Here Come the Zombies
Thirst Behavior No. 003
This is the time of year when the zombies come out.
They arrive in packs—ten, sometimes twelve to a group—clad in coordinated outfits in the same earth tone hue, bought online at the same time they booked their share house. The women drift in shades of beige and oatmilk and dust: ribbed tanks and matching lounge pants, weird crocheted net skirts and soft sculptural dresses. Individually, the looks suggest relaxed summer elegance; together, they read like a moodboard for some haunted sorority of influence. The guys wear tees from Kith or Rhude depending on whether they identify as finance or marketing. There are tech bros in expensive utilitarian stretch chinos, and the more obviously Republican-coded golf apparel types, too. They all emerge at once, fresh from the train, a few High Noons deep, ready to experience the wealthy millennial theme park that has become the East End.
They come here, I assume, for the usual reasons: to see the beach, go to restaurants, meet likeminded people, and maybe pick up a tan. But the whole ritual—the beers at the beach, the sunset selfies, the espresso martinis before the dirty martinis before the Uber X to Bounce Beach—feels a little overdetermined. It’s less a spontaneous summer weekend than a spreadsheet of aesthetic obligations.
And they all seem to miss one crucial thing about the Hamptons: if you don’t live here, it actually kinda sucks. More on that later. Right now, I’m just need to get them another magnum of Domaine Ott rosé.
This is the new spirit of the season: not indulgence, but simulation. It’s not that people want to have fun—they want to recreate the image of fun, as seen once on someone else’s Instagram. There’s no need to be present. The goal is to perform the evidence of leisure.
Summer itself seemed to arrive in a single weekend. One moment we were layering sweaters, the next it was full heatwave, full swing, full invasion. The city emptied, the beaches filled, and every boutique hotel launched some kind of branded wellness activation—an influencer-led sculpt class and a ‘fireside chat’ from a gut health doctor, pop-up IV vitamin therapy sessions, botox injection booths. The tone is clear: we are here, we are optimized, we are in matching sets.
This zombie energy finds its most ridiculous form here in the Hamptons, but i’ve spotted more subtle expressions elsewhere, like in the art-world.
Resurrecting FOOD
Case in point: the revival of FOOD, the artist-run restaurant originally opened by Gordon Matta-Clark and Carol Goodden in 1971, now being revived by Lucien Smith. The new version, launched in Chinatown earlier this year, reimagines the original as part nonprofit, part conceptual installation, part community space. The narrative is clean: an art-world wunderkind goes back to basics, reinvents himself by feeding the people. There’s a Grubstreet story on the subject with the obviously ironic headline, Lucien Smith Gets a Job, and a lengthy piece in Cultured Mag, as well. He’s shown in the FOOD space as it undergoes renovation, styled in Marc Jacobs, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta and Marni. It brings me no pleasure to report this, but the photos are very good.
Here’s where Zombie-ism comes in: Lucien was once hailed as the poster child for a wave of early 2010s painting dubbed zombie formalism—a term coined by critic Walter Robinson to describe large-scale abstract works that mimicked the aesthetics of mid-century modernism (Pollock, Rothko, etc.) while draining them of urgency, or risk, or any historical specificity. Smith’s success was meteoric, and his fall, equally so. His work became emblematic of a market-driven revivalism—art that reanimated old gestures with new gloss, designed to circulate more easily through the speculative economy of contemporary collecting.
Which is why the new FOOD has a kind of spooky resonance. The idea is compelling. It’s also a little maddening.
The original FOOD was messy, physical, unpredictable. It was run by artists, but it wasn’t about branding—it was about the work of hosting. It was nourishment as an act of community care, not curated content. It may do some good (I hope it does), but it also reads like yet another instance of branding resurrecting something that wasn’t dead yet—flattening the stakes by abstracting the labor into a gesture. Lucien’s resurrection of the FOOD has the energy of a tech startup guy reinventing the restaurant from ‘first principals.’
Because real restaurants are already artist-run spaces. They are communal, creative, financially precarious ecosystems that depend on soft skills, aesthetic judgment, improvisation, and constant management of chaos. Not only do the people who work in them execute practical creativity every single day, but the labor model often allows them the flexibility to pursue other creative endeavors in parallel. To turn that into an installation/performance piece may honor the art-world’s past, but it also risks missing the hospitality industry’s present.
The Zombie Spirit
If you want a drink that embodies this phenomenon in a single pour, look no further than Cristalino tequila.
Cristalino is technically an aged tequila—añejo or extra-añejo—that’s been aggressively filtered through charcoal until all the color (and character) is gone. It’s the beverage equivalent of laser resurfacing: expensive, painstaking, and designed to erase the evidence of time. Which is why it’s everywhere in the Hamptons right now.
You see it on bottle service menus, in rooftop cocktails, pitched as “refined,” “elegant,” “smooth.” And sure—it’s smooth. But that smoothness often comes at the expense of everything else: wood, funk, depth, heat. It’s luxury, clarified. You get all the visual codes of aging—black bottle, gold foil, $150 price tag—but nothing else.
Cristalino is for people who want to appear discerning without ever having to taste anything. And that’s not a knock on drinkers. It’s a symptom of the moment. It’s what happens when craft becomes content: a drink engineered to photograph like minimalism and sip like a vodka soda. Don’t fall for it. It sucks.
What I Sell vs. What They Want
This is the part of the summer where I start trying—gently, earnestly—to guide people toward wines that still feel alive.
I open a bottle of En Cavale Vermentino, which smells like a sea breeze that caught a sprig of something green. It’s saline and floral, lemon-pithy, with a texture I can only describe as a little fluffy. There’s no oak, no sugar, no label shouting at you. It’s just good—sincere, clear, and refreshing. It tastes like the person you wish you were sitting with, the person who knows how to put their phone away at the dinner table.
Or I reach for a Grillo from Marco De Bartoli, a white wine that somehow carries the memory of oranges and dried herbs without being heavy-handed or cynical. Grillo gets misunderstood all the time—it’s Sicilian, so people expect heat and fatness, and if they’re a little better informed, they might equate it with the dessert wine, Marsala. But De Bartoli’s version is lifted and golden, a little waxy, a little metallic, and a little wild, with a lean structure and a zippy finish.
But these aren’t zombie wines. They don’t scream summer. They don’t scream anything. They just ask you to listen. Which is maybe too much to ask of someone who just did a hot Pilates class and hasn’t eaten since 11am.
So I smile and watch the espresso martinis pour, the Sancerre reorders itself, and I think, not for the first time: we don’t have a taste problem. We have a context problem. When every drink is a prop, anything that asks for more attention feels awkward.
This is the logic of the undead. The form survives; the meaning does not.
Whether it’s a tequila engineered for optics, or a conceptual restaurant staged for rebranding, or yet another bottle of Sancerre materializing at brunch like a ghost summoned by group text—branding keeps resurrecting the things we’ve stopped understanding. The gesture remains but the guts are gone.
So for now, my official Thirst Behavior summer beverage recommendation is:
Filtered water.
Not canned spring water with a quartz moon ritual and proprietary minerals. Not vapor-distilled electrolyte-enhanced cucumber scented spa juice. Just cold, filtered water. From the tap, through a decent system, into a real glass, maybe even with ice. It doesn’t sell anything. It doesn’t reference anything. It doesn’t make you cool. It just hydrates you—cleanly, honestly, without pretending to be more than it is.
When summer is in peak zombie, this is what I reach for.
P.S.
Thanks to everyone who’s pledged support for Thirst Behavior. When the paid tier launches later this summer, you’ll start receiving extra dispatches—targeted recommendations for what to drink, where to find it, and how to tell the difference between real taste and branded noise.
In the meantime, feel free to write in. I’d love to hear what you’re drinking, what you’re avoiding, and what kind of coverage you actually want from a letter like this. Is there interest in a wine club? A service gossip column? A pocket guide to not sounding like an idiot at Sunset Beach? The inbox is open.
“Because real restaurants are already artist-run spaces.” 🥹😭 Go off, Brodéééé!!