Telltale Windows

   Winter seems a long way off at the moment, but that’s not so as far as the East Hampton Village trustees are concerned. Tomorrow, they are expected to approve a law that would require vacant and closed-for-the-season shops to place displays or graphics in their windows rather than cover them with depressingly plain paper.

    It is a sad testament to what Main Street, East Hampton, once was, now that it now seems almost a ghost town come November. Where once the downtown shops supported thriving business for 12 months, storefronts now add to the feeling of desolation for half the year.

    All things being equal, we would rather see the return of the kind of places once run by members of the community, by friends and neighbors, not distant corporate offices uninterested in what the place looks or feels like when they can’t be bothered to keep the lights on. Until that day comes, the village leaders are correct in demanding at least a degree of good citizenship from those who are happy just to harvest summer’s richer fruit.