster, and Tony Laiacona
It’s not easy to create something that lasts, and it’s no secret that the founding team at The Bridge put together something special enough to now celebrate its tenth year.
I’ve been to many, many, many car events over the years. Some of the best in the world, and some of the best in your local town on a Wednesday night at Krispy Kreme, long before Instagram and scene points became the flaunting currency.
There have always been the more exclusive events: pinkies up, champagne and caviar. Those usually celebrated the preservation of automotive artifacts. Pebble Beach, for example, with its intense judging scrutiny and celebration of cars as art long before they became an alternative asset class. It was about the passion, the history, and a community that could recognize it, pinpoint the discrepancies, and appreciate the historical accuracy.
The Bridge isn’t that, and that’s why it’s great.
It fits into a different category: a more relaxed, end-of-season celebration during what might be some of the best weeks of weather anywhere in the country. If you live in the Northeast, you know the stretch. Those days in September and October just before the leaves change, when the air is dry, the temperature is perfect, and you want to spend every possible minute outside.
Here, you’re planted on this seemingly unreal landscape, where the automotive history buff can appreciate the lineage of Bridgehampton Raceway. And if you’re a golfer, you can appreciate the nods to racing history they’ve kept throughout this unbelievable course. (Which I would love to play. If anyone can get me an invite, I will most certainly make myself available.)
You find yourself looking out over the water on one of those perfect golden-hour afternoons they seem to get almost every year. I’ve been there nearly every year since it started, and I can remember maybe one that was rained out.
For all of that, it’s not as pretentious or as highfalutin as you might think. The concours scrutiny isn’t involved. The drama around preparing your car, the restoration, the judging—that isn’t what you’re here for. It’s just about enjoying what we love.
There are a few things they do really well, starting with the food. It’s amazing and carefully curated, but it’s also stationed around the course so that you’re encouraged to experience different selections of cars along the way. Someone tells you the kebab is unbelievable or the lobster roll can’t be missed, and suddenly you’re heading off to another corner of the grounds, finding things you might otherwise have walked past.
Given the taste that goes into the whole thing, from the layout to the food, it wasn’t all that surprising to see Martha Stewart herself casually mingling in the crowd and checking out cars. For me, that felt like some intrinsic stamp of approval. Hey, guys, it took you ten years, but Martha made it.
The car selection is always a difficult thing to pull off. This is the end of a busy season, when the best of the best are being shipped all over the world to different shows. It’s not long after Monterey Car Week and Pebble Beach, which makes putting together something distinctive even harder.
But I thought this year was a standout, partly because of Anthony at 1600Veloce, who helped put together an unbelievable tribute to the Ferrari Testarossa and its 512 successors. As any car nerd would appreciate, you could walk through the different models and variants, looking for the nuances and changes. You suddenly realize that even what you remember as the simpler years of Ferrari were much more nuanced than you thought.
I was happy to see a fair share of youngtimers, too. There was a live jazz band tucked into a sand trap off the fairway, and nearby you might come across something like the Audi wagon. Even walking through with some very experienced aficionados, not everyone immediately recognized what made it special: an Audi developed with Porsche, and arguably one of the defining early combinations of estate-car practicality and serious performance.
Those are the discoveries that make walking around worthwhile. You can appreciate the obvious stars, but you can also stop at something a little less obvious and spend a few minutes figuring out why it belongs.
It’s not that long of a day, either, and that makes it nice. You arrive in the afternoon, and it only lasts until dusk. The caviar is usually gone in the first hour, because even this crowd loves a caviar buffet. That’s generally the first long line you’ll find.
By the time you leave, you’ve seen friends and familiar faces, looked at amazing cars, and eaten very well. You haven’t been through some elongated sixteen-hour day of car preparation, judging, and an awards ceremony. You leave relaxed, excited about the hobby and the passion that brought you there.
It almost feels like the reward at the end of the season. The after-party. The one you just want to go to and enjoy.
Sure, you can dress up if you want to, but it doesn’t have to be a Kentucky Derby affair. A lot of people are simply there to roam around and check things out. For all the effort that must go into putting it together, being there feels easy.
There’s always another event on the calendar, but in terms of summertime car shows, this one marks the end of the season in a way that lets you float away on a little cloud of perfection.
And whether this is just for fun or you work in the industry, it reminds you that the thing that got you interested in the first place was as simple as walking around and looking at cars.
