There is almost never a time when Fierro’s isn’t busy, and if you’ve been there, you can understand why. 

The pizzeria, which celebrates its 35th anniversary in East Hampton this week, has survived and thrived not only on the strength of its popular pies — served 362 days a year — but on the amicability of its owners, John and Al Fierro.

The brothers helped their late father, Albert, open the place when they were 22 and 25. They have been behind the counter ever since. 

“This is the only job I ever had,” John said on Friday, during a quieter time between the lunch and the dinner rush. “Me and my brother have spent more time in this building than anywhere else.” 

To them, this anniversary is less about what Fierro’s has done over three and a half decades than it is about the customers who have kept it in business. “We just want to thank everyone for giving us the years that they’ve given us,” Al said. 

“We give them a service and they give us a lifetime of memories,” John said.

Fierro’s has done the same for its loyal customers. Kids who stop in with their parents for a quick bite before a Little League game come in at 12 with just enough pocket money for a soda and a slice and grow into teenagers who make Fierro’s an after-school pit stop and homework spot. “Kids are very respectful to us,” Al said. 

The brothers look out for them and keep them in line, spotting them a buck or two when they’re short. “Kids come in and even if they don’t have enough money, they have enough,” John said. 

“When a kid likes the food, they bring in their parents,” he added. 

“The kids are our best advertisement,” Al said.

Teenagers go off to college, then they’re back in for a slice when they’re home on break, and eventually they’re on their own, married, and taking their children to Fierro’s. “There are people who this is the first place they stop when they come into town,” Al said proudly. 

In a village where few downtown businesses can claim the same longevity, 35 years is quite an accomplishment, made possible largely because Albert Fierro had the foresight to buy the building back in the 1980s. 

The older Mr. Fierro had worked for Union Carbide, which was relocating from Long Island to Connecticut. “Dad always had a desire to go into business,” John recalled, but was new to the pizza trade when he opened the first Fierro’s in Farmingville in 1979. Al had learned on the job at a pizza parlor in Northport and helped his father get things started. A pizzeria in Shirley followed, and then came the spot in East Hampton. 

In the 1970s, their father “had a dream to come out to the Hamptons,” John said. “He looked and looked and looked.” 

“When we first got the store, we didn’t know much about the town,” he said. “We fell in love with it and we wanted our kids to be here.”

The whole family moved east not long after opening the East Hampton Fierro’s, though they continued to run all three pizzerias for 10 years. 

The village has changed a lot since they arrived. “There are maybe five or six places that are still here,” Al said, remembering the early days when Villa Italian Specialties was on Main Street and kids could while away hours shopping in Penny Lane a few doors down from that. “A lot of the mom-and-pop or generational family stuff is no longer here.” 

“Unfortunately, it’s becoming corporate, which is sad,” John said. “It saddens me that the mom-and-pop stores are getting pushed out.” 

And yet, while the veneer is glossier, there is something at the heart of East Hampton that has remained the same, the brothers said. When local people need help, “the community has stepped up,” John said. “That’s one thing that’s really impressed me about this town. . . . It’s the everyday people that make it.” 

“You see change everywhere, but East Hampton is still basically a phenomenal town,” he said. “You don’t have many towns like this.” 

In any town, a pizza place is a great leveler. You can be rich or poor, a celebrity or a regular Joe, a kid or a granny and still call it your own. 

When kids call their parents, “No one ever says, ‘I’m at the pizza place,’ ” John said. “They say, ‘I’m at Fierro’s.’ ” There is something especially gratifying about that. 

It’s an eatery, yes, but also a community hub, an institution. Lives unfold over slices and garlic knots. 

“There are so many stories,” Al said. 

Thinking back, they can’t help but recall “the people we lost,” John said. 

“Some of the younger tragedies were especially hard,” Al added. “Everyone mourns.” 

He remembered the week of 9/11. “It changed how I thought about life out here. I saw how the city people came out here and almost felt like it was a little safe haven.” 

After one hurricane, the power was out all over the village, but the gas pizza oven worked, “so we grated cheese by hand and were parking our car so the headlights would shine in the window” and light the place up, John remembered.

Fierro’s has its share of famous customers, but even when they’re impressed by who walks through the door — Alex Rodriguez, for example (they’re big Yankees fans), or Dudley Moore way back when — the brothers never make a big deal of it. “We want them to be comfortable here; we want their kids to feel comfortable,” Al said. 

“People come in to talk sports,” John said, or to just shoot the breeze. The key, he said, it to keep it light. “We just get involved in fun things to talk about. . . . Our dad always said your everyday life is what you make it. . . . I consider this work, but we make the best of it. We have fun.”

And while a lot has remained the same at Fierro’s, plenty has changed. Back when it first opened, there were just four or five different pizza offerings. Now there are at least half a dozen specialty pizzas on the counter at any given time and a full menu of other choices. When people ask what’s good, John tells them it all is. “If it’s on the counter, it’s good, it sells.” 

John now spends his winters in Arizona while his older brother runs things year round. They each have a grown son and grown daughter and wonder if there’s a chance they might take over the business someday. 

“It’s a grind, but it’s a good living,” John said. “Whoever makes money in this business, they deserve it.”

"Every day is a fresh start to change your life," the 7-year-old girl's T-shirt read. I cast an eye toward the rearview mirror as she and her twin sister, flanked by their mother, former Real Housewife Cindy Barshop, signaled my date to back his red-and-white, doorless, roofless, three-wheel Polaris Slingshot (the only race car made for the road) out of the garage. The anesthesiologist was already in his own car, idling at the end of the driveway.

I turned around and waved to the group, like Sandy next to John Travolta at the end of "Grease" after she's decided to go bad and take up smoking and leather. We sped off, up the hill and into the blue-green evening. Jonathan revved the engine and we raced downhill, then right, then left, his diamond-encrusted watch catching here and there a waning ray of sun as he maneuvered the stick shift, then my knee. "Are you afraid?" Then the same hand switching on the radio, turning the volume all the way up on Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl." "I bet she never had a backstreet guy," Billy wagered, as the wind ripped through my hair like a torn sail, and my date let his head fall back against the sculpted memory-foam seat and cast his eyes up appreciatively at the canopy of trees, the leaves abundant because he approved of them, because he would have it so, because the world was a feast laid out before him, and I could have some too.

Jonathan hummed along to the music as a different tune played in my own mind. "My god," I thought, recalling that Talking Heads' song, "How did I get here?"

Driving home from the Gatsby party at Blackman Plumbing Supply the night before, I couldn't get Jonathan's face out of my mind. His way of flirting, talking to me as if I were nearly nude and standing amid a line of girls at a brothel, each of us hoping to get picked by one of Madam's regulars, as if I should be flattered by the special attention, had caused me to call him a "sleazeball." Like a hurt peacock, he put his feathers away -- the diamond watch disappeared into his pocket. I couldn't sleep that night, thinking of his wounded expression.

My mother told me this story: She was 7 years old, playing in the then-open fields of Athens, Greece, when a man appeared, asking if she wanted to see a birdy. When he exposed himself a few moments later, she stammered a quick apology, "My friends are calling me! I have to go!" she said, backing away slowly before turning to run, afraid more than anything that she'd hurt his feelings. "People just want to feel seen," she shrugged, recalling the story with almost pathological empathy. I am my mother's daughter, I realized in that moment. So I was relieved when Jonathan called the next morning, for I too wanted to apologize.

"You're a rare commodity," he said, as we walked through his house later that day, "smart and beautiful and reserved, classically elegant," he went on, as if I were a light fixture.

"Thank you," I said, lighting up as he tested the switch.

On the one hand, being called a commodity, a thing to acquire or trade, is degrading, no matter how many camels you say you could get for me. On the other, I'm an old-fashioned girl still on the marriage market, brought up by Greek parents who've alerted me to the danger of letting my stock go down. "It's okay to be single, but once you hit 40..." my father said through a seven-mile-stare, before trailing off a few years ago.

Black Tuesday hit in February of this year. The Greeks have an expression for a single woman of my age; you could win the Nobel Prize -- which, admittedly, I haven't -- but if you fail to find a husband, you'll still be a woman who was "left on the shelf."

Was I not a little happy then to be picked up, dusted off, and turned around? Mom, Dad, my stock is up! "Thank you," I replied, to the first of a hundred compliments that evening, before he broached the subject of our previous altercation and apologized, before I apologized too, before he told me how much he loved and respected his mother -- he bought her a car! -- before he added in his defense Freud's suggestion that all relationships are transactional, that everyone has a price. We were standing on the deck overlooking his pool, next to his hot tub, against a background of trees, and I wondered not if he was right, but how much we both cost.

"It's my friend's house," he clarified, as we stepped back inside, after I remarked on all of the pictures of sailboats, which reminded me of my dentist's office when I was 9 and being filled simultaneously with metal and laughing gas.

"You sail?"

"I'm just renting a suite in it. Here he is."

The anesthesiologist appeared in the living room. "Have you met?"

I nodded and offered my hand. We had met on the paella line at Polo Hamptons. He'd told me he was an anesthesiologist, and I'd told him what I knew about that -- "The inventor of anesthesiology went mad after experimenting with it on himself" -- and then again at a party on someone's yacht, and then again at the Parrish Midsummer after-party, where I'd also met Jonathan. "I'm having a massive pool party," he'd said on the paella line. I looked out the sliding glass doors as the two of them conferred. Here was the pool I might have partied in.

They discussed the details of the night ahead, where we were headed once he received his houseguest, and a few other parties on the weekend's menu -- "Jill Zarin's having a brunch tomorrow." The doorbell rang. The former Real Housewife and vajazzling magnate Cindy Barshop appeared with her children -- she'd come in from the city for the Housewife luncheon -- and we got in the car.

"There's Norma Kamali's house." Jonathan pointed. "Billy Joel lives around here." "And there . . .," he said, gesturing to nearby estates, as the wind made dancing snakes of my hair.

The books in the Farrell Show House all faced inward, a new design trend that keeps the content from interfering with the appearance. The house had already been sold, we heard from another of the some 200 guests milling about, for $8.5 million. A pool, vast windows, and a modern kitchen, it abutted a nature preserve, though the master bathroom's window faced the street and the other houses.

"You like it?" he said in the kitchen, as if we were shopping for our own home. "I had a house out here but sold it a couple years ago. I'm waiting to get a girlfriend before I buy another. What if I bought a house and she didn't like it? Then I'd have to sell it."

I picked up a paint brochure for Kristen Farrell's Hamptons Color Collection, which includes the aspirational color Charitable Gray, as the greatest status symbol is not having, but giving.

We wove through the other party guests celebrating the launch of Luxe magazine's latest issue. Jonathan spotted his friends: Len, the owner of the yacht docked at the Sag Harbor wharf some weeks back. Another -- "he married a model and made her pregnant," by way of introduction. Meanwhile, Gwyneth Paltrow's producing partner was down at the mouth as the first reviews for their new Broadway show had come back poor.

The publisher of Luxe was a woman. "Iris is a published writer," said Jonathan. "Give her your card, go ahead," he insisted. I blushed under the heavy sell.

"I love how he's so supportive of you," the publisher said kindly, sensing my embarrassment. I smiled. "Where would I be without him?"

I met the builder Joe Farrell, who told me he'd slept in five different houses in the last seven days, all of them his.

I met Ian Shapolsky, owner of the Shapolsky gallery in which my cartoons, some years ago, were shown along with Kurt Vonnegut's and a hundred other writers' in "The Writer's Brush" exhibition. "I guess you're staying with Jonathan for the weekend," he assumed, and I saw myself through his eyes, like a one of those cutouts at a fair that you stick your head into for a photo. This one, a cutout of Jonathan's date. "Cheese!" I said, as a caterer-waiter offered a tray of snacks.

Ian was standing with the Bedroom Baroness, Cosmo's former sex writer -- they'd just come from the Perlmans' Shelter Island benefit, where I had intended to go before I accepted Jonathan's invitation instead. I had been relieved to get out of it, certain I'd see people there that I know.

I often prefer the company of strangers. Isn't it easier to be who you are when you're not saddled by who you've been? You step into a conversation and maybe step into a whole other life, the way King Arthur pulled Excalibur from the stone. Maybe Charitable Gray is the color of my future kitchen. Or maybe I give the sword a tug and it stays there and that tells me something too.

As a still somewhat attractive woman (were I to develop my own fragrance, I would call it "somewhat attractive") I get to try on different lives the way men try on pants. My father’s seven mile stare -- someday there will be no pants left for you, my girl.

It goes like this: A man asks me on a date, and like a tourist I let him lead me through his country. "I could totally live here!" The upside of being seen as an object is how easily an object can be toted around. Here I am resting on this pedestal for a while. Will I go well with this gentleman’s lamp? On the back of his bike? At this restaurant? At this opening? Will I match the vibes at a beach party in Maui? Backstage at a concert? Will I look good coming out of his state-of-the-art kitchen in an apron?

Last week I met a man outside of yoga who read me his poetry before inviting me to coffee. I’ve dated every variety of man—though I rarely date anymore—and the only thing they seem to have in common with each other is the feeling that I alone am uniquely suited to them. I’m one of those "rare commodities" that goes with everything. "Isn’t she classically elegant?" Jonathan said to the anesthesiologist, suggesting I was that elusive thing he’d so long been searching for. At last a drape that really ties the room together.

My ex-boyfriend’s family was close friends with the Perlmans, and when I first started coming out here 20 years ago, we were always at their house. There was Toby Perlman, Itzhak’s wife, by the pool, advising me to write a book about my job teaching public school in the South Bronx. "The gym teacher was attacked again and isn’t coming back, so now I’ve got to teach gym too," I complained. "It’s wonderful material," she said. "You have to use it!"

My exboyfriend, now a lawyer, once called me "marriage material" and didn’t understand why after two years of dating I should bristle at the remark. But I never called him material. I never once thought about him as good stuff. He was upset years later when I wrote about him in my first book, when it was my turn not to understand: I thought he’d see himself like one of Byron’s muses, walking in beauty, for I’d written so well of him. Instead, he was upset because I’d made him mine. Because he’d found himself on my shelf. You know the poem I’m talking about? Who did Byron write it about again?

On Friday I ran into Toni Ross and her boyfriend Ron Kaplan whom I hadn’t seen since Jonathan parked his race car in front of Yama Q after we left the Farrell House. We’d pulled in and Jonathan spent about five minutes pulling forward and back ward, forward and backward, while all the people inside the restaurant stared.

We were on our way to dinner at Bobbi Van’s next door, and I wondered if I’d see a friend who invited me once to join him on his Friday night routine. In August, he and another, a famous actor in famous actor disguise (baseball cap), sit on the bench out front of Bobbi Van’s and watch the summer show-offs parade in an out, catching what they can of their conversations, and guessing from the looks of them, their stories. "It’s great for people watching," my friend told me rubbing his hands together.

The people, Jonathan and I, parked. And as Jonathan maneuvered the car back and forth, I saw myself from the outside, my view aided considerably by my view of Toni, looking out the window at us, appalled. Jonathan’s car, a grasshopper, his date, Medusa.

I patted my hair down and waved, but she seemed not to recognize me within the tableau. When at least we docked at the curb, Ron came out to get a closer look at the car and was surprised to see that it was me disembarking. "My new car!" I announced before introducing them. The two stood side by side for a while and looked at the car, discussing it.

"Who will you be tonight?" read an email ad I got once from Victoria Secret. I wore a long dress with a lorgnette attached to a string of pearls. I was classically elegant and reserved, a rare commodity, unaware of her own value, smoothing her dress as she stood outside Yama Q. Ron and Toni were down-to-earth inside. Jonathan was the guy on a winning streak that began at birth.

Over dinner Jonathan told me his favorite book was The Fountainhead. A core tenet of its author Ayn Rand, a staunch capitalist whom my parents admire, is that value is determined by the marketplace. Context matters. "Van Gogh is a genius," my father has said, his genius proven when the market vindicated his efforts posthumously. And if he’d painted the same paintings, but no one came along eventually with the right sale’s pitch? Would Van Gogh be a fool?

Hopping from date to date, party to party, trying on different lives every weekend--fool, genius, fool genius. What’s the different between priceless and worthless, if neither can be traded?

Ron laughed when he saw me on Friday, recounting what the guy had said about his car: "One of my favorite toys."

"What if it rains?" Ron had asked, noting the absence of a roof.

"I have rain coats in the trunk."

"Did you get the story?" Toni asked, as she strode up next to the cheese plate at the Guild Hall Summer Gala.

"He’s not a bad guy," I said. "He offered to keep me. He lives in Miami and he offered to set me up."

"No strings attached, except for his penis," Ron quipped.

They laughed.

I dished more. "Over dinner, Giuliani texted him about a nearby party."

I told them I’d not realized I was on a date until he kissed me at the end of it —- why kiss the drapes? I wanted to explain why I’d accepted his invitation when to them he was obviously so wrong for me—"I dislike everyone equally so I see no reason to reject one person over another," I said, which is only half true. The other half is that I like everyone equally, which amounts to the same thing.

"You have to write about it," Ron said.

"If I do, can I mention your name?"

"Call me ‘plus one,’ that’s how everyone knows me," Ron joked, referring to his girlfriend’s fame.

"What must they think of me?" I said laughing, performing my thoughts from when I’d run into them that night. But it was obvious they said why I was in that car. I’m a writer; that’s the tableau. Toni shrugged, "It’s good material."

I was torn over whether or not to write about Jonathan though. "He knows you’re a writer," my friend Frederic said, as if the exchange were understood. But thinking about it, I couldn’t sleep all week. His face stuck in my mind, not a face anymore but a hole in a cardboard picture, featuring a body with a wrist circled by a diamond watch, a race car, a Farrell House, friends in the background, a Real Housewife, an anesthesiologist, and a cartoon yacht in the distance. Now Jonathan sticking his head in at the last minute, saying "Cheese!" just before I describe him. I couldn’t sleep, worried that I would hurt his feelings, wondering if we both could afford the date.

Despite difficult weather conditions, firefighters quickly extinguished a fire at a bayfront house in Amagansett on Saturday morning that started with an apparent lightning strike, Amagansett Fire Chief Bill Beckert said. 

First responders were on their way to investigate a report of smoke in the area, which had come in at 6:41 a.m., when 911 dispatchers said they received a report that a roof was on fire at a house on Cross Highway, which is between the Devon Yacht Club and Fresh Pond, overlooking Gardiner's Bay. The chief and his brother, Chris Beckert, the department's second assistant chief, arrived about a minute later, within a few seconds of each other, and saw flames both in and outside the two-story house. 

The homeowner met them in the driveway. She told them that loud thunder, and likely the lightning strike, "shook her out of bed," Chief Beckert said. He was not sure who had called in the fire initially. 

Frequent lightning and heavy rains at times hindered the firefighters, Chief Beckert said. Firefighters were ordered off the house's roof at one point. Most of the efforts to fight the flames came from "an aggressive interior attack," he said.

The fire was not easy to get to either, due to tongue-and-groove interior construction. Even so, Chief Beckert said, firefighters were able to keep the flames to one bedroom. Part of a roof dormer was destroyed, and the room below experienced smoke and water damage, but the fire's effect on the rest of the house was minimal. 

"If the homeowner wasn't home and a neighbor called it in 15 minutes later, this would be a completely different story. We could have lost most of the house," Chief Beckert said. 

Springs firefighters assisted the Amagansett department at the scene. The East Hampton Fire Department stood by at Amagansett's firehouse in case there was another call. 

The National Weather Service predicted a chance of thunder through 9 p.m. Saturday. Rainfall was expected to decline to a chance by 2 p.m. There were severe thunderstorm warnings in western Suffolk and Nassau Counties on Saturday morning.

A 44-foot Meridian yacht sank after striking the west side of the Montauk jetty Thursday night, the Coast Guard said Friday. 

No one was injured when the boat hit the rocks and began taking on water on the west side of the jetty at about 9:30 p.m. Members of the Coast Guard were on the pier when they heard the crash, according to Petty Officer Ryan O'Hare.

"They could see the running lights. Knowing the area, they knew it wasn't right," he said. The Coast Guard called East Hampton Town police and the Marine Patrol, and Coast Guard members took a van to the jetty because the area is too shallow for the Coast Guard boats, he said. 

When the Marine Patrol arrived with its boat, patrol officers and Coast Guard members boarded the boat and rescued a husband and wife before the boat sank deeper into the water, Officer O'Hare said. 

He said the couple had come from Patchogue and missed the entrance to the harbor. He believes the captain "spun around, thinking he was going back in the entrance, and ended up hitting the jetty." He was going about 15 knots, the officer said.

"It's rock jetty. It won't take much at that point for a hole to get punctured in the hull," he said.

Officials secured the boat, but it is the owner's responsibility to have it removed, they said. 

The boat was still there around midday on Friday, but did not pose much of a danger to other boaters.

"It's not the entrance side — it's on the opposite side of the channel," Officer O'Hare said. "There's hardly any traffic there."

The Coast Guard is continuing to monitor the boat for any signs of leaking fuel, but for now there was no evidence of pollution, he said.

The Coast Guard's Marine Safety Detachment in Coram is handling the pollution side of the investigation.  

Brian Z. France, the chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, was arrested on Sunday night in Sag Harbor Village on drunken driving and drug charges. He has since taken a leave of absence from Nascar.

Village police said an officer saw the 56-year-old behind the wheel of a 2017 Lexus when he failed to stop at a stop sign on Main Street at about 7:30 p.m. He was pulled over on Wharf Street and, police said, appeared intoxicated. 

Police said they found oxycodone pills during a search.

Mr. France, who lives in Ormond Beach, Fla., was charged with aggravated driving while intoxicated, a misdemeanor levied when a defendant’s blood alcohol level is .18 or above, and seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance, also a misdemeanor.   

He was held overnight for a Monday morning court appearance. He appeared in Sag Harbor Village Justice Court alongside his attorney, Eddie Burke Jr., and was released on his own recognizance. 

“I apologize to our fans, our industry, and my family for the impact of my actions last night,” Mr. France said in a statement. “Effective immediately, I will be taking an indefinite leave of absence from my position to focus on my personal affairs.” 

A statement issued Monday by Nascar said: “We are aware of an incident that occurred last night and are in the process of gathering information. We take this as a serious matter and will issue a statement after we have all of the facts.”

According to Bloomberg News, Mr. France has been the C.E.O. at Nascar since October of 2003. Nascar’s corporate headquarters are in Daytona Beach, Fla. 

In an unrelated traffic stop, East Hampton Town police arrested Jake A. Lipson, 27, of Manhattan in Springs on July 29. Police said they found a cartridge of concentrated cannabis in a pocket of Mr. Lipson’s pants when they searched him. 

Police said they pulled over a 2008 Chevrolet on Three Mile Harbor-Hog Creek Road, near Harbor View Drive, at about 2:45 a.m., after observing Mr. Lipson allegedly following another car too closely, failing to dim his high-beam headlights, and speeding at 50 miles per hour in a 40 m.p.h. zone. He performed poorly on field sobriety tests, according to police. 

He was charged with driving while intoxicated and seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance, both misdemeanors. East Hampton Town Justice Lisa R. Rana released Mr. Lipson on his own recognizance later that day.

An East Hampton Town ordinance inspector has been suspended for 30 days without pay after being charged with sexual abuse of a child under 13. 

Maximiliano Fabian Amaya, who is 25, was arrested on July 20, charged with sexual abuse in the first degree, a felony, and endangering the welfare of a child, a misdemeanor. Capt. Chris Anderson said Mr. Amaya allegedly had sexual contact with the child.

“He adamantly denies the charges and looks forward to defending against them in court,” said Carl Irace, an East Hampton attorney who represented Mr. Amaya at his arraignment. 

The town brought disciplinary charges against Mr. Amaya on July 25, according to a resolution on the suspension. Last Thursday, the town board voted to suspend him for 30 days without pay, effective the next day, pending a determination of the disciplinary charges. 

Mr. Amaya has worked for the town since 2016. On July 9, he was appointed an ordinance inspector with Spanish-speaking ability, from the Civil Service list, at a salary of $53,077. His probationary period was to last 26 weeks.

A man whose yacht was found discharging waste into Lake Montauk late last month is facing a number of charges brought by federal, state, and local authorities.

Charles Vaccaro of Sunny Isles Beach, Fla. was wanted in Florida at the time for theft of government services, though that matter has since been cleared up.

An anonymous tipster alerted East Hampton Town Marine Patrol officers that a yacht at Gurney's Montauk Yacht Club was illegally discharging sewage into the water.

Two people were living aboard the 74-foot yacht, the C-Weed, which was docked at the yacht club for about three weeks, Chief Harbormaster Ed Michels said. It was pumped out when the boat left Port Washington three weeks earlier, but not since, he said. The tanks were full and overflowed into Lake Montauk. "You could certainly smell it," Chief Michels said.

Mr. Vacarro, the president and co-founder of Velez Capital Management in Port Washington, who has a house in Montauk, was not living aboard, but was issued tickets because it was his boat, Chief Michels said. The harbormaster's office tried on several occasions to get Mr. Vaccaro to assist them in the situation, but he did not immediately respond.

Chief Michels called in the State Department of Environmental Conservation and the United States Coast Guard to assist. The Coast Guard boarded the boat on July 26 for an inspection.

The Italian-made 2001 yacht, which Mr. Vaccaro recently purchased, has four heads, Chief Michels said, adding that no one on board knew how to use the pumpout system. Ultimately, the yacht club had to shut off the power being supplied to the boat. The chief said the club owner and staff were "very cooperative."

Coast Guard Petty Officer Ryan O'Hare, second in command at Coast Guard Station Montauk, said the boarding officer could see the discharge coming from the boat. Even so, a dye test on the vessel's toilets was conducted. Officials said it confirmed that sewage from the C-Weed was entering Lake Montauk.

D.E.C. officers issued three misdemeanor tickets, for discharge of sewage in a no-discharge zone, which carries up to a $1,000 fine; for discharging without a  New York State Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit and for pollution of waters of a marine district. The latter two carry fines of $3,750 to $37,500 and/or up to one year in jail per day of the violation.

For the federal charges, the Coast Guard cited Mr. Vaccaro for not having closed a valve that would have prevented the sewage from discharging into the water once the tanks were full, and for discharging in a no-discharge zone. A hearing office in Virginia will make a determination with regard to prosecution, Officer O'Hare said.

He described the charges as very serious. "It's not going to go unanswered by the Coast Guard," he said. "The Coast Guard will, one way or another, take action."

The Town of East Hampton cited Mr. Vaccaro for violation of a town ordinance.

“Protection of our natural resources, including water quality, is a top priority," said Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc. "All harbors in the town are designated no-discharge zones, where waste must be contained and properly pumped out in order to prevent pollution.”

While running Mr. Vaccaro’s license, environmental conservation officers discovered an outstanding warrant in Florida on the theft of government services charge. The warrant, related to taxes in Florida, has been cleared and dismissed, according to Mr. Vaccaro's Sag Harbor attorney, Edward Burke Jr.

The yacht owner was taken into custody on July 27, and arraigned on the D.E.C. charges on July 30 in East Hampton Town Justice Court.

“We will vigorously defend Mr. Vaccaro and clear his name from these charges," Mr. Burke said in a statement.

Mr. Vaccaro is due back in Justice Court next Thursday.

August in the Hamptons is a scourge of elegance. As The Star’s Lady Columnist, countless invitations cross my desk, and deciding which glamorous event to attend and write about is a trial by ordeal. How long shall I writhe at the Watermill Center’s annual Time Bomb party in the woods, the 35th annual Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival benefit at the Atlantic Golf Club, the Ellen Hermanson Foundation’s “enchanted evening” at the Topping Rose House, the Judith and Gerson Leiber garden tea party, or the Gatsby-style gala at Blackman’s Plumbing Supply celebrating the launch of Franke’s Crystal Collection, “a state-of-the-art coordinating sink and faucet forged from a unique integration of the highest quality stainless steel and glass, boasting a striking aesthetic and providing added cabinet space under the sink through a corner drain”? 

At 5 p.m. last Thursday, the sun was still high and bounced off my red sequin flapper dress as I drove, turning the inside of my car into a private disco and likely blinding anyone who dared look in. The Blackman showroom is in Southampton, so I had to leave early to get there by 6 p.m.

I parked next to two women in a minivan applying last-minute mascara in the mirror, and made my way to the check-in desk, where I was outfitted with a name tag and given $100 of play money to use at the casino games set up inside among the hors d’oeuvres, flowing champagne, and D.J. Twilo (who most nights can be found at Maison Vivienne) spinning hits for a rotating band of dancing real estate agents and designers. Nearby, a man in white shirt and white shorts, topped by mirrored sunglasses, clutched his drink by the stem. 

No two writers have had a greater influence on the world of interiors than Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Do a quick Google and you’ll find dozens of chairs and living room sets named after Papa, while Fitzgerald’s Gatsby is apparently the first name on a plumbing provider’s mind. “Franke’s new Crystal Collection sink is like Gatsby because he puts on a show and makes everyone happy,” said Courtney Kozieja, a social media executive at Sharpe, straining to make the link. Another Franke rep turned on the faucet, noting the elegant glass backsplash, which Gatsby would totally have.

After so many fetes devoted to animal welfare and cancer research this summer, I was excited to attend a serious literary event at last. 

“If you could rewrite ‘The Great Gatsby,’ would you include more kitchen scenes?” 

“Definitely.” 

“If you could rewrite ‘The Great Gatsby,’ would you let him live?” I followed up. 

It was a stupid question in retrospect, as Fitzgerald’s story in our time has become less a cautionary tale than an aspirational one. Most people I spoke to, most at the party anyway, when they think of Gatsby don’t recall him lying face down in his swimming pool at book’s end, but as having made it. “Of course he should live!” Sort of like how “Sex and the City” went from being a gimlet-eyed look at sexual mores in modern Manhattan to a shoe-shopping/real estate fantasy in which the toxic bachelor reforms and gets down on one knee.

I wandered the showroom, weaving through some 200 guests, thinking about this revised book, the one where Gatsby lives and marries Daisy after she divorces Tom, before Gatsby throws her over a few years later for his yoga instructor. I ran my hand across an array of gleaming stainless-steel faucets, seeing in each a new life that I might buy. With the faucet goes a house, and with a house, a handsome husband, beautiful children, successful glamorous friends, the tent we rent to host a summer benefit for a wildlife charity, the elephant on the lawn on which I make my brilliant entrance, the billionaire washing his hands after pissing in our state-of-the-art toilet. Later, he pulls some strings for our daughter to work in the State Department.

Shopping and literature are not dissimilar; both deal in dreams. When you buy something, you’re buying the life you imagine goes with it. Buy a castle, a cape, and an arsenal of sex toys and you too can host an orgy written up in Page Six.

“Ivan’s here,” said a young woman I was chatting with. I’d first heard of Ivan and his rumored sex parties two years ago when a friend from the city was on the fence about spending the weekend at his castle. “He’s very generous, but I’m not sure I want to have sex with him. I don’t know. It’s a really nice house.” And then again a few weeks ago at Polo Hamptons after I’d wondered aloud, “Who are all these people?” The answer is always Ivan.

Though I’ve not yet met Ivan and the notion of orgies makes me despair, I admire his doing things his own way, his making a life in his own fashion. Why not a castle? “I delight in a moat,” as Isabel Archer says in “The Portrait of a Lady,” Henry James’s novel about the upside of having it all.

Most of the guests, however, were not there to buy. Like the guests at Gatsby’s lavish parties, we’d come for the food, for the champagne, for the music, and to see who else might come. “The invitation said this party was ‘exclusive’? Whom were you hoping to keep out?” I’d asked the publicist. “Is there anyone you don’t want to have this sink?” 

“We want everyone to have this sink!”

In my younger and more vulnerable years, I’d failed to dream of a party in a plumbing supply showroom, but it turns out it’s kind of a scene, especially out here where real estate has all but replaced fishing and potato farming as the primary industry, and Gatsby types come from all over trying to recapture, if not the past, then at least a healthy slice of the future. While the Hamptons is filled with people you’ve heard of, it’s also filled with strange new money possessed by individuals whose backgrounds you can’t quite place, all mixing together, making it a fairgrounds of millionaires, grifters, and the beautiful who attach to both. The ostentation is often so great, so exaggerated, it’s hard to know which is which, or if the difference even matters. The millionaires, some of them, might be the biggest grifters of all. But once you have the money, does it matter how you got it? Is there still any snobbish distinction between old and new money? Or is the only important distinction these days between more and less?

“There’s toilets everywhere, but hell if you can find the bathroom,” Maryann Aiello told me. Having read about the party in Dan’s Papers, she’d stopped by for a snack on her way to see Bruce Willis perform at Guild Hall. We were standing near the roulette table surrounded by glamorous guests in the toilet display center, when she told me she’d once rented a house in Southampton where the books were actually fake. I’d been talking about Owl Eyes, my favorite character in Gatsby: “The narrator wanders into the library during one of Gatsby’s parties and finds a guy with glasses, Owl Eyes, on a ladder inspecting the books, declaring with astonishment that all of them are real.” Our eyes went to the toilets, which we dared not flush.

A dapper man with sculpted eyebrows who used to run a plumbing supply showroom in Arizona told me about the three best plumbing parties he'd been to. One where there was a vodka luge, another where there was a flash mob dancing to "Thriller," and another, glassblowers —"you could take home your own bowl if you won the raffle." 

"Designers and real estate people are huge partiers," he explained. He had just relocated to New York and found a rental in Hell's Kitchen. The first thing he did was replace the faucet with something more elegant.

I wandered further, accepting compliments on my dress, which gleamed in the bright white room with its silver fixtures all artfully displayed, and allowed a servant to fix me a roast beef sandwich. Then, tired from standing in heels, I put the lid down on a toilet and sat down to eat. Next to me, a man sat on another toilet flipping through an issue of Blackman at Home, the new design magazine that the party was also celebrating, its cover featuring the model Ashley Graham (who'd just renovated her home) being blasted by a stream of water coming from a state-of-the-art showerhead.

I was about to leave when I remembered my unused play money, which I could potentially double or triple and then put toward one of the items in the silent auction. I was trying to figure out where to trade my money for chips when I ran into Jonathan, a smiling, bear-like man I'd met a few weeks ago at the Parrish after-party and whom I thought I saw on the far end of a yacht where I wound up one night. His physique, at the Parrish, was accented by an oxford shirt with an embroidered teddy bear where a polo player might be. "Ralph" gave me that, he said within two minutes of our meeting, before reciting a few highlights from his hardscrabble rags-to-riches story (music executive made good).

I smiled. He smiled. The light bounced off my sequin gown and back onto a light fixture, before bouncing off his diamond-encrusted watch and projecting into the air something like the bat signal for hoes. "Wow. Does that cut glass?" I asked, not wanting to appear gauche by asking outright about the carats. He nodded. "How often do you cut glass with it? It must be very hard for you to resist in here, surrounded by Franke's glass-bottom sink and other temptations." 

He claimed it was not. "I just like nice things. You should know that when a guy talks to you it's because he likes nice things," he said, giving me the five-over. 

I asked him where I could get some chips to gamble, and his friend, in a Hawaiian shirt with a gold anchor pendant, offered me his play money. "Look at that. He's giving you money and you don't even have to do anything," the teddy bear said, as if I were a streetwalker who'd lucked out when her lonely John wanted only to talk. 

He laughed. I laughed and said, "You know, you're what they call a real sleazeball," before his face fell and I felt guilty and mean. How was he supposed to know I wasn't a hooker? I exchanged my fake money for chips and blew it all on roulette. 

"Go big or go home!" the dealer called out to the group, each of us pretending we had something or nothing to lose. 

"Can't we do both?" I asked before sliding all my chips in.

Walking out empty-handed — all the gift bags had been taken — I thought about Gatsby. Driving east along 27, most of the big stores were closed now, and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of traffic. "And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes -- a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder." . . . So we turn the faucets on, water against the glass-bottom sink, splashed back ceaselessly into our faces.

The majority of the 32 people reported to be occupying a single-family house off Abraham’s Path in East Hampton when a search warrant was executed there on Sunday morning were out-of-towners working for local businesses, town officials said. Eighteen of them were sleeping on mattresses on the floor of a basement with no smoke or carbon monoxide detectors, according to the town.

The East Hampton Town Police Department, along with the town’s Ordinance Enforcement Department, building inspectors, and fire marshals, executed the warrant at 38 Railroad Avenue shortly after 6 a.m. on Sunday, according to a release issued by the town. The occupants of the house were unrelated.

The town code prohibits multifamily occupancy in single-family residences, as well as rental or occupancy of less than the entire residence. Language in the code also addresses overcrowding and excessive turnover. 

Additional code violations included a gasoline generator and storage tank in the basement. Use of the generator could have created lethal levels of carbon monoxide, police said.

“Overcrowded housing such as this not only places residents in dangerous conditions but poses a risk to public safety and the environment when septic systems are overtaxed, and diminishes the quality of life for others in neighborhoods designed for single-family residences,” Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said in the statement. “The town will continue to actively enforce our codes to ensure the safety of all our residents.”

The town identified the property’s owner as Evan Davis of Jamaica, Queens. Mr. Davis, who was not at the property at the time the search warrant was executed, will be given an appearance ticket once he has been located, according to a statement from Town Hall. Braham Elorda was the house’s manager, according to the town. He was issued an appearance ticket to appear in East Hampton Town Justice Court. 

The multiple code violations could result in fines totaling tens of thousands of dollars, according to the release. 

The occupants of the house told investigators that they paid Mr. Elorda between $100 and $150 per week in cash to live there. Some had just arrived, others had been in residence for longer.

The occupants were not charged with any violations, David Betts, the building inspector, said on Tuesday, but Mr. Elorda was advised that he is obliged to comply with code and remove them from the house. “They were dramatically overcrowded,” Mr. Betts said. 

Tina Piette, an attorney who is representing Mr. Davis, disputed the town’s account of the action. On Tuesday, she said that Mr. Betts and Kathleen Gomez, an ordinance inspector, knew that she represented Mr. Davis when they went to the premises unannounced on July 23 and asked Mr. Davis to sign a consent form to inspect the premises on the spot. She said that Mr. Davis declined, saying that he wanted to speak with Ms. Piette first, which he did the following morning. 

After speaking to her client on July 24, Ms. Piette said that she called Mr. Betts to schedule an inspection of the premises. Mr. Betts declined that proposal, she said, and told her to speak to code enforcement on the following Monday. The warrant was executed on Sunday. “It’s a shame,” she said. “I truly believe this could have been resolved in a different manner.” The action, she said, is a stark illustration of the town’s critical shortage of housing for its seasonal work force.

Asked where the tenants in the house were going to go, Ms. Piette said she did not know. “It’s not like they are going to leave in the middle of the summer and risk not getting their jobs back next year,” she said. “They are going to put their heads down somewhere else, I suppose.” 

Mr. Betts said in an email yesterday that he was “unable to comment on the actual investigative aspects in the case.” Ms. Gomez was unavailable for comment yesterday. 

Execution of the warrant followed an investigation into the property initiated by the town’s Ordinance Enforcement Department, according to the statement issued by the town. The investigation is continuing.

They’re back. Shark Week, the summer tradition airing each year on the Discovery Channel, ended its 2018 run on Sunday. The show has continued in real time along our ocean beaches, however, as a number of rather large sandbar tiger and thresher sharks have been either landed by thrill-seeking surfcasters or just witnessed beyond the surf line not far from those enjoying a day at the beach. A number of dead sandbar tiger sharks have been found along the beach in recent days, too.

Several different species of sharks are frequent visitors to our local waters. Everything from the lowly dogfish to the king of the seas, the great white, seems to make an annual visit at one point or another to South Fork beaches. Whales and porpoises have also been seen in great abundance.

“Without a doubt, there seems to be more sharks closer to shore the past few years,” Capt. Michael Potts of the Montauk-based charter boat Blue Fin IV said on Tuesday afternoon while returning to port. “The other evening, another captain here caught three sandbar tiger sharks just off the Montauk Lighthouse while trying for striped bass.”

Captain Potts noted that a large amount of food, including bunker, mackerel, and sand eels, has taken up residence close to shore the past three summers and is likely the reason that the sharks have found a summer home. 

“There is a ton of bait out there, and a lot of it is pretty close to the beach,” the skipper, a veteran of 40 years, said. “I just passed through Cartwright” — an area five miles south of the Montauk Lighthouse — “and you could see the bait everywhere. Where there is bait, there are fish. It goes the same for sharks, whales, everything.”

Harvey Bennett, who has owned the Tackle Shop in Amagansett for 39 years, is not surprised that sharks are being seen and caught close to the beach. “There are sharks around for sure, but I actually think there were more around last summer. Like last year, there is just a lot of bait around, and it will attract just about anything, including sharks and whales,” he said on Tuesday. “Where there are whales, there are sharks.”

“Just a few years ago, there were very few people who would actually try to catch a shark,” Bennett said. “Folks were just focused on bluefish and striped bass. But today there are more and more people actually trying to catch one from the ocean beach. Over the past few years, I’ve sold a number of outfits that are more capable of landing a larger fish like a shark. As such, I think you are also seeing more of them as the equipment being used can actually land a fish of such size.”

“It’s easy fishing, too,” he added. “Besides some stout tackle, all you need is to bait up with a chunk of bunker and you are set.”

Ken Morse, the owner of Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor, and an avid surfcaster, also remarked that several fellow surfcasters have found a number of dead sandbar tiger sharks washed up on the ocean beaches in the past two weeks.

“It’s probably two things,” he concluded. “First, if you catch one of these sharks, they drown quickly when they are picked up by the tail and dragged backwards up to the beach. Water, and especially the sand, will choke and fill in their gills. They basically suffocate to death.” 

Morse also thought that some of the dead sharks were the victims of being trapped and released by commercial gillnets. “Some of the pictures I’ve seen look like the sharks are pretty beaten up and scarred,” he said. “Gillnets are not very forgiving to anything that gets tangled up in them.” 

Neither the sandbar tiger nor thresher shark is considered dangerous to humans, but the fact that some fish weighing over 100 pounds have been landed or found dead on the beach has led some bathers to be cautious.

“I’m not overly concerned, but if I see a fin or if a shark has been caught, I might give it a second of concern on entering the water,” said James Gallagher of Manhattan, a frequent visitor to Sagg Main Beach in Sagaponack. “Our family was up in Cape Cod last month, and they seem to be more used to such occurrences, as they always have sightings of great white sharks.” 

Over the past 10 years or so, the Cape Cod area has witnessed an increase in the sightings of great white sharks, resulting in a number of beach closings, as the population of seals, a favorite food of the great white shark, continues to grow. 

“There certainly have been quite a few shark sightings close to shore of late,” Frank Quevedo, the director of the South Fork Natural History Museum in Bridgehampton, said yesterday morning. “We have received a lot of calls from people at the ocean asking what kind of shark they may have seen. Most have been sandbar tiger sharks.”

Quevedo agrees with Morse that many of the dead sandbar tiger sharks found likely died as a result of being dragged backward through the sand when caught, but he added that the sandbar tiger is a shallow-water feeder that sometimes can accidentally beach itself when looking for food.

“Sandbar tiger sharks usually come very close to the shore at night to feed in as little as one or two feet of water,” he said. “They are prone to suffocating if they do not get enough oxygen.” 

In May, SoFo established the Shark Research and Education Program, an alliance with the Long Island Shark Collaboration, to tag and study the habits and patterns of four sharks found in the waters here: great white, dusky, sandbar, and thresher. On July 19, the group tagged its first juvenile white shark of the 2018 season off Long Island. A satellite tag was attached to the 1-year-old pup’s dorsal fin to record water temperature and the depth of the animal every five minutes for 28 days, before the tag breaks off.

“Long Island is now known as a nursery ground for white sharks,” Quevedo said. In general, sharks are balance keepers and serve as an important part of our near-shore ecosystems, and we want to learn more about their habits. It’s amazing the amount of important data we received from the tagged sharks.” 

Unexpectedly, the day the white shark was tagged, two bathers were nipped in the leg by unidentified sharks in two separate incidents on the same day near Fire Island, about 45 miles west of Montauk. 

“A true, deadly shark attack is beyond incredibly rare,” Bennett said. “I think this all ultimately shows we have a pretty healthy ecosystem out in our waters here. The past few years have been unusual in the amount of bait around. It’s been really interesting to witness all of this.”

New York State Department of Environmental Conservation biologists are seeking assistance from the public if sharks are seen while fishing, boating, or enjoying a day at the beach. The D.E.C. Shark Spotter survey aims to help biologists better understand the habits of sharks off New York. The digital survey can be found on the D.E.C.’s website.