Spiegel Stuff: St. Tropez’s Wild Beaches, Coney Island’s Nostalgia, and More Great Escapes

Monday, May 25, 2020

St. Tropez’s Wild Beaches, Coney Island’s Nostalgia, and More Great Escapes

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Great Escapes

Unless you've already decamped to the Hamptons, Memorial Day might look more like the four walls of your own home and less like a pebbly beach and a freshly topped-off cocktail. As a brief respite, consider joining us in St. Tropez among Diddy's hangers-on, or in Palm Beach circa 2004, before it became the Southern sanctum of MAGA-world. If that's not the right scene, there's always the teeming crowds of 1934 Coney Island. (Be sure not to miss the backboneless Beautiful Serpentina).

Should you feel tempted to actually venture out, simply read this last, and most cautionary, tale: Ned Zeman's excellent examination of the intersection of man and the world's largest terrestrial predator. It might convince you to stay on the couch.

La Vita Brandolini

Uniting two of Italy's most famous bloodlines, Countess Cristiana Brandolini d'Adda, née Agnelli, has long been celebrated for her style, so evident in her homes in Venice, Paris, and Geneva. But in 2017 at Vistorta, the 500-acre Brandolini country estate and vineyard, James Reginato discovered the 90-year-old matriarch's greatest achievement: a thriving, tight-knit family that cares more about the present—and a fine wine—than its illustrious past.

Saint-Tropez Babylon

It took just one stunning 21-year-old blonde to turn a sleepy little Mediterranean fishing village into the most decadent stop on the jet-set circuit. Almost 50 years after Brigitte Bardot filmed And God Created Woman in Saint-Tropez, the resort is wilder than ever: a Cristal-soaked mosh pit of exquisite young bodies; gargantuan yachts, Saudi royals; Hollywood stars; supermodels; moguls; and such scene-makers as Sean Combs; Ivana Trump and Donatella Versace. Evgenia Peretz searched for the limits of Saint-Tropez excess in 2004.

Palm Beach Exclusive

Palm Beach may be the last place in America where celebrity per se doesn't count. Ever since Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Carnegies colonized the island in the late 1800s—and on through the grande-dame, charity-ball era White House years; the Lilly Pulitzer shift; and a series of scandals that rocked the social order—it's been about money, money, and more money. As photographer Jonathan Becker captured the scene in 2004, Bob Colacello heard from players such as the late C. Z. Guest on Palm Beach anti-Semitism, Terry Allen Kramer on its A-list, and Simon Doonan on its camp appeal.

Coney Island's Summer

In 1934 Coney Island reigned supreme. "It's a spectacle to give one pause, right enough; probably one would have to travel to the banks of the Ganges to find anything even remotely resembling it."

The Man Who Loved Grizzlies

For Timothy Treadwell, the grizzlies of Alaska weren't just the world's largest terrestrial predators. They were his soul mates, his salvation, and his cause. When a 1,000-pound male tore him and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, to pieces, Treadwell died as he'd lived—by the bear, Ned Zeman reported in 2004.

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