Parisian Real Estate Porn, or All About Yves (and Pierre)

SELLER: Pierre Bergé for the estate of Yves Saint Laurent
LOCATION: 7th Arrondisement, Paris, France
PRICE: €23,500,000
SIZE: 5,600 square feet, 4 bedrooms plus staff quarters

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Although tomorrow is America's most patriotic holiday, Your Mama thought the children might appreciate a little Parisian real estate dee-lishusness to get y'all through the endless parades, fireworks, and flag waving.

In early May of 2010 it was widely reported that Pierre Bergé, the long-time man-mate and bizness partner of famed French fashion icon Yves Saint Laurent hoisted the couple's historic apartment in Paris on the market with an asking price of €23,500,000. A quick consult with Your Mama's currency conversion contraption reveals that comes to a toe curling 29,459,400 American clams at current rates.

Messieurs Laurent and Bergé moved into the elegant apartment on the Rue de Babylone in the heart of the Faubourg Saint-Germain district in 1970–or 1972 depending on who you ask or what you read–and then purchased the prestigious and aristocratic doo-plex digs in 1978. The couple occupied the art-filled apartment until 2008 when Monsieur Laurent when to meet the great pattern maker in the sky.

In February of 2009, in a greatly anticipated and much ballyhooed and auction at Christie's Paris of the private art collection of Messieurs Laurent and Bergé fetched a heart stopping €373,900,000, or $468,717,000 for all us Americanos at today's rates. The legendary collection of art, furniture and high class baubles and bagatelles featured substantial works from artists such as Brancusi, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger, James Ensor, and Thomas Gainsborough. Eileen Gray's Dragon chair, a small, funky, and swoopy wood and leather chair, alone brought in an unimaginable €21,905,000 otherwise known as 27,459,900 American dollars. In November of 2009, a second sale netted around €9,000,000 ($11,282,300 at today's rates).

The sophisticated residence of Messieurs Laurent and Bergé, which measures approximately 5,600 square feet, has a private entry on the 2nd floor and an elongated oval entrance hall with mottled black marble floors, red lacquered walls inspired by the color of Monsieur Laurent's signature fragrance Opium, and an arching, uplit gold leaf ceiling. The theatrical entry leads directly into the 750 square foot main salon that features 12.5' high ceilings, a fireplace with glitzy and glammy mirrored surround, wall to wall carpeting that Your Mama loathes, luscious and sleek, marquetry-free oak paneling, and 5 gigantic windows that open to and overlook the apartment's gorgeous gardens. The formal dining room has a fireplace and overlooks the rear gardens while a music room has three tall windows that overlook the building's courtyard.

Three of the apartment's four bedrooms are located on the second level and include a master suite bathed in aquatic blues done up by apotheosized French decorator Jacques Grange. The garden view suite also includes a fireplace, dressing room and private pooper. The second floor is completed by laundry facilities, linen room, staff quarters and a pantry with dumbwaiter for hauling food up from the first level kitchen.

A dramatic lower level lobby has more of the dreaded wall to wall carpeting, more dee-voon and emotionally unrestrained lacquered walls that bounce the dim light around the room, and an adjacent "treasure room" lined with curio cabinets where the prolific collectors kept and displayed some of their vast accumulation of swank tchotchke, trinkets, and objet d'art.

A 750 square foot salon/library on the lower floor has heavenly, large scale herringbone patterned hardwood floors, a fireplace, and floor to ceiling bookshelves opens to the rear terrace through five floor to ceiling French doors. Also on the lower level is the kitchen–a room Your Mama imagines the fussy Messieurs Laurent and Bergé rarely entered–a staff sitting room, and a large, oak-paneled chambre with fireplace, French doors that open to the rear terrace, and private pooper.

A wide, stone terrace extends from the back of the apartment and into 4,700 square foot private garden that according to listing information is "without overviewing," which means Messieurs Laurent and Bergé could sunbathe and frolic nekkid as jaybirds in their backyard should they have been so inclined. Remember kiddies, these two sybarites moved into this apartment in the hedonistic 1970s when it really would not have been so unusual for a couple of fey French fashion fellows to host parties of a somewhat lurid nature.

Anyhoo, the next owner of the apartment will certainly pay a premium for owning and occupying the long time home of a French icon of style and elegance. Your Mama hopes the new owners will also place a premium on maintaining at least some of Monsieur Laurent's architectural and decorative stamp because, really, let's be honest bunnies, is there really any need to change anything in that elongated oval entrance hall that sends goose bumps of the good kind up and down Your Mama's spine?

Messieurs Laurent and Bergé maintained a fat portfolio of seriously luxurious and high priced properties around the world that have little by little been listed and, in some cases, sold off.

In the 2005, long before Monsieur Laurent went to wherever genius gay couturiers go to heaven, the luxe-living couple listed Chateau Gabriel, their beloved and seriously sophisticated Proust inspired country retreat just outside the resort town of Deauville, France that was blessed with breathtaking interiors worked over by none other than fab French decorator Jacques Grange. The property was first listed at twenty million Euros, but in the fall of 2007 the two men opted to keep 15 acres and a small Russian dacha style cottage on the property and re-listed the remaining 52 acres that includes a large, Napoleon III era house with an asking price of twelve million Euros, which at the time translated into about $17,800,000. The property was reportedly sold in February of 2009 for €9,600,000–just over $12,000,000–to a couple of Russian tycoons.

In November of 2006, he and his man-friend Pierre Bergé listed their New York City apartment at The Pierre for $8,500,000. The 2 bedroom and 2.5 pooper pied a terre that included flaw-less leather lined dressing areas was finally sold in August of 2007 for $7,500,000 to another fashion icon, the two tan Italian fashion virtuoso Valentino and his former man-friend and long-time bidness partner Giancarlo Giammetti.

In August of 2009, the high-class couple's retreat in Tangiers (Morocco) was listed with an undisclosed asking price. The Villa Mabrouka, or the House of Luck as it was dubbed, sits atop a cliff with panoramic views of the Strait of Gibralter and has 5 bedrooms 4+ poopers, a swimming pool carved into the rocks with an adjacent 650 square foot pool house, a 1,200 square foot staff facility, a guard house, and a 6,500 square foot roof top terrace. As of this day, the somewhat prissy but still magnificent property remains unsold.

Hair Honcho Sally Herschberger Lists Penthouse Pad

SELLER: Sally Hershberger
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $5,900,000
SIZE: 905 square feet, 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: If the children will get into their mental time machines and go back to the spring of 2007, y'all may recall when scissor sister Sally Hershberger, the hair stylist to the rich and famous who will charge you an astonishing $800 just to cut your damn hair, unsuccessfully attempted to unload her Beverly Hills, CA home. Miss Hershberger, a gal Your Mama thinks of as the She-ra of the Shag, listed her 3 bedroom and 5 pooper contemporary crib in the Trousdale Estates neighborhood with an asking price of $6,500,000. Five months later, the Hershberger house was taken off the market without a price reduction and without a buyer.

Skipping forward to late June of 2010 and we learn from our prolific informant Hot Chocolate that Miss Hershberger has now listed her itty-bitty New York City penthouse apartment with a porcine asking price of $5,900,000. It certainly isn't unusual for a terraced penthouse pad in the West Village to carry a price tag of nearly six million clams. What isn't so common is that the penthouse Miss Hershberger hopes will pour five or six million smackers into her bank accounts measures less than 1,000 square feet and includes just 1 bedroom and 1 pooper.

Miss Hershberger, who comes from a substantial Kansas oil fortune, owns three eponymous salons including her home base on Los Angeles' La Cienega Boulevard, which happens to be located in the same contemporary building as maximalist decorator and shelter rag darling Kelly Wearstler's office. In New York, Miss Hershberger camps out in a second floor salon in the sadly over-developed Meatpacking District–may Florent rest in peace–that's wedged between the Alexander McQueen–may he also rest in peace–and Stella McCartney boo-teeks. She recently opened a second Manhattan outpost on the top two floors of a spectacular townhouse on E. 71st Street that presumably caters to the uppity Junior League and Ladees Who Lunch sets.

Property records show Miss Hershberger bought her downtown digs in August of 2001, paying $1,850,000 for the 905 square foot aerie located in a much desired pre-war Bing and Bing building. Technically, Miss Hershberger's penthouse is in the West Village but it's so damn close to the Meatpacking District that it may as well be in the Meatpacking District.

The children may find it interesting to know that this penthouse is not the only apartment Miss Hershberger has owned in the building. In November of 1998, records show she purchased a 1 bedroom unit on the 9th floor for $425,000 and sold it in June of 2001 for $790,000 to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's former Press Secretary Nina Blackwell and her huzband Mark Solomons who in turn sold it in August of 2007 for $1,850,000 to the family of San Francisco-based billionaire Ray Dolby.

Miss Hershberger is a ladee of taste and style and her wee penthouse reflects that bent. The small apartment is blessed with a generous but not large entrance hall. Opposite the front door, in front of a frosted panel of floor to ceiling glass, sits a pedestal topped with a gigantic spiky white crystal, a form echoed with the Verner Panton wall mirror constructed of a myriad of different sized pyramids. Miss Hershberger's nice, gay decorator also introduces a dead animal skin motif in the entry that, like the crystal, plays itself out repeatedly throughout the petite penthouse.

The corner living room has large casement windows that suck up the panoramic views and a set of casement French doors that open the room to the expansive wrap around terrace. There are dee-voon walnut floors, a vintage Vernor Panton capiz shell chandelier, a very expensive Arne Jacobson Egg Chair that we'd bet our pinky toes is the real deal, a vintage leather Paul Frankl armchair that easily cost as much as a decent used car, a black and white spotted cow skin rug, and a pair of fluffy sheepskin pillows that could probably double as a pet in a pinch. Hanging on the wall behind a petite mid-century modern table and chairs is a large abstract canvas by Joseph La Piana with a series of red, yellow and orange geometric forms placed on a white background that Your Mama thinks successfully reflects the spiky nature of the crystal in the entrance and, more importantly, would look a-may-zing in Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter's dining room.

The small but functional kitchen is open to the living room and is fitted with sleek, matte white and flat fronted cabinets, a baby 4-burner Viking range, 24" wide stainless steel Sub-Zero fridge and freezer, a large work island wrapped in steel and lit by a linear crystal chandelier–there's them crystals again–and a microwave that is, thank the lawd, mounted under the cabinets and off the counter top. There does not appear to be a dishwasher, which does not mean there isn't one, but sitting atop the work island is, we regret, a dreaded orchid plant. There really isn't anything wrong with an orchid plant per se, but they've become so cliche in real estate listing photos that it makes Your Mama cringe and cower with decorative annoyance every time we see one.

Miss Hershberger's corner bedroom has three casement windows that open out onto the terrace, a gitzy Ettore Sottsass tubular chandelier with a ring of turquoise accents at the top and bottom, another dead cow rug, a stool covered in zebra skin, a platform bed with linens the color of the the Dalai Lama's robes, and behind the bed a series of photographs of what appear to be spiritual leaders. The children will note the extensive collection of crystals on the bureau. Miss Hershberger appears to have a more than a touch of the New Age in her.

The wrap around terraces have both brick and narrow plank decking and rows of rectangular planters bulging with sea grass line and soften the perimeter. One section, where Miss Hershberger placed a couple of teak chaise lounges for sucking up the sun, has unobstructed views north towards the London Terrace apartment complex–where Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter once lived in a dee-vine doo-plex apartment–and the Empire State building. Another section, near the kitchen has a round table with four wire Saarinen Bertoia chairs with the seat pads. The chairs and pads cost well upwards of $600 apiece which means, according few flicks of the well worn beads of our bejeweled abacus, that Miss Hershberger's outdoor dining set cost her at least three grand.

Eagle eyed children will note that the actual apartment layout is somewhat altered from the floor plan included with listing and marketing materials. In the Hershberger penthouse, the kitchen has been opened up into the living/dining room and a kind of hallway from the foyer to the pooper has been created by eliminating the walk in closet that once opened into the bedroom. While it's never desirable to cut down on closet space in small Manhattan apartments, it's far more unacceptable to have guests wander through the bedroom in order to get to the pooper. It's unclear if the bedroom can be properly divided from the hallway but we'd be 12 kinds of flummoxed and flabbergasted if Miss Hershberger's smart architect did not include the option of closing off the bedroom from the hallway, otherwise it's a six million dollar studio apartment.

It does seem a rather optimistic to ask nearly six million bucks for a small 1 bedroom penthouse apartment but consider that in June of 2008 a smaller, 690 square foot doo-plex penthouse apartment with 1 bedroom, 2 poopers and 600 square feet of terraces sold for a blood curdling $5,250,000, an amount that according to StreetEasy comes in at a heart stopping $7,608 per square foot. With that as a barometer, at its current asking price of $5,900,000, Miss Hershberger's penthouse may be a bit of bargain for a deep pocketed buyer at just $6,519 per square foot.

In addition to her mid-century modern in Beverly Hills that she bought in January of 2004 for $2,400,000 and her pricey penthouse in New York, Miss Hershberger also own a weekend retreat in the Hamptons, natch. Property records show that in December of 1999 Miss Hershberger paid $930,000 for the waterfront retreat that's located in a less expensive area of East Hampton known as The Springs.

Penelope Cruz Claims New Crib In the Post Office

Yesterday Your Mama discussed the soon to be former home of sophisticated ladee Candice Bergen located in a guarded and star studded enclave in Beverly Hills. One of Candy B's many soon to be former celebrity neighbors that we mentioned in the course of our discussion is lezbionic actress (and Yale graduate) Sara Gilbert (Roseanne, The Big Bang Theory, ER, Twins) and her ladee-mate writer/producer Allison Adler (Chuck, Still Standing, Family Guy).

Well, chickens, buckle your safety belts because deep in the dark of the night Your Mama received yet another furtive missive from Leonard Leaksthenews informing us that the Sapphic spouses sold their 2,538 square feet house two weeks ago for $3,300,000 to none other than the Madonna of Madrid herself, Penelope Cruz. Your Mama was able to confirm the sale via property records but as best as we can suss out, the 4 bedroom and 3 pooper property was never on the open market.

Records reveal that Miss Gilbert and her luhbeezhun ladee-mate Miss Adler picked up the property in March of 2005 for $2,481,000 buying it from model maker Heinz Holba. Herr Holba may not be a household name for anyone outside the bizness of fashion, but he's a certainly a force to be reckoned with in the cut throat world of modeling. Herr Holba, for any of the butter beans who might care, owns both L.A. Models and New York Model Management and between the the two companies Herr Holba represents a bevy of bean pole thin beauties including fresh faced catwalk queens Melissa Tammerijn, Patricia van der Vliet, Sigrid Agren, and Amanda Booth.

The children will recall that in late April of 2010 Your Mama discussed the trying to be Balinese residence in the Hollywood Hills that Miss Cruz currently owns and has on the market with an asking price of $3,450,000, reduced from its original price of $3,695,000.

Madea–aka Tyler Perry–Lists Modern Mansion in Los Angeles

SELLER: Tyler Perry
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $13,250,000
SIZE: 8,751 square feet, 4 bedrooms 6 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Tyler Perry, the spectacularly successful and prolific writer/actor/director who has made a mountain of money dressing up as a crotchety old woman named Madea, is an out and out real estate size queen. In January of 2009 he listed Avec Chateau, his 17,252 square foot pile in Fairburn, GA that he once told Ebony magazine was a "testament to the rewards of faith" and "what God can do when you believe." Bitch, please. We don't begrudge you your smashing success or vast wealth, but going around saying silly stuff like that chaps Your Mama's already chapped hide. It is just so insulting to all the God fearers and holy rollers out there who spend their entire lives speaking in tongues and tithing ten percent of their meager income and still have to live in a damn double wide smack in the path of a tornado. How are these less fortunate lives a testament to what God can do when you believe? If God wanted Mister Tyler to be so filthy, stinking rich, how come s/he leaves so many true believers to be hungry and poor?

Property records show that Mister Perry has yet to sell his titanic "testament," which is currently listed at $3,650,000. According to multiple and many previous reports, Mister Perry wants to get rid of his first real estate testament to what God can do when you believe because he has spent the last few years building an even larger testament to what God can do if you believe, a 30,000+ square foot beast on 17 acres overlooking the Chatahoochie River in suburban Atlanta, GA. Well, good for him. This is America, dammit, where a filthy rich single man can and should be able to have a house the size of a damn Wal-Mart iffin he has a fool notion to want it. Have mercy and hand Your Mama a nerve pill, please.

Anyhoo, we digress. Word on the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine is that for the last few months Mister Perry and his real estate people quietly shopped his little used uber-modern mansion in Los Angeles' Sunset Strip area with an asking price of around $15,000,000. With no takers, or at least no one serious enough to sign on the dotted line, Mister Perry shifted gears, swapped real estate agents, and hoisted his dramatic digs on to the open market with an asking price of $13,250,000.

Property records and other sources Your Mama can't reveal tell us that in November of 2006 Mister Perry paid $9,600,000 for the sleek and sexified SPF:architects designed edifice that measures, according to listing information, 8,751 square feet and includes 4 bedrooms and 6 poopers. When the glassy manse was built it contained, according to the architects' website, a two level "concrete plinth base" that holds the 3 car garage fronted by stainless steel doors, a screening room, billiards room, home fitness center, wine cellar and a damn disco, because everyone needs a nightclub in their private home, right? Current listing information also states that the boldly built house boasts "spaceship views" and several feats of architectural chutzpah including a curved and mirrored wall in the billiards room that is actually a window into the depths of the swimming pool–perfect for pervy voyeurs–and a glass catwalk that acts as the ceiling of the wine cellar, another potentially pervy architectural device.

Although it is a long, long, long slog up Byzantine and twisty roads, trust Your Mama when we tell the children that Mister Perry's house is supremely sited at the tippy-top of the famed Bird Street neighborhood. The house hovers high above the surrounding homes, some of which are owned by famous folks like crooner Michael Bublé, R&B singer Robin Thicke–that's Alan's son, Fran Drescher's recently outed gay ex-husband Peter Marc Jacobson, and Jenny Aniston, who still owns the very first bachelorette pad she bought with Friends money and appears to still use as some sort of office/storage facility for her vintage Mercedes.

Mister Perry is hardly a stranger to high priced real estate in Los Angeles. The cross-dressing showbiz mogul owned ocean front house in Malee-boo that he purchased in 2005 for $3,375,000 and, according to property records, sold in April of 2007 for $4,800,000. In the mid-2000s, Mister Perry planned to build an approximately 22,000 square foot Mediterranean mansion on an undeveloped 22-acre sprawl behind the guarded gates of the Beverly Ridge community up in the hills above Beverly Hills. In the fall of 2007, after laying down the cement foundation for the big house, Mister Perry caught a case of The Real Estate Fickle and heaved the property on the market for $15,000,000. Public records indicate that the property remains in Mister Perry's property portfolio.

photos: Keller Williams Realty Sunset via Redfin

Your Mama Hears...

...from two separate sources that Michael Huffington–the oil heir turned Republican Congressman turned wannabe Senator turned homosexual activist turned film producer who was once married to political commentator and media maven Arianna Huffington, was recently thisclose to closing on a very contemporary crib high above the Sunset Strip but got some real estate cold feet and bailed out.

The rejected property, a newly built beast high up in the famed and star studded Bird Streets where the streets are named after, you got it, birds, has 6,200 square feet (approx.), 4 bedrooms 5.5 poopers, all the electronic bells and whistles a person can imagine, 200 bottle wine cellar, Valcucine kitchen, an 1,800 square foot master suite with private sitting and study, generous terraces both covered and not, a fire on ice fire pit–jeezis holy mary mother of god Your Mama hates those things–built in barbecue, roof top terrace, dramatic infinity edged swimming pool, too die for jetliner views, and an beefy asking price of $13,900,000.

Your Mama hears through the gay gossip grapevine–but can not confirm–that the Boston-based late bloomer and his man-friend want a bigger and better west coast crib–they already own at least 1 condo in L.A–so they can spend more time in L.A. to better facilitate Mister Huffington's desire to increase his prominence in the showbiz industry as a producer of small but meaningful films. To date he has executive produced a number of (mostly) gay-themed films and documentaries including Father vs. Son, Bi the Way, the earnest but wildly campy We're All Angels, A Jihad for Love and For the Bible Tells Me So.

A peep and a poke through property records indicates Mister Huffington's real estate portfolio bulges with high priced properties, mostly condominiums. In Boston, Mister Huffington beds down in a 2,621 square foot penthouse condo near the Boston Common with 3 bedrooms and 4.5 poopers purchased in May of 2005 for $3,200,000. Records also indicate that Mister Huffington maintains a 2 bedroom and 3 pooper condo property in a fancy high-rise building in Marina del Rey, CA purchased in April of 2006 for $2,025,000 as well as a 4,522 square foot condo purchased in October of 2007 and located in the same hoity-toity Houston, TX high-rise where that scoundrel Ken Lay and his wife lived in a full floor extravaganza of expensive but not particularly good taste. Records also reveal that in October of 2003, Mister Huffington laid out $1,360,000 for residential lot inside the gates of the swank Four Seasons Resort Lana'i at Manele Bay on the island of Lana'i in Hawaii and a few years later, in July of 2006, he scooped up the adjacent property for $1,250,00.

A Hamptons Hideaway for David Hyde Pierce

BUYER: David Hyde Pierce and Brian Hargrove
LOCATION: Amagansett, NY
PRICE: $6,300,000
SIZE: 4,000+ square feet, 3 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The summer season has officially begun so let's all head out to the hoity toity Hamptons where the roadways become parking lots and the restaurants become tedious exercises in self-control from the end of May to the beginning of September.

A peep and a poke around Property Shark reveals that some of the East End's newest home owners are Emmy winning actor David Hyde Pierce and his long-time man-friend and huzband Brian Hargrove who, according to public property records, picked up an ocean front property in Amagansett, NY in mid-May of 2010 for $6,300,000. Lo-ward have mercy butter balls, we should all be so damn lucky as to be essentially unemployed and still able to spend six and some million smackers on a beach house that will likely be used, at best, 6 months of the year.

Misters Hyde Pierce and Hargrove join the wealthy masses who schlep out to the Hamptons each summer weekend for a bit of rest and relaxation and end up tearing their hair out over the drama and hysterics required just to buy a damn lobster roll at Loaves & Fishes in Sagaponack or a burrito at La Fondita in East Hampton. Fortunately for Misters Hyde Pierce and Hargrove, their new digs are just a hop, skip and a jump–or a not entirely safe bike ride–from one of Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter's favorites summer lunch locales, the road side Clam Bar at Napeague where all good things come deep fried and the waiter people always bring our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly cool bowls of water.

Mister Hyde Pierce is most widely known, of course, for his long running role as the mincing, fussy, and annoyingly persnickety psychiatrist Dr. Niles Crane on the once popular now defunct sitcom program Frasier. In addition to earning him boo-coo bucks, Mister Hyde Pierce's role also earned him numerous accolades including 5 Golden Globe nominations, 2 Screen Actors Guild awards (plus another 10 nominations), and 4 Emmys (plus another 7 nominations). A quick look-see at Mister Hyde Pierce's resume on the IMDB shows that he really didn't do much before Frasier and hasn't done much since Frasier ended in 2004 after 11 successful seasons. Your Mama imagines that well educated Mister Hyde Pierce–he graduated with a double major from Yale–has nary a financial need to do a damn thing but sun his buns on the back deck of his new house in Amagansett for the rest of his life iffin he doesn't want to. Such are the beauty of residual checks that will keep fattening Mister Hyde Pierce's bank accounts as long as reruns of Frasier are played day and night on every half cocked cable channel on the boob toob.

Mister Hargrove, who hasn't worked on anything in the business of show that appears on his IMDB resume since 2003, wrote and produced several sitcoms and pilot programs including Caroline in the City, Titus, and Wanda at Large.

Listing information Your Mama was able to tease out of the interweb shows the gay guys' very 1970s contemporary crib is nestled into the gorgeous and rolling dunes of Amagansett on a .67 acre parcel with 110-feet of pristine and prime ocean frontage. Listing information also shows the single story dwelling, surrounded by naturalistic, no maintenance shrubbery and vegetation, measures more than 4,000 square feet and includes 3 bedrooms and 4 full poopers.

While there's little more pleasant–and enviable–to Your Mama then an decoratively under-done beach house where guests will not be whispered about or lambasted by the hosts for dragging sea salt and sand into the living room, Misters Hyde Pierce and Hargrove's new beach hut could use a wee bit o' updating and upgrading.

The living/dining room, anchored at one end by a fireplace, is an amazingly voluminous space with an unobstructed ocean view and a sharply pitched and vaulted ceiling that resembles a big, upside down boat. A long row of floor to ceiling sliding glass doors that blur the edge between indoors and out wraps around the back wall and open to a wide, sunbathing deck that runs the length of the back of the house. A covered dining deck makes a lovely open-air shelter from the elements that can include scorching sunshine and downpours from the dramatic thunderstorms that rush in during the summertime. A sandy path winds through the rugged, windswept dunes to the beach.

Besides the bewildering blue and white and nautically cliché carpeting in the bedrooms, it's the kitchen that clearly needs the most assistance from a nice, gay decorator. What's good is that the kitchen is large and sky lit. Your Mama can even live with the pickled paneling that is trés 1970s and could be utilized to nice effect in the right hands. What's bad is pretty much everything else. The cabinetry looks dull and worn, the counter tops punished with old-fashioned and boring laminate, the appliances mismatched in a most unpleasant manner and, let's be honest, not the quality that one expects to find in a six and some million clam crib at the beach.

We should probably just keep our fat trap shut about this because the knick-knacks and paddy-whacks were–we hope–most likely removed by the previous owners. However, we can't help ourselves. The bric-a-brac hot mess on top of the cabinetry, which appears to include several photographs that quite likely can't even be seen by someone of average height since they're so damn high and a plant–heaven help us all if it's a dreaded plastic plant–has got Your Mama so on edge that we had to take a break, a lie down and a nerve pill. How many times do we have to tell the children that putting a bunch of crap on top of kitchen cabinetry is nothing but a recipe for dust and bad taste. It just is.

Misters Hyde Pierce and Hargrove's new nearby neighbors in the Hamptons include Goop-y ack-tress Gwenyth Paltrow and her rock star huzband Chris Martin, and Sex and the City's Sarah Jessica Parker and her Broadway baby huzband Matthew Broderick who own a modest ocean front house in Amagansett as well as an even more modest house across the street. A little farther away are honchos like Naomi Watts, Paul McCartney, Robert DeNiro, Ralph Lauren, and fellow (out) gays Jann Wenner and Matt Nye.

Property records indicate that Misters Hyde Pierce and Hargrove also own some sort of time-share style pied a terre near Lincoln Square in New York City that they picked up in May of 2005. It's also been widely reported the couple live primarily in Los Angeles and Your Mama's sources have told us the live in Los Feliz, but honestly chickens we don't find much in the way or property records that confirm that. Whatever the case, Your Mama wishes them a swell summer at their new hideaway in the Hamptons.