The Manhattan tribes live by binary oppositions. French anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss suggested that, just like the indigenous people he studied in the Brazilian Amazon, we all share the same "savage mind" that creates categories in distinction to other categories (alive/dead; animal/human; inside/outside), thus ordering our experience.

So we divide our island in half, and then we divide it in half again, imbuing it with successive layers of opposing meanings.

To wit: there is Downtown (most broadly believed to be young, edgy, artsy, interesting) and there is Uptown (generally thought to be more family-oriented, more grown up, more staid, more boring).

Uptown is further divided into the East Side and the West Side. The East Side (west of Lex, at least) is supposedly (and in some cases actually) immaculate, socially and politically conservative, posh, dressed up, well coiffed, anorexic.

The West Side is allegedly (and sometimes actually) dirty, left of center, assertively if not aggressively casual, and not so uptight about those last ten pounds. The East Side has Madison Avenue and the West Side has flea markets. Upper East Siders hire baby nurses to help out for the first few months when they have babies; the West Side tribe hires doulahs. Jack Rogers/Birkinstocks. Jack Donagy/Liz Lemon. Trying too hard/succumbing to sweat pants. Physique 57/Yoga. The Met/The Natural History Museum. And so on.

Central Park divides East and West neatly up the middle, furthering the impression that we are two entirely different worlds, separated by a moat of snapping alligators. "God, I have to cross town!" we despair, as if required to scale Kilimanjaro rather than hop on a bus for a five minute ride.

When we escape for the weekend or the summer, we do not escape from our binaries. We bring them along. And so if you go to Long Island for your weekend and summer escapes, as many Manhattanites do, you have your choice of the South Fork, or the North Fork. Here we go again.

The South Fork (aka "The Hamptons" — Wow, it even sounds monolithic) is, in the collective cultural imagination, glitzy, busy, "social," hedge fund-y, powered by big-named artists, celebs and titans of industry (I can't get into the different flavors and tribes of each of the different Hamptons, because that will complicate things a bit). In short, it is Uptown, specifically the Upper East Side. There are giant, shingled gambreled houses that cost tens of millions, and big Gwathmey houses that cost tens of millions and Calvin Klein's new glass box of a house, rumored to have cost about $75 million to build. There are modest homes too, but generally South Fork = over the top.

The North Fork, on the other hand, is known as a "sleeper." It is quiet. It is understated. It is "more affordable." It is dialed down. Which perhaps sets the tone for who wants to be there. The North Fork is downtown, if you will, with a dash of the Upper West Side, the South Fork's cooler little sister who went to art school and moved to San Francisco. The weekenders on the North Fork, it is said, are the edgier artists (Jorge Pardo, for one) and fashion designers and editors and art critics. They still have fabulous houses, like my friends Elizabeth and Jesse Gordon's, to name just one. There are still famous bold-face names, like Elizabeth Peyton and Richard Serra. But the feeling is different, and so is the self-presentation, and so are the rituals, beliefs and practices of everyday life. Everything from the fashion (easy and understated and cool, no simple thing to pull off) to the childrearing ethos (a little more relaxed) has a distinct North Fork inflection.

Recently we made a really fun trip to the North Fork, where we used to go on weekends, from our new weekend home on the South Fork. We reconnected with old friends and had the most fantastic, slow cooked BBQ ever (it was prep cooked for 12 hours), with roasted corn on the cob and a killer pickled cuke and parsnip (I think?) salad made by Jason Kallert, a tattooed culinary genius with a mohawk.

A South Fork affair would likely have been catered, with servers. A canny friend observed that on the South Fork it's rude to stay "too long" at a party, but on the North Fork, it's rude to leave too soon. We were happy to linger in Orient, ground zero of a certain kind of downtown, relaxed hipness out on the island. Its strong North Fork identity showed in the food — local, pared down and slow — and in the fashion, where there were lots of stripes but also, as always on the North Fork, plenty of outliers (five or so of them in the same Oysterponds Fishing & Rifle Club cap). Thanks to our hostess, Jennifer, for a perfect afternoon. We stayed and stayed.