Ernesto has pretty much cancelled the last weekend of the summer. Remember when these things just wrecked cities in the South? The good old days. Now they're ruining your end of summer cook out.

Oh well. Good news. Traffic is extremely light on the Long Island Expressway. You'll be out east in no time at all, enjoying the rain and wind all by yourself. (And don't tell anyone, but we have the inside scoop on Monday: no rain! Wind gone. Weather should be nice.)

One of our favorite blogs, WallStFolly, runs with this picture today. It's allegedly Morgan Stanley's summer class, although they look a little bit too civilized for our taste. Send us your pics!

We're awash in photos of the summer classes of London banks. To the left you see Lucy Gao's fellow Citigroup interns, and after the jump we've got the Goldman 2006 summer class. No one, however, has seen fit to send us any group shots of summer interns from out home town of New York City. This is an injustice that will not be tolerated. Only you can set things right by emailing us your photos. (And have no fear-we protect the identity of our sources with even more tenacity than Robert effin Novak.)

The New York Observer checks in with the mandatory end-of-summer story of "what the interns did this summer." It's pretty standard stuff-coke references, expensive drinks in fancy clubs and late hours. This story from a "young fellow at JP Morgan", however, was a new one for us:

"On my floor, there were two interns," he said. "So the V.P. proposed a hot-dog-eating contest. So the challenge was to eat 15 dirty-water dogs in 20 minutes and to hold it down for an hour. There were lots of bets placed and taken. We stood to make about $200 each if we succeeded. After about 10 hot dogs, the other intern started looking sick and ran off to the bathroom. I managed to finish and regretted it for the rest of the day. So disgusting. But at least I got the cash."

Bank On! [New York Observer]

It has been a frustratingly slow day for DealBreaker style news. We're pretty sure we know why this is-the end times are coming. That's right. Tomorrow is August 22, the day Bernard Lewis (writing in the Wall Street Journal) informs us that many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to "the farthest mosque" in Jerusalem and then to heaven and then back. And incidentally, the day that Hezbollah or Iran either is or is not planning a massive attack to bring about the end of the world.

So, uhm, you people are probably all away preparing for that. DealBreaker's scribes, however, are working away because, well, we cannot quite figure out how one prepares for the end of the world. Make peace with your Gods? Drink till you fall down? Slut it up with the intern? Short everything?

Or maybe its just the dog days of August and you are all on vacation. If you're around and there's something you think we should know, send your tips to Tips (at) DealBreaker (dot) com. We will protect your anonymity, as always.

August 22 [Wall Street Journal]

Alright. It's just about time to head out for what promises to be the best weekend ever. Or at least the best since sometime in mid-July, before we got hit by the Wrath-of-God heat wave. On tap: fishing, drinking beer at a picnic table, forgetting all about business and finance for a couple of days, crashing the party being thrown by Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz and his wife Sheri where we plan to tell people we think Jane Goodall should have just left those friggin' monkeys alone.

Till Monday!

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."

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]

If you've ever wondered what kind of country the very rich would create if they had their way, we suggest you visit Nantucket. It's the ultimate gated community, surrounded not just by a gate but by a moat of ocean, accessible only by plane or ferry. And far from being some sort of haven of free enterprise, it is one of the most heavily regulated places on earth-would be home builders and developers face 184 pages of rules, an aggressive building commission and 140 non-profit organizations and pressure groups.

Connecticut oil trader Gary McCarthy and bond trader Blake Drexler, Great Point Partners LLC, are probably men used to getting their way. Not in this wonderland of wealth. Here their plans to build a new yacht club on the island-the traditional Nantucket Yacht club has a waiting list of at least ten years-have been greeted with cries of outrage, and stalled in island bureaucracy.

Bloomberg has the story of these put-upon yachtsmen who are suffering from one of this world's greatest injustices.

"Some of the best sailing waters in the world are right here, and there are just not that many places on Nantucket where you can put a boat in,'' McCarthy said.

Bond Trader's Nantucket Yacht Club Hits Preservationist Squall

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.

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.

The odds are that this is going to be the first weekend in recent memory where it won't rain on your beach plans. Break out the sunblock, put the beer on ice and tell the managing director someone close to you just died and you've got to leave town for the funeral. Then hope you don't run into him out east.

Added bonus: the beaches will be eurotrash free thanks to the World Cup.

TheBeach, Curbed.Com's recently launched summer blog, reports that the drive out east is all clear. At least for now.

Unfortunately, it's definitely and certainly* going to rain all weekend. So pack plenty of rum for those dark-and-stormies you'll be drinking . And maybe pick-up a hammock rainfly before heading out, so you can lie around on the porch with your official big fat beach reading book and not get wet.

*No, really. Expect rain.

Bloomberg spills on the latest golf club in the Hamptons, Sebonack. Membership costs $650,000, with yearly dues running at 12 grand. What's that get you?

They will have access to a yet-to-be-built 28,000-square-foot clubhouse and a 19th hole with a green rather than barstools; it's a par-3 constructed especially to break ties and settle wagers.

So you won't really have a club house for a while. Still, that hasn't stopped the founding members from ponying up $1.5 million each. According to DealBook the founding members include:

Stanley Druckenmiller, chairman of Duquesne Capital Management; Richard Santulli, chief executive of NetJets of Woodbridge, N.J.; Paul Desmarais Jr., chairman of the Power Corporation of Canada; and Johann Rupert, chief executive of Cie. Financiere Richemont of Geneva, the world's second-largest luxury-goods company.

We're sorry you are still in the office and not already plowing through your third mojito and sailing away for the first weekend on the summer on blackout island. We'd at least like to bring you the good news that the roads are still clear and you won't spend the first five hours after leaving the office stuck on the LIE inhaling exhaust.

We'd like to but we can't. According to Traffic.Com, you are totally screwed. The 0 traffic jam rating from this morning has shot up to 8. So it looks like it is eighter the LIRR or another Friday night in your usual Friday night haunts, except that they'll be weirdly abandoned. Good luck.

The roads east from New York City are in good shape this morning. But as you know, that can change fast. Traffic.Com's LIE page provides real time updates on Fire Island and Hamptons bound traffic. Right now the LIE is rated "clear" with just a bit of construction, all scheduled to be cleared up before this afternoon.

...expensive?

Let's face it. Between the house out east, the new summer wardrobe, the car rentals and the sundry costs of living well between Memorial Day and Labor Day, summer in and around New York can get a bit pricey.

This advice from the Natty Banker won't help at all.