Villages

After 35 years as a mainstay on Sag Harbor’s Main Street, Sylvester & Co. will close its doors for the last time next week.

“There’s been some pretty significant glimmers of hope — only to have our hopes dashed again,” Peconic Baykeeper’s executive director, Pete Topping, said at the start of a panel discussion the group hosted in December on this year's scallop season and prospects for the future.

This still image from a 1988 video from the LTV Archive features a spoof by the artist Robert Janz, as he tries to draw a clock face on a timepiece in motion.

The Sag Harbor Village Zoning Board of Appeals voted on Dec. 17 to close a public hearing on the planned expansion of the restaurant Page at 63 Main Street, plans that involve the use of the second floor. The village attorney will draft a decision to be voted on.

David Brandman and the Artists and Writers Softball Game’s impresario, Leif Hope, recently handed out $10,000 checks to four beneficiaries — the Eleanor Whitmore Center, the Retreat, Phoenix House, and East End Hospice.

The developer Jeremy Morton’s proposed renovations for the K Pasa and former 7-Eleven buildings in Sag Harbor took another step forward last month, with more review ahead.

A 38-foot adult female humpback whale washed up on the shore at Napeague State Park in Amagansett on Dec. 17, but according to Joanne Biegert, a representative of the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society, because of the whale's advanced state of decomposition the organization cannot determine a cause of death. 

In October, Craig Berkoski and Andrew Drake ran a legendary Grand Canyon route known as a "rite of passage" for ultra runners. The so-called Rim to Rim to Rim trail involves descending 4,500 feet down the South Rim, crossing the canyon floor and the Colorado River, and then running up the nearly 8,000-foot North Rim, and back. 

“It’s an issue that we continually have to manage and rethink,” Sag Harbor Village Mayor Thomas Gardella said at a parking workshop on Dec. 16. “We also have to consider the overall character of our village as we move forward with this.”

Cold, still, quiet, and clear conditions marked the morning of the Audubon Christmas Bird Count in Montauk on Dec. 14. The cold proved challenging, if not for the groups of birders in search of birds, then certainly for the birds.

This photo from The Star’s archive once belonged to Catherine Osterberg Kelsey Richard. It shows a Christmas party for children on Dec. 19, 1948, at the Star of the East Masonic Lodge downtown.

The water was 24 degrees at Clearwater Beach in Springs at 8 a.m. on the morning of Dec. 13, when around a dozen people gathered to jump into Gardiner’s Bay for their weekly cold-water swim. The group is called the Clearwater Coldwater Club, and it began meeting in September, after Suzanne Sandbank, who moved to Springs three years ago, got everybody together.

Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s freestanding emergency department on Pantigo Road in East Hampton is almost ready to open its doors to the South Fork’s easternmost residents in need of immediate care.

Golf’s popularity, stone revetments, and Plum Island — ’twas ever thus, Starlings.

The Huntting Inn, stung after the East Hampton Village Z.B.A. declined to approve its application for a pool, spa, and patio, is asking the Suffolk County Supreme Court to overturn the decision and looking to be awarded $5 million.

For Serge Pierro of Shelter Island, a teacher of guitar lessons and designer of original tabletop games, his latest project speaks to his appreciation for his home of 19 years and counting. Called Shelter Island Experience, it’s a card game that showcases the “nuances of what makes life on Shelter Island so special and unique.”

Plungers will be “freezin’ for a reason” at ocean beaches in East Hampton Village and Wainscott on New Year’s Day, their mad dashes into the frigid surf arguably motivated by desires for personal renewal and for their fellow citizens’ well-being, inasmuch as the proceeds from the usually very well-attended events go to food pantries in Sag Harbor and East Hampton Town.

“It’s not like I went to the moon or anything, but it’s something I did that was pretty cool when I was 10 years old,” Billy Strong said, before objecting to someone else “taking credit” for a 1976 "Jaws"-inspired prank at Town Pond.

It’s fitting that the winner of East Hampton’s first Holiday Spirit storefront-decorating contest should be a business known for having fascinating windows: The Monogram Shop on Newtown Lane has made national headlines not for its holiday décor but for the tally of political cup sales that, in election cycles past, has been a notoriously accurate predictor of presidential outcomes. The window cup count was wrong in November, but the window display in December is, according to a panel of judges, oh so right.

Bridgehampton’s Ernestine Rose, an important figure in the history of the New York Public Library, championed preserving Black culture through the Schomburg Collection.

From 1949 water worries on the eve of massive Long Island development to the small triumph of halting gun sales at the Bridgehampton Kmart, it happened here, news junkies.

Pitch Your Peers, a charitable effort launched here in 2023 by Brooke Bohnsack, has awarded a $35,000 grant to the Springs Food Pantry and a $10,000 grant to Project Most, the organization announced on Dec. 1.

This photograph, taken in 1996, shows the ice house on the grounds of the L.V.I.S. after its rehabilitation.

The Diocese of Rockville Centre’s $323 million settlement in the bankruptcy case connected to a flood of lawsuits concerning child sexual abuse in its parishes stretching as far back as the 1950s was approved yesterday by Judge Martin Glenn of the Southern District of New York Bankruptcy Court.

It’s not the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade yet, but what is now dubbed Santafest seems to be growing year by year in East Hampton Village. This year it will take place on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the parade will feature its first grand marshal, John Ryan Sr.

Georgia Bennett and Evan Fox were married on Sept. 28 at the Hedges Inn in East Hampton, with one of the bride’s uncles officiating and another performing on trumpet.

Kirby Marcantonio doesn’t always read East magazine, but he happened to pick up the Thanksgiving issue last week. Flipping through the pages, he found an illustration that looked familiar: a shark flopping around in Town Pond.

The spotted lanternfly, after making its first appearance on the South Fork last fall, continued its eastward march in 2024, with the fancy-looking insects showing up in every trap placed here by the Town of East Hampton.

A historian’s frank comment from 1924 on the distinct lack of piety in Sag Harbor’s founders. And more from The Star’s pages of yore.

Stephen Deckoff, the billionaire founder of the private equity firm Black Diamond Capital Management, and his son, Stephen E. Deckoff, are no longer simply longtime visitors to Montauk aboard their yacht. They are officially the new owners of Gosman’s Dock and several surrounding properties, acquiring the set for just over $34.35 million in October.