who created this wonderful place?

Tucked into a little corner of Hampton Bays, Long Island, is a magical place where legal citizens can go to relive their college years on a Sunday afternoon; sidenote: many of the people that frequent it are actually in college, but still. I have wanted to go since I turned 21 two years ago, and I feel like as a respectable human, there was a window of time before I am "too adult" to go, so that's why I threw it on my bucket list for this summer.

So basically, from where I live on Long Island the Hamptons are an hour and a bit away from me, and not every train line on Long Island goes out there. Obviously that list includes my two local ones, and about seven other ones kind of nearby. We knew going into the day that it was going to be a trek getting there, but we're also a little bit dumb in terms of planning, so we missed our first opportunity to get out there before 12, which was a 10:46 train. We decided to hang out at my friend Kiersten's boyfriend's house nearby and get our breakfast sandwich and early morning tequila on. By the time we caught the next train at 12:51 we were warm and ready for the rest of the day.

Once we got there via long train journey and short cab ride, we joined the back of a looooooong line in the hot sun. Two hours and five gallons of sweat later, we were in. As soon as I walked through the door I felt like I was back in Scranton. The music was right, the crowd was ridiculous, and the beer was  a-flowin'.

One of the famously known details known about the Boardy Barn is the logo, a smiley face with sunglasses and the name of the establishment as the shape of the mouth. As soon as you walk in people start covering you with stickers of the logo that get handed out in long sheets behind the food counter. We covered each other with stickers and got our drink on. With $2 beers you can't go wrong, right? Right.

The grainy-ness of some of these photos are actually spot on. I had sunglasses + beer goggles on all day, and all I can remember was how great it felt to be in a giant crowd of drunk people dancing to oldies and current chart toppers. It seems so juvenile, but every once and a while I like to grant myself a few hours of "college Alessia" time. I feel like I got my dance on and was hungover by 10pm, two of  my personal criteria for a successful day of day drinking.

I had an awesome time at this place, but would I make it an every weekend, even twice a month thing? No, probably not. It took so long to get out there, it was a mess missing that first train and equally as messy trying to get home with a million other drunk people. If it were closer to where I lived, on my train line, or even just if it were on a Saturday, I would reconsider, but it's not. Sigh.

Despite all of that though, I would go back and do it all over again, sweatiness and all, because it was a lot of fun. The staff were really nice considering they deal with drunk people all day long, the other people their were friendly, we didn't see any fights or other type of trouble that made us uncomfortable. It was just a good time.

So another summer bucket list item bites the dust. I feel like I'm busting through these at a pretty decent pace, and a lot of the other ones are in the making, or already planned but yet to happen. This one felt good to cross off, because it reminded me of Scranton and my housemates, making me want to plan that reunion on my list even more intently. So all in all, a good day, good reminiscing, and good new memories made.

This is the crew, post two sheets of stickers and four or five beers later. Success.