Ian Hornak's house, invisible behind its blinding floodlights, was silent one dark, rainy evening last week except for little waterfalls dripping off the roof. Nothing moved. It could have been some remote rainforest.

Suddenly Mr. Hornak emerged from the shadows: He'd been sitting on the terrace, waiting and watching. A tall, strapping, blond man in safari clothes, he led the way into a small but elegant house with a huge studio.

Formidably flamboyant paintings blazed from the dark walls: a vase of riotously unsettling flowers, a portrait of a preening macaw, a bowl of demented-looking tulips. Combined with some chaotically gesturing potted plants and his two pet parrots, they deepened the exotic spell, evoking a kind of wild kingdom.

Michigan Farm Roots

Mr. Hornak introduced Paco, a mild-mannered, dapper, red-lored Amazon, and Rowdy, a larger, scruffier, and rather intimidating yellow nape. He fetched a plate of homemade scones from the kitchen and sipped a gin and tonic as he talked.

While his work has variously been compared to German Romanticism, Dutch genre painting, Realism, Surrealism, and Photorealism as it evolved over the years, it has eluded classification or association with any one school, making its own independent way from its plain American roots on a dairy farm in Michigan, where the artist grew up.

Born in Philadelphia in 1944 to a Czechoslovakian father and an American mother educated in Prague, Mr. Hornak was 8 when the family moved to the Middle West.

Self-Taught

"We had a lot of milk cows and a couple of riding horses, grew hay and wheat, and did a little truck farming," he said. "It was a good way to grow up. When I wasn't doing chores I rode around with my little sister, Rosemary, piggyback on the horse in front of me."

There was also a younger brother, Michael, but Mr. Hornak was closest to Rosemary, who also grew up to become a painter and who remains his "best friend."

Earliest Work

Completely self-taught, he started drawing at age 3 or 4, concentrating on boats and museums. " 'Museum' is written in my mother's hand on some of these early drawings," he said. "I wasn't much of a prodigy, but I loved boats."

At 9, he received a set of oil paints and a book of famous paintings from the world's great museums as Christmas presents, and immediately began copying Raphaels and Michelangelos. "It was probably good that there were no art classes in school," he said.

In his bedroom today hang two paintings from this period. A self-portrait done at age 11 in the style of Raphael shows a Renaissance-type young man in a silk vest standing against a pale Italian landscape.

A portrait of the 8-year-old Rosemary in a black velvet dress with a white lace collar and cuffs has echoes of a Dutch interior. Both are exquisitely rendered, startlingly beautiful paintings.

"My mother was very encouraging about my art," Mr. Hornak said, "but my father wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer. He thought I was wasting my time." Even so, he remembers that his father "did show my work rather proudly to his friends."

At the University of Michigan, and later at Wayne State University where he took an M.F.A. and also taught, Mr. Hornak experimented with surrealistic drawings of Renaissance-inspired mythological themes, often with nightmarish overtones, rendered in microscopic detail.

New York Art Scene

Gertrude Castle, who owned a gallery in Michigan, admired his work and gave him letters of introduction to various artists in New York City. Through her he met de Kooning and Motherwell, Fairfield Porter, and the realist painter Lowell Nesbitt, who introduced him to Claus Oldenberg, Robert Indiana, and others on the scene.

In the summer of 1968 Mr. Hornak sublet Nesbitt's huge studio on East 14th Street and, steeling himself to the bums and prostitutes on his doorstep, launched himself uncertainly into the New York art world.

"After a month I realized I could never go back to teaching at Wayne, so, with $700 in my pocket, no job, and, once Lowell came back, no place to live, I somehow found the courage to stay."

Tibor De Nagy

He lived with friends, found other sublets, and "got a stupid job teaching kids at an awful art school in Scarsdale, run by two absolutely monstrous little old ladies. That job didn't last long."

Stints at Bergdorf Goodman's men's department and Bloomingdale's kept the painter going until he was able to afford a place of his own.

In 1971 he had his first one-man show at Tibor de Nagy, a highly respected gallery that was promoting Abstract Expressionism at the time.

"It was very exciting and quite a coup," said Mr. Hornak. "Tibor was a great gent and we used to go to the opera together, but he wasn't interested in my work until he hired Jason McCoy, Lee Krasner's nephew, as his new director. Jason persuaded him to take me on."

The relationship lasted through six years of "great big successful shows," at first of figural paintings, usually nudes, within a vaguely pastoral border.

Sunsets And Rainbows

By the mid-70s the figures had disappeared and the borders had taken center stage, evolving into intensely romantic landscapes with outrageous sunsets and rainbows that "were very 19th-century," said Mr. Hornak, "in that nobody important had painted sunsets or rainbows since well before Frederic Church."

These works transmogrified into more exotic, complex scenes in which trees protruded through Japanesque mists at various horizon-levels, as in multiple-exposure photographs, one bleeding through another.

These dreamlike images caused the artist to be grouped with the Photorealists - wrongly, he felt.

Outrageousness

"I always fought inclusion with Photorealists," Mr. Hornak said. "I thought they were more connected to everyday things like snapshots of families standing in front of their cars in their backyards, than to my romantic landscapes." "Sure, I worked from photographs as I might have from sketches, but my paintings were much more outrageous and far-out, as if they'd come from a Frankenstein movie."

"One of the best compliments I ever got was from the cookbook writer Yvonne Tarr, who said about one of my flower paintings that there was something weird about it: It reminded her of Jack Nicholson, she said, leering like he did in 'The Shining.' "

Dreamlike "Otherness"

John Gruen, the Water Mill writer and critic, commented in Arts magazine that "the tinge of Surrealism that inhabits Hornak's work (and it is only a tinge) contrives to give his imagery an imperceptible 'otherness': Again, this 'otherness' is only to be found in dreams" - or nightmares.

In 1977 Mr. Hornak regretfully left Tibor de Nagy for the Fischbach Gallery, on the advice of a friend who thought its director, the late Aladar Marberger, who summered in the Hamptons, would promote his work more energetically.

Pan-Seared Halibut

For six years the artist prospered at Fischbach until Mr. Marberger fell ill and began spending less time at the gallery; he died of AIDS in 1989. Differences with his successor caused Mr. Hornak to leave Fischbach; for four difficult years he was without a regular gallery.

In 1988 the Katherina Rich Perlow Gallery took him on, on the strength of seeing just one painting. He has showed there ever since, and is excited to be having the opening show at her new space in SoHo early next month.

"Our relationship gets better and better as time goes on," he said.

Mr. Hornak first came to East Hampton in 1971, mostly for summers and weekends. In 1974, when he hooked up with his partner of many years, Frank Burton, they began living here year-round.

Dark Interlude

Here he developed what he considers his best work, although the paintings did not sell. Dark landscapes and night scenes done in the mid-'80s, along with what some saw as morbid tropical landscapes, led him to seek treatment for depression.

Gradually, these landscapes evolved into the gaudy flower paintings of his more recent oeuvre, works celebrating the chutzpah and flashiness of orchids, wildflowers, lilies, and the parrots he often posed with them.

The devastation of Mr. Burton's illness and eventual death from lung cancer a little over a year ago stopped this exuberant style in its tracks.

New Still Lifes

The artist's latest works, mostly more subdued and classically beautiful still lifes, will be in his new show.

One especially vivid painting is triumphantly life-affirming, however: three lobsters on a silver platter near a bowl of lima beans, against a verdant landscape with a waterfall.

"It's very red and green," Mr. Hornak said with obvious relish. "Somewhat surrealistic, quite outrageous, and really sort of shocking."

Jack Lenor Larsen, whose 40-year career as a designer of fabrics, carpeting, leather, and furniture has transformed the field of commercial design, will be honored next month as the first recipient of a special Guild Hall award for across-the-board cultural contributions.

Since 1986, Guild Hall's 123-member Academy of the Arts has presented three awards each year for excellence in the literary, visual, and performing arts. "This new award recognizes interdisciplinary achievement," Henry Korn, Guild Hall's president, said this week.

"The leadership of the academy was concerned that there were significant lifetime achievers who didn't fall neatly into any of the three categories," Mr. Korn explained.

Fabric's Possibilities

"I've been voting for a decade on these awards," Mr. Larsen said Monday from LongHouse, the foundation and garden showplace on Hand's Creek Road in East Hampton that doubles as his residence. "It never occurred to me that I'd win one."

The playwright Edward Albee, a longtime friend of the designer's, will present the award to him at the Plaza Hotel on Dec. 2. Peter Jennings will be the evening's master of ceremonies.

Mr. Larsen founded the firm that bears his name in 1953, two years after moving to New York from Seattle. As a student at the University of Washington he was interested in interior architecture, but became intrigued by the possibilities of fabric design.

Good Press

He used to think his business started out slowly, said Mr. Larsen, but he has come to realize that "in fact, it grew rapidly. It's amazing that so much happened in such a short time."

Good publicity was a big help. "I always had good press," the designer said, "and I won awards from the start. I thought in those years that even if I starved to death - I wasn't making a lot of money at first, despite critical success - I'd still have an obituary in The New York Times."

By the mid-'50s, the business had expanded to Europe, with a base in Zurich. Over the next decade it became increasingly successful, accumulating not only healthy profits but critical acclaim as well.

For The Airlines

Millions of people have seen Mr. Larsen's work without knowing it. One of his early commissions, for example, was to design the first fabrics for Pan American Airlines jet planes, in 1958.

In 1969, for Pan Am and Braniff International, he designed the fabrics for the first 747s.

He also designed the draperies for Lever House, the Mies van der Rohe masterpiece in midtown Manhattan, and a collection of sheets, towels, and blankets for J.P. Stevens.

What has become known as "the Larsen look" in design circles began with handwoven fabrics of natural yarns in random repeats.

Paris Retrospective

Mr. Larsen's many honors include Gold Medal awards from the American Craft Council and the American Institute of Architects. A retrospective exhibit of his work was presented at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, the design museum of the Louvre.

The designer first came to the East End in 1952. In 1962, inspired by African art and design, he built Round House, which he sold some years later.

LongHouse, which occupies 16 acres, was designed after a seventh-century Japanese shrine. The gardens, which, said Mr. Larsen, "present the designed landscape as an art form in its own right," sprout thousands of daffodils each spring and are home to a vast number of tree and plant species.

At LongHouse

The designer's LongHouse Foundation has presented an increasing number of cultural events there in the past several years, 16 altogether in 1997. The dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones and the theater artist Robert Wilson have appeared at LongHouse, as has Mr. Albee, who gave a reading there last summer.

Mr. Korn described LongHouse as "a 16-acre free zone, where environmental artists and sculptors have an opportunity to show their work in an optimal setting," in pointed contrast to the display of art elsewhere.

"In general, East Hampton regulates very stringently the placement of artworks in outdoor sites," said Guild Hall's president.

Collaborators

In the past few years Mr. Larsen and Guild Hall have collaborated on several events. Mr. Wilson, for example, appeared at both LongHouse and at the John Drew Theater, as did the noted glass artist Dale Chihuly, a fellow student of Mr. Larsen's in college and a friend ever since.

"I hope to do more with Guild Hall in the future," Mr. Larsen said. "We've very much enjoyed the relationship, particularly working with their children's groups and some of their art classes."

Next year and in 1999, he said, LongHouse plans programs focusing on Japan in the third century, "and we hope to present some events in conjunction with Guild Hall. Their theater and meeting spaces are assets we don't have."

In addition to Mr. Larsen, the artists who will receive Guild Hall laurels in their respective fields this year are the sculptor William King, for visual arts; the playwright Wendy Wasserstein, for literary arts, and the musician and composer Billy Joel, for performing arts.

Oh how we carried on about the splendor they bestowed on the fall. Now nobody wants to get near them.

One neighbor uses a blower to dispatch them - to the yard next door. Another sets a pile out in the road for incoming cars to broadcast. A third stashes them among the brush on an otherwise empty lot - under cover of night. Don't even think about burning them.

There wasn't a peep about overhanging limbs when shade was all the rage. Now one encroaching twig and the Joneses hold you accountable for anything that falls beneath it - within one square mile at least.

What's with the impulse to tidy up every natural bit of dishevelment anyway? Would the universe implode if we just let the leaves blow this way and that, catching in clusters around stones and sticks, mums and daisies, tree trunks and trash?

Live and let leave! Or, as The Beatles would have it, leave it be.

It was a sad week in Sag Harbor - a week without cotton candy, without stuffed animals. No sweethearts kissed at the top of a Ferris wheel.

The annual Sag Harbor Carnival - which the Sag Harbor Fire Department Web site had announced would take place between Aug. 17 and 21 - never came to town.

"What happened to it?" asked callers to The Star this week. "It was such a nice carnival," one person said sadly. "What else can I do with my kids this weekend?"

Chris Kohnken, the Fire Department chief, said this week that the village's volunteer firefighters decided against continuing the carnival in October 2004. It was "voted down" because of "an accumulation of things," he said.

The department had hosted five days of fun and games each summer for six years. The carnival was begun in 1999 as a way to raise money as the department prepared to celebrate its 200th anniversary in 2003. "The 200th anniversary is over with," Mr. Kohnken said, citing one reason for the carnival's discontinuance.

But the firemen were also reacting to "problems that happened" last year at the carnival site, Havens Beach, the chief said.

On Aug. 21, 2004, a Jeep was stolen from a nearby driveway by a carnival worker who had just been fired. After Trevor T. Wilson of Brooklyn took Robert Allardice's 2004 Jeep he was spotted on Sunrise Highway by Southampton Town police and charged with driving while intoxicated. Sag Harbor Village Police then charged Mr. Wilson with grand larceny, a felony.

Although Mr. Kohnken admitted that the theft was "one isolated incident," he said that "the guys didn't want to deal with problems like that," after having worked hard to organize and run the event.

Sag Harbor's was the only full-fledged carnival east of Wainscott. Similar events are held annually in Bridgehampton, North Sea, and Southampton.

Mr. Kohnken said that the carnival raised a good deal of money for the department, although he could not cite an exact figure. The firefighters are "looking into different types of fund-raisers," he said. The department will continue to hold its annual cocktail party; next year's installment is tentatively scheduled for March.

Mr. Kohnken said he had heard that the Stella Maris School might organize a carnival in coming summers. No one at the school, which is closed for the summer, could be reached for comment.

Will the real East Hampton Airport plan please stand up?

With a new Democratic majority on the incoming Town Board, it is likely that the Republican-backed repaving and revamping of the main airport runway will not go forward as planned. Supervisor Cathy Lester has vowed to see this controversial airport improvement scaled back and is to meet today with Federal Aviation Administration representatives to explore the options.

The underlying question is whether, if the runway work is done according to the specifications in the contract (which originally had bipartisan approval), it would facilitate the expansion of the airport itself, in keeping with what some believe to be the F.A.A.'s agenda, or would simply provide a needed measure of safety for the larger planes that land there now.

As to the long-range future of the airport, a new master plan, with a full impact study done under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, is a necessity. But those who use the airport and those who are affected by it deserve to have straightforward answers to a host of immediate questions. The series of contentious Town Board sessions about the airport and the hyperbole of election rhetoric did nothing but sow confusion.

Give the public a chance to stand up and say: Spell it out for us. The F.A.A. and the airport manager and the town's consulting engineers may say what most people want to hear and they may not. At least both sides, whether they are for or against improvements, will gain a better understanding of the issues and the costs, and be able to debate more knowledgeably in the future.

Although Supervisor Lester's re-election was probably not the referendum on the runway project that some would have us believe, airport improvement was surely a major issue of the campaign. Everyone had an opinion about it. Before we go much further, let's have the facts instead.

Supervisor Lester has invited only the Town Board's other Democrat, Councilman Peter Hammerle, and the newly elected Job Potter, to the meeting today with F.A.A. officials. She justifies the exclusion of the board's two Republicans, Len Bernard, Nancy McCaffrey, and Tom Knobel, and the incoming Republican Councilwoman Pat Mansir on the grounds that the Democrats need to be brought up to date.

So does everyone else. What is needed is not a tˆte-...-tˆte among a few officials, nor, as some suggest, a formal public hearing (which would be premature in the absence of a new airport master plan), but an informational, give-and-take exchange with the F.A.A. - call it a town meeting for want of a better phrase - to clear the air.

And the sooner the better; delay only adds the notion that someone, somewhere, is hiding something.

Riled up about a deal in which East Hampton Town would pay $1.05 million for five acres off Town Lane in East Hampton, several artists made their opinions known at a public hearing last Thursday night.

Under the proposed agreement, the town would allow the seller, a sculptor, to leave six large sculptures on permanent display there.

"You're going to have every artist against you," Ruth Nasca of Springs warned the board. "If it's going to be an East Hampton sculpture garden, then it should include other artists."

Sasson Soffer, an 80-year-old artist who lives in Amagansett and New York City, has owned the land for 19 years. He has placed 30 of his large and small sculptures on the site.

The town-owned sculpture park would be named Grandeland, and six of his sculptures would be the only artwork displayed. Mr. Soffer's arts foundation would pay for installing and maintaining the sculptures.

"We are looking at this as an open space purchase, and not as a sculpture garden," Supervisor Bill McGintee explained at the public hearing. "And as a condition of the open space purchase, he wanted to leave six sculptures on there that he had there for a long period of time."

"We're buying the property based on the appraised value of the land," Mr. McGintee said. "Our focus was to get that open space as a pocket park."

"He's getting no money for whatever the value of those sculptures is," said Councilwoman Debra Foster.

Mr. McGintee said last Thursday that it was not unprecedented or unusual for the terms of a property purchase to include an agreement with the seller on the town's future use of the land.

The agreement to keep only Mr. Soffer's sculptures on this property would have no bearing on the potential future development of a public site for other artists to show their work, Mr. McGintee said.

If the town goes through with the purchase of the Soffer land, Ms. Nasca said at the hearing, "attorneys will see that this is a way to close an artist's estate."

"I feel this matter sets a bad precedent for the art community here," she said. Ms. Nasca said she had called other artists, and that she had asked the board to postpone a final decision until those she called have a chance to weigh in.

"I appreciate your concerns," said Ms. Foster. But, she added, "frankly, I'm shocked that the artists would not be supportive of this."

"He was so selfless," she said of Mr. Soffer, who had contacted Ms. Foster last fall about a potential deal. "He is so generous and giving. He wasn't born here and he wants to give back to his adopted country."

"I thought this was a win-win for the community," Ms. Foster added. She said the land is "the backyard of an affordable housing area"- the Accabonac Apartments complex - and that trails across the land could provide a safe way for children to get to the nearby youth park on Abraham's Path. "It is a beautiful neighborhood park," Ms. Foster said.

"It's a memorial to him," said Phyllis Hammond, a sculptor. Ms. Hammond is the vice president of the East Hampton Artists Alliance but was not representing the group at the hearing.

"His sculpture will be there forever. That means that his name will be there forever - very cheap," said Aldo Perotto, who is Ms. Hammond's husband.

"It's a matter of reputation," Ms. Nasca said angrily. Mr. Soffer, she said, will be able to say that his sculptures are on exhibit in a public park in East Hampton.

"It gives him an in," she said. "And every sculpture that he sells in New York is worth thousands of dollars more." She said the effect will be to make him "as well known as Jackson Pollock or de Kooning, who lived here."

Mr. Soffer's paintings and sculptures have been displayed at the Whitney Museum, Battery Park, Lincoln Center, and other galleries and museums. He is at work on a piece, "Amal," an Arabic word meaning "hope," that will be placed outside the United Nations building in Manhattan.

Stella Sands, the artist's wife, was at the hearing to listen, she said, but felt she had to speak up. Her husband's foundation has donated pieces all over the world, including in Cuba, China, and Israel, she said. "He likes to do that."

She noted that Mr. Soffer intended to cast new versions of some of the sculptures in Amagansett in bronze and steel for permanent placement at the site, at his own cost.

"Our focus has been, not the celebration of Mr. Soffer's work - which certainly should be celebrated - but to get the five acres of open space," Mr. McGintee reiterated.

The land is zoned for one-acre residential lots and is likely to be developed if it is not preserved, Town Councilman Pete Hammerle said.

"Most artists donate their land," Ms. Hammond said. But past offers by artists to sign over land and studios had been spurned by the town, she said.

Ms. Foster said she had been discussing with Robert Hefner, the town's historic preservation consultant, the potential for obtaining "historic easements" over the houses and studios of East Hampton's well-known artists, to maintain them as protected historic sites.

She noted that the Duck Creek Farm, a traditional farm on Three Mile Harbor that was owned by the painter John Little, who had a studio there, was one of the town's recent Community Preservation Fund purchases.

Ms. Foster said she would like to meet with members of the artists' alliance. "Rather than excluding what I see as a man's generous offer, we reach out to the artist community," she said. "We're very much into the cultural and historic preservation. This is one of the art centers of the world."

The hearing, board members decided, will be held open for written comment, "because we truly want to hear from everybody," according to Supervisor McGintee.

Those who wish to comment on the proposed purchase can submit letters to the town clerk until Friday, Sept. 2. The town board intends to review the comments at a work session on Sept. 6.

Diane Hausman, who owns a motel in Montauk's downtown area, had a problem to air before the East Hampton Town Board on Aug. 2.

"We're being overrun by underage drinking - the Daytona-Fort Lauderdale mentality, and we're losing the family business," she told the board. "What I see now is a disgrace."

The stretch of road on South Emerson Street between the Sands Motel, which Ms. Hausman owns, and Nick's on the Beach, a bar and restaurant, has been more crowded than ever this summer, she said. "It's constant."

At night, it is mostly young adults coming from Oyster Pond, another bar and restaurant, who spill onto her motel property across the street. A stairwell in one of the motel buildings is being used as a place to make cellphone calls and for vomiting, she said, adding, "Every morning we have to clean up a mess."

Paul Graves, the owner of Oyster Pond, said the week after the meeting that he had three bouncers working most nights: one in front, one at a side entrance, and another who is "floating."

The smoking ban has made things harder, he said. "People coming and going with the smoking makes it hard to keep track of them all."

To address complaints made last year, Mr. Graves has already closed in parts of the building that used to be open. He agreed that there had been a surge this year in the downtown night crowd, and said that his was one of three popular bars in a small area, the others being the Memory Motel and the Point.

Mr. Graves agreed with Ms. Hausman that people were spilling out of cabs throughout the night. "But it's a double-edged sword," he said. "At least they're not driving."

At Nick's there are five bouncers working, according to Nick Deane, the proprietor. He said he has had trouble with minors trying to scale a fence to get in, and now posts bouncers near the fence throughout the night. The other bouncers are posted at the doors or floating, he said.

"We want to be here for a really long time. The last thing we want is to sell liquor to some 20-year-old and lose our license," he said.

Town Police Chief Todd Sarris said he was unaware of any increase in crime in Montauk, but said the "hot spots" around town seemed to change from year to year. "This year it seems to be in downtown Montauk," he said. Around town hall they call it "Montauk madness."

At Supervisor Bill McGintee's request, the Police Department is "utilizing our existing resources and clogging those particular areas with officers," the chief said. "We will use every resource we have."

Capt. Kevin Sarlo of the Montauk precinct said there are always at least two officers in Montauk and sometimes as many as seven. He was trying to keep officers out of the patrol cars and on foot or bike, he said, and "that seems to be helping."

Lynn Cucci said that at Puff 'n' Putt, her family's miniature golf course on Main Street, there had been increased vandalism this year. Some main attractions, such as a plaster bear, a pirate, and a horse, have been stolen, broken, or disfigured, and benches have been thrown into the pond regularly.

The Cuccis put in a surveillance camera this year because of all the vandalism, she said, adding that an ice cream vendor who makes deliveries in Montauk early had told her he never saw so many drunk people when he arrived there in the early morning hours.

"It's been an unusual summer," she said.

The Cuccis asked the police to step up their nighttime patrol, which put a stop to the attempted theft of a bandanna from a pirate figure. "Word got out, don't go near Puff 'n' Putt or you'll be caught," Ms. Cucci said.

Owners of large lots are often compelled to divide their land into smaller lots for the sake of financial profit, but the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals does not always consider personal financial gain a valid reason to approve a subdivision application.

Hearings earlier this month on two separate subdivision applications met with stiff opposition from the zoning board's chairman, Andrew Goldstein, who said both were profit motivated. "I don't feel we should be granting variances for that reason," Mr. Goldstein said during an Aug. 12 hearing on Ira M. Barocas's plan to divide a one-acre lot on Montauk Highway into two half-acre parcels.

His response was the same to Sea Spray L.L.C.'s request to divide a 3.5-acre lot, also on Montauk Highway, into two lots, of 80,000 square feet and 59,228 square feet.

"Every variance we issue weakens our zoning code," Mr. Goldstein said on Aug. 12. "I don't think we should be bending over to issue variances."

In Sea Spray's case, one of the lots would meet the two-acre zoning requirements, but the other would not. Mr. Barocas's property, however, is in an area recently upzoned from half-acre to one-acre residential zoning, so neither parcel would comply with the rules.

According to Mr. Barocas's application, he first began the process of subdividing his land in 2001, shortly after buying the property, which is next to the Getty gas station and partially outside of village limits. To do so, he would need permission from the town planning board, the village zoning board, and the Suffolk County Health Department.

He met with the village's planning consultant, Gene Cross, and was told, his application says, that he should ask for Health Department approval before turning to the village. In October 2004, Mr. Barocas met with the village building inspector, Tom Lawrence, who told him that the subdivision "did not present problems under the code," according to his application.

For groundwater protection purposes, the Health Department generally prohibited parcels smaller than one acre in that area, even though village zoning allowed, at the time, for half-acre lots. Landowners could buy land elsewhere in the town, agree not to develop it, and transfer the development rights to the village property. In that way, Mr. Barocas might have been able to get Health Department approval. But late last year, the village upzoned land north of Montauk Highway and west of Main Street.

Mr. Barocas's attorney, Robert J. Savage, said last month that no village official ever told his client about the pending upzonings. Village code used to provide that applications pending before any village board would not be affected by changes to the zoning code.

Even though Mr. Barocas submitted his application after the upzonings took effect, he might have been excused from having to comply with the new regulations, but for another change to the code in June. Since then, only those applications pending before the planning board are exempted. Others, such as Mr. Barocas's, are subject to the laws in place at the time a determination is made.

"He didn't create the hardship, it was created by the upzoning," Mr. Savage told the zoning board on Aug. 12. He said his client "innocently was steered the wrong way by the building inspector" and that Mr. Barocas would agree to a smaller building envelope on the property, if the lot size variance were granted.

"If this application had been formalized a week earlier, we wouldn't be here," Mr. Savage said.

"I don't feel, as a member of the zoning board, bound by statements made by the building inspector," Mr. Goldstein said. "Applications get caught in these quandaries and that's just the way it is."

Not only was Mr. Goldstein opposed to granting a variance for a "profit-oriented" benefit, but he also said an additional house in an already developed area would have a negative impact on the neighborhood.

Deciding that the negative impacts outweighed any possible benefits, the board asked Mr. Barocas to complete a more detailed environmental review if he wishes to pursue the subdivision application.

The Sea Spray lot is also on property that was upzoned at one time. If the board were to agree to the subdivision the smaller of the two lots would still be larger than 16 of 17 parcels in the immediate area, the attorney Jonathan Tarbet of East Hampton Land Planning told the board on Aug. 12. Mr. Tarbet's father, also named Jonathan Tarbet, is the owner of the Sea Spray L.L.C. lots.

The property already contains two houses. If it were subdivided, the driveway for both would be on Cove Hollow Road, rather than on Montauk Highway. Moving a driveway from Montauk Highway to Cove Hollow Road would, Mr. Tarbet said, have a positive impact on the neighborhood.

"You mitigate something on Montauk Highway but create something on Cove Hollow," Mr. Goldstein said. If the property were divided in two, he said, Mr. Tarbet could replace the two modest houses there with two very large houses. "You take what is essentially a rural parcel and create a suburban parcel." He suggested Mr. Tarbet build one "very large house as opposed to two very large houses."

"You should develop it as you can legally develop it now," Mr. Goldstein said. "There was a legislative intention to have larger parcels in this neighborhood."

"But 16 of 17 parcels would be smaller," Mr. Tarbet argued.

Although a draft environmental assessment form prepared for the board by Mr. Cross did not identify any significant impacts, the board seemed prepared to ask Mr. Tarbet and Sea Spray to prepare a full environmental impact statement.

When Mr. Tarbet said it was hard to see how the board could make such a determination, Mr. Goldstein responded, "I guess we'll just see what comes up."

Mr. Cross was to draft a final environmental impact statement after the hearing, taking the board's comments into consideration.

In Aug. 15 letters to the zoning board's attorney, Linda Riley, Mr. Tarbet urged the board to reconsider and wrote, ". . . for the zoning board to deny my clients' area variance, they must have a 'character of the neighborhood' or environmental concerns that outweigh the presumed benefit to the applicant." He asked Ms. Riley to monitor Mr. Cross's revisions to the environmental assessment form "to ensure that the answers are not changed to create an 'ends justifies the means' approach."

The zoning board has yet to make a decision on the application.

The board will meet again tomorrow at 11 a.m. at the Emergency Services Building on Cedar Street.

A mosquito control plan initiated by Suffolk County that allows the spraying of pesticides in areas suspected of infestation has been deemed illegal after a court ruled on a lawsuit filed by the Peconic Baykeeper last week.

The lawsuit, filed for the fourth consecutive year by the organization, claims that the "county cannot lawfully adopt its plan of work until it concludes an environmental impact statement," according to a press release from the Peconic Baykeeper.

"The court has not yet decided whether to issue an injunction to halt work, but the decision renders Suffolk County's mosquito control plan illegal under state and county law," said Matthew Atkinson, the Peconic Baykeeper's general counsel, in a press release.

However, Christine Malafi, the county attorney, said that "the Legislature looked at the SEQRA concerns and did not act arbitrarily or capriciously." The State Environmental Quality Review Act requires government agencies to weigh certain projects' potential effects in an environmental impact statement before approving them.

In previous years, in addition to spraying, the county has ordered that ditches be dug to drain bodies of water that could be mosquito breeding grounds. In October, East Hampton and Southampton Towns blocked an attempt by the county to resume its program of mosquito ditching.

The practice has since been stopped until the environmental review can be completed, according to Dominick Ninivaggi, the superintendent of the Suffolk County Division of Vector Control.

Mr. Atkinson said the Baykeeper organization was pleased with the court's decision.

"The vector program is in large part to contain the transmission of mosquito-borne illnesses in the county," said Ed Dumas, a spokesman for the county. He added that the program was "as environmentally friendly as it can be," and that the county was studying ways to reduce its reliance on pesticide sprays.

The county has sprayed across the South Fork, including in problem spots like Meadow Lane in Southampton, on Napeague, in North Sea, and around Accabonac Harbor, according to Mr. Ninivaggi. He added that since a lawsuit with Southampton Town had been settled last fall, the county and that town had agreed to work together.

Kevin McAllister, whose title is the Peconic baykeeper and who is the organization's president, said he was not entirely convinced, however, that the county's spraying and ditching were specifically for disease prevention and not generally for nuisance control.

The county commissioner of health services, Brian L. Harper, announced on Tuesday that mosquito samples collected in Aquebogue on Aug. 16 tested positive for West Nile virus. Samples have also tested positive in Commack, Blydenburgh County Park, Saltaire on Fire Island, West Babylon, and North Babylon.

The county has declared a "public health threat" every summer in Suffolk since 1999, when the first cases of West Nile were discovered.

The Peconic Baykeeper organization would not oppose spot spraying of pesticides to control mosquitoes if the county could prove that the West Nile virus was a real threat, according to Mr. McAllister. Still, Mr. McAllister said, the waters must be off limits.

"Why are we continuing to persist?" asked Mr. McAllister, who said the county continues to disregard the law. "Because we have to."

Jack and Barbara Connors, former South Fork residents - he is from East Hampton, she from Montauk - packed up two carloads of their belongings along with two dogs, a cat, and a bird and left their house in Slidell, La., outside of New Orleans, early this week to ride out Hurricane Katrina at a naval base in Mississippi.

Ms. Connors's mother, Blanche Riley of Montauk, said that it wasn't until yesterday that she had contact with her daughter and son-in-law. Although the Connors have returned to their neighborhood, which didn't suffer the brunt of the storm, and "didn't lose a thing," according to Ms. Riley, they are virtually prisoners in their house.

They will be without electricity for three months, Ms. Riley said yesterday. And though they have enough food to last a few days, they cannot buy gas, and A.T.M.s are not working. Stores in the neighborhood have been completely demolished. Their daughter's school will not reopen until Dec. 1.

"Everybody on the block has somebody missing," Ms. Riley said. "It's total chaos." She said she was relieved to hear that her family is safe, but added that they might have to leave Louisiana in Katrina's aftermath.

As the days of Indian summer approach and storms batter other coasts, South Fork residents have one thing on their minds: hurricane season. Although the long-range radar outlook has shown relatively clear conditions lately, experts say that the warm seas will churn up some nine hurricanes through November.

The hurricane season started in June, but the northern Atlantic states see the worst of it in the fall, and the East End must again brace itself for the major storm that is said to be statistically inevitable.

Richard G. Hendrickson of Bridgehampton, an observer for the National Weather Service for over 75 years, said, "We will have another one, but I don't know whether it will be this year or 20 years from now. The longer you wait, the closer you get to having another one."

Of the nine storms predicted by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, between three and five are expected to be classified Category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale, with winds of at least 111 miles per hour.

A storm of Category 3 magnitude could cut into the South Fork at Canoe Place, Napeague, Fort Pond, or Ditch Plain, creating islands as well as new inlets. If winds reach 131 miles per hour - the definition of Category 4 - the storm would "flatten everything from the present shoreline back across the few dunes remaining," Mr. Hendrickson said. Such a phenomenon has not occurred here for 190 years.

Experts say that we are 11 years into a 30-year cycle of higher-than-average storm expectations. According to NOAA, seven tropical storms appeared in the Atlantic Ocean during June and July alone, a record. Low winds and warm ocean temperatures have been blamed for their frequency.

Much of this problem is caused by global warming, according to Mr. Hendrickson. On Aug. 22, he recorded the 14th day of the month with a temperature exceeding 90 degrees. The air temperature affects the temperature of the sea, he explained.

Mr. Hendrickson said that several squalls have already formed off the coast of Africa this season. Some of them dissipated, but others moved toward Central America, the Caribbean, and even Texas, at the west side of the Gulf of Mexico. Not until the storms get as far west as the Caribbean do American forecasters begin to track them consistently, he said.

Last week, weather forecasters watched tropical storm Katrina as it picked up steam traversing the Caribbean, turned into a hurricane, and reached Category 4 hurricane status as it passed through Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. New Orleans was evacuated in anticipation of 150 mile-per-hour winds on Monday. Lake Pontchartrain flowed over hundreds of towns surrounding it. The coastal cities of Biloxi, Miss. and Gulfport, La., appear to have been all but completely destroyed. The Gulf Coast was hit earlier this season by Hurricane Dennis.

Katrina's effects could reach as far as the Great Lakes, according to the National Hurricane Center. Cleaning up after the disaster could cost over $20 billion, and death tolls continue to rise.

It has been 14 years since a hurricane came close to touching the East End. In 1991, Hurricane Bob veered east of Montauk, but caused a fair amount of damage anyway, uprooting trees and intensifying the ocean's swell.

Before that, Hurricane Gloria crossed the middle of Long Island in 1985 as a weak Category 3, knocking out power on the East End for up to two weeks for some residents. Because it hit during low tide, experts say, the twin forks were not damaged too critically.

Neither, though, compared in strength or magnitude to the Hurricane of 1938. The Category 3 storm came with little notice on a warm September day, battering the East End. It is said to have killed as many as 600 people. A tidal surge and high winds crushed some houses and tore the roofs off others. That morning, the Coast Guard station had received a warning only of relatively mild winds, of the sort found on the fringes of a hurricane.

It is highly improbable that we could find ourselves surprised by a hurricane today. NOAA flies airplanes into the eyes of the storms to gather information on them. But it is local weather, according to NOAA, that determines the landward movement of hurricanes. So although a hurricane can be carefully tracked, when and where it makes landfall cannot necessarily be predicted.

Although death tolls have decreased in recent hurricane history, the cost of related damage has increased dramatically. Hurricane Andrew, which hit Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi in 1992, does not appear on the list of most deadly hurricanes, but it set the record for expense caused by damages - it cost $15.5 billion to clean up after the storm.

According to the Insurance Information Institute, hurricanes last year, none as catastrophic as hurricanes Andrew or Katrina, caused damages well into the billions of dollars.

Local governments, including East Hampton Town, enforce Federal Emergency Management Agency standards for all houses built in the flood hazard district, which includes areas along the Atlantic Ocean, Block Island Sound, and some smaller bodies of water such as Three Mile Harbor.

First floors have to be raised above the 100-year flood height - a tide whose chances of being equalled in 100 years are 1 percent. Floodproof construction, meant to prevent water from tearing houses from their foundations, and breakaway walls are also required. Those who live in flood hazard districts are required to buy flood insurance.

In 2000, the Long Island Power Authority formed a major storm review panel, meant to ensure that power is restored in a timely fashion to those who lose power during storms. After Hurricane Gloria, the Long Island Lighting Company (since replaced by the Long Island Power Authority) faced criticism for the length of time it took to restore power.

Although FEMA construction standards can protect waterfront houses from sustaining the kind of damage seen in the past, there is no sure way to avoid other dangers posed by high winds, such as falling trees. Covering windows with plywood can be effective in some situations, but flying debris can damage more than glass.

Hurricane safety tips and recommended procedures are listed at the Web sites of NOAA, FEMA, and the Red Cross.

Mr. Hendrickson said that for the moment, at least, he sees "nothing we should be alarmed about" on the hurricane front. But in the wake of the current drought, he expects a strong northeaster to blow over the South Fork within two weeks. "We have to watch our weather very closely," he said.