The beer taps at Hampton Bays' Boardy Barn could be gone for good

"Some random older lady" dumped a beer on Cynthia Federico her first time patronizing Hampton Bays’ Boardy Barn.

And Federico, 21, and covered in stickers from her head on down, couldn’t have been happier.

"I got beer poured on my head because that’s what happens when it’s your first time there. I didn’t even mind it. I wanted the full local experience," Federico, a college senior from Hampton Bays and cheerleader at Stony Brook University, said Thursday.

Summer 2021 was her first, and likely last, summer at the Boardy Barn.

The legendary Hamptons summer watering hole is up for sale, with no word on its future, and there are worries about a ripple effect that could hurt nearby businesses.

The property is on West Montauk Highway — 4,000 square feet of main building, with 12,000 square feet in the tent and patio area, with a current approved occupancy of 720 seating and 1,488 standing, according to a marketing brochure created July 20, 2021. It doesn’t give the price for the sale, which is being handled by the commercial real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle and listed on the commercial property site loopnet.com.

The owners didn’t respond to a request for comment sent via the Barn’s website. The site proudly touts the Barn's place in the Hamptons scene: "Same building … same owners … same GREAT FUN!!" the Barn’s website says, adding, "There's no strangers, just friends you haven't met."

The Barn was open Sundays during the summer, Memorial Day to Labor Day, with a $30 cover charge, according to its website. The Barn was "iconic," the real estate listing says.

A 2011 news report said that the Barn’s patrons ran through 600 kegs of Budweiser in seven hours on Sunday before Memorial Day that year. That’s nearly 100,000 cups of beer, the report estimated, and more than Yankee Stadium or Citi Field on game day.

The Barn "dominates that slice of afternoon between beach tanning and club hopping," Newsday said in 1994.

"On a paved outdoor area that resembled a schoolyard, under blue-and-white-striped tenting, young men in flip-flops and their female counterparts in Daisy Duke cutoff shorts danced to infectious, retro party tunes like ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight.’"

The next year, Federico’s parents, Rosa and Mike, met and went to the Boardy Barn their first weekend together.

"All of the places we went to are gone," Rosa Federico, now 48, a part time schools employee, lamented in a text message. She added a frown emoji. The closure will have a damaging effect, she said: nearby eateries, transportation and limo companies, "and even the local police dept who has to amp up the security around town."

"It will be a lose-lose situation," she said.

Her daughter said that growing up "all my aunts" and other older adults "wish they could relive their 20s, just so they could experience the barn again in their youth, one last time."

The younger Federico remembers the date she first went, when that beer was dumped on her: June 27, 2021. She wound up going three more times this past summer.

"I wish that I could have one more summer left. … Some of my friends didn’t even get to experience it this summer so I was excited to get to experience it next summer with them."

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.