Is it over already? Summer finance internships are wrapping up all around the city. The fresh faced kids aiming for econ degrees at good schools have gained weight and now barely squeeze into the suit they bought during interview season last fall. Too many lunches, too many trips to Peter Lugers, too many conference room cookies.
And, of course, too many late nights spent boozing and occasionally groping strippers. The New York Post’s Sunday edition titillated with a report showing that despite concerns about sexual harassment and a dearth of women on Wall Street, summers are still be taken to Scores and the like.
The best line of the story describes how investment banks seduce students into the life of the all-night grind. “They’re not unlike coke dealers, only in nicer suits,” she said. “They want to give you a taste, because they know that once you have a taste, you’ll come back for more.”
The worst line shows that even though the kids have been given a taste of the good life, they’re still strictly amateurs at this sort of thing.

“At MarkJoseph Steakhouse, each of the handful of interns stuffed their faces with $80 porterhouses meant for two – and washed them down with plenty of cocktails. David drank Long Island iced teas.”

Porterhouse steak with Long Island effin’ iced teas? We’re gagging on our mid-day martinis just thinking about it.

Wine & Dine [New York Post]

This summer we’ve more or less fallen in love with staying in the city. Empty restaurants, bars you can belly up to without a struggle, lonely women and taxi cabs galore. But listen up ladies, if you’re still losing your weekends to the Hamptons, you might want to glance above at Hamptons Magazine’s Men of Wall Street, courtesy of Curbed.Com’s The Beach. If you run into Josh Birnbaum, you can ask him about his simple algorithm for computing short-dated CMM forwards. [pdf]
Hamptons Blackbook: Wall Streeters Edition [The Beach]

We hope this guy gets better so we can make fun of him. Bank of America bond trader Ray Ducharme, a New York native who has lived in Charlotte for the past eight years, went to Pamplona for the running of the bulls and wound up with severe spine injuries. But he wasn’t hurt by the bulls. He was hurt in a side event, by a cow.
Why do people even do this? Even in the book that made it famous, The Sun Also Rises, the event ends in charity as a young man is stampeded to death.
Get well Ray. We have jokes to make at your expense.

Charlotte man injured at festival returning home [Associated Press in the Sun-Press of Myrtle Beach]

Our favorite font of frivolous fun–The Beach at Curbed.Com –fanned the flames of fear this morning, reporting that all roads from New York City were leading to nowhere at all. Traffic on the LIE was a standstill. No one was going anywhere.
Don’t panic! The roads have cleared up. At least for now. You still have time to make it out to the beach. But you’d better leave now.

Friday Drive Report: LIE Never Looked So Good [TheBeach]

We’ve had three calls in from the Long Island Expressway, all with the same report. Sorry, but if you aren’t on the road already, you might as well stay in the city tonight and set out early tomorrow. It’s going to rain all Saturday, so it’s not like you were going to the beach in the morning anyway.

The big summer internship is back, according to Forbes. And not a moment too soon, as far as we’re concerned. Excessive perks for summer interns tend to encourage, well, excess among the interns. Drunkenness. Insubordination. Tawdry affairs.
Some highlights after the jump.

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Today is Bloomsday, the annual celebration commemorating the day on which the events told in James Joyce’s Ulysses unfold. We’ve already had our lunch of Gorgonzola sandwiches washed down with a glass burgundy. Okay. Two glasses. Fine. Three. But it’s Friday in the summer, so who is counting?
Where were we? Oh yes. Bloomsday. The world of business and finance doesn’t make much of a showing in Joyce’s epic novel. In fact, the most notable appearance of a businessman takes place (appropriately) in a chapter called “Hades” and the businessman in question is dead.

Every mortal day a fresh batch: middleaged men, old women, children, women dead in childbirth, men with beards, baldheaded business men, consumptive girls with little sparrow’s breasts. All the year round he prayed the same thing over them all ad shook water on top of them: sleep.

Joyce did, however, coin one of our favorite phrases–”The Phantom Ship of Finance.” Someday when we write a DealBreaker guide to investing, remind us to use that as the title.