Villages

The road to hell, the adage goes, is paved with good intentions, but the three lighted crosswalks installed on Montauk’s Main Street earlier this year have created hellish conditions for motorists and pedestrians alike, the hamlet’s residents told the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday.

Mary Vorpahl of East Hampton celebrated her 80th birthday with family and friends at a surprise party on Sunday at Harbor Bistro in Springs.

Proposals to start a bicycle-sharing program in East Hampton Village, to upgrade the septic system at Herrick Park’s bathrooms, and to redesign the parking lot at Chase Bank on Main Street, were discussed at the village board meeting last Thursday.

The Army Corps of Engineers may dredge Montauk Harbor to a greater depth and width than it presently calls for, East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said at the town board’s work session on Tuesday. The spoil would be deposited to the west of the western jetty, where erosion has long battered the beach.

To mark this year’s 100th anniversary of the American Legion, members of Sag Harbor’s Chelberg and Battle Post 388 have created a remembrance journal to honor the service of village veterans. The book will be presented to members at a dinner celebrating the centennial on Tuesday, and then made available to the public.

The town-owned parking lot behind Amagansett Main Street will see some big changes in the near future, if the East Hampton Town Board accepts new recommendations from the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee. The lot was the center of attention Monday night at a well-attended meeting of the committee.

The newly restored Dominy woodworking shop began rising on Tuesday in its original location on North Main Street. The 18th-century structure was moved by truck, with a police escort, from Mulford Farm to a 5,400-square-foot parcel adjacent to the municipal parking lot.

Sag Harbor’s St. Andrew parish is among about 170 parishes around the state named in a widespread sex abuse complaint brought by people who say they were abused, as children, by clergy at those parishes and in some cases their schools.

The East Hampton Sons of the American Legion will dedicate a 9/11 memorial on the post’s grounds in Amagansett on Wednesday at 5 p.m.

The story of the Robert Southgate Bowne house, seen in this postcard, begins with a death notice recorded in The East Hampton Star on March 20, 1886.

James Froehlich never got to know his maternal grandfather, John P. Babinski, who died in 1998 when he was only 2 years old. But he feels closer to him when he cranks the flywheel to start the 1937 John Deere that his grandfather worked the fields with for several decades, and then hops in to ride it up and down Sagg Main Street.

Classic aircraft, vintage cars, and modern jets will be on display at the East Hampton Aviation Association’s Just Plane Fun Day on Saturday, after having been moved to the rain date of Sunday temporarily, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at East Hampton Airport.

A 66-year-old paperback called “The World of Li’l Abner,” with a cover price of 35 cents, turned up recently in a pile of old books destined for an Amagansett yard sale, and if the owner, who declined to be identified, hadn’t noticed the name of John Steinbeck on the cover, it would have been sold by now for a nickel.

The owners of nearly six acres of reserved land in Amagansett, who were stopped from cutting down trees there after the Peconic Land Trust won a temporary restraining order last month, insisted they have the legal right to clear the land for agricultural use, and filed a motion to have the restraining order dismissed on Friday.

Item of the Week From the East Hampton Library Long Island Collection

Disappointed but determined after the East Hampton Town Board’s cool reception to the East Hampton Group for Wildlife’s request for a one-weekend-day ban on hunting, a member of the group is planning to communicate support for animal rights by recording a song.

“People can see the plans for Long Wharf, and the conceptual plans for Steinbeck Park, and tell us what they like, and what they don’t like,” Sag Harbor Mayor Kathleen Mulcahy said.

Around for more than 25 years, the pantry’s main location serves up to 180 households of varying sizes each week, said Stacy Holmes, the administrative assistant.

As Labor Day approaches, so too does the height of tick season on the East End. An explosion of dozens of red bites up and down legs spells out quite an itch for victims, as well as perhaps some more dangerous side effects.

A model in Paris, a secretary in Belgium, a columnist and candidate in Brooklyn, and the long-serving, unofficial mayor of Amagansett. “I’ve had an interesting life,” Joan Tulp said on Monday.

Chewy the bald eagle, found dehydrated and emaciated in Amagansett in June, soared back into the wild on Saturday after being rehabilitated at the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center in Hampton Bays.

Representatives of Orsted U.S. Offshore Wind and Eversource, the energy companies proposing to build the South Fork Wind Farm, provided the East Hampton Village Board with an update on the project and its possible impacts on the village at a board meeting on Friday. 

“Leading With Hope: Faith in Challenging Times” is the title of the second annual Wagner Dialogue at Sag Harbor’s John Jermain Memorial Library on Sept. 1, featuring a scholar, a minister, and a rabbi discussing the role of religion in today’s world.

At Friday’s East Hampton Village Board meeting, Police Chief Michael Tracey recognized members of his department and of the village volunteer ambulance service who had recently saved two lives.

Item of the Week From the East Hampton Library Long Island Collection

Community members joined state, town, and village officials to celebrate the official opening of Steinbeck Park in Sag Harbor on Friday morning in a ceremony that culminated with the signing of an inter-municipal agreement transferring management of the park from Southampton Town, which purchased the property in July, to Sag Harbor Village. 

How exactly did one take a selfie without a mirror before the advent of the smartphone?

East Hampton straddled two worlds in the summer of 1969. In one of them there was Vietnam, the moonwalk, Woodstock, the Manson murders, Stonewall, the civil rights movement, and war protesters. In the other world, a small beachfront town was still small enough that almost everyone knew everyone else, for nine months of the year anyway.

To many residents, the East Hampton Library means a maze of books and helpful librarians tucked into gorgeous architecture, with $1 coffee to boot. Behind the stacks, a little secret helps make it all possible: Amazon.

Fresh from their appearance at the Fisherman’s Fair on Saturday on the grounds of Ashawagh Hall in Springs, the East Hampton Town Trustees have set Oct. 13 as the date of their annual Largest Clam Contest.