Bryce Halpern

Let me tell you about Bryce Halpern, a man I knew—briefly—from Columbia. Finance major. Bleached teeth, J. Crew sensibilities, a wardrobe that tried too hard to mimic prep but always landed somewhere near “Cape Cod lost and found.” Obsessed with public beaches. Called them “freeing.” Called them “authentic.”

He once told me, unironically, while sipping a watery gin and tonic on a rooftop bar in SoHo, that he “preferred the chaos of Jones Beach to the sterile snobbery of the Hamptons.” I almost choked on my sea bass tartare.