Villages

    Labor Day may have passed, but big plans are still in store for Shelter Island, and for good cause. The Rock’s annual fund-raising Beach Blast is set for Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday morning, it’s the charitable bicycle Spur Ride.

    The blast and barbecue is all-important this year to the Island Gift of Life, with last year’s event called off due to strong winds and a storm threat.

    With a deadline nearing in two weeks, the East Hampton Town Board must make a final decision about what it wants the Army Corps of Engineers to do about the Montauk Harbor inlet.

    The corps is set to dredge the inlet to provide safer navigation, but there are several options as to how to proceed. Federal funds would fully cover the least ambitious plan — to maintain the status quo by dredging to a 12-foot depth and 150-foot width in the channel, with a 50-foot wide “deposition basin” at the east side, to collect sand that would otherwise cause shoaling.

    Sag Harbor’s HarborFest, which began 50 years ago as the Old Whalers Festival, will celebrate its golden anniversary this year with a three-day glorification of all things nautical, as well as tastes of Sag Harbor food, music, and history.

    Competitive whaleboat races, the festival’s claim to fame, will go on all weekend, launched from Windmill Beach, with the winner crowned there on Sunday afternoon.

    Margaret M. Ciechanowski, M.D., of Glen Ridge, N.J., and George J. Ciechanowski, M.D., of Lake Hopatcong, N.J., have announced the engagement of their daughter Tesia Eva Ciechanowski to Timothy Joseph Henn, a son of Marie T. Gallagher and Joseph G. Henn of Darien, Conn., and East Hampton.

    While temperatures topped 90 degrees on four days in July, August was “considerably on the cool side,” Richard G. Hendrickson reported from Bridgehampton. “In all my years of keeping weather records, this has been one of the coolest Augusts. There was only one day, on the 2nd, when it reached 91 degrees, the highest for the month. In fact, it was only 80 or higher on 14 days. A cool, cool August.”

    Mr. Hendrickson, who turned 101 on Monday, has been a United States Cooperative weather observer since he was a teenager.

    The Montauk Seafood Festival will have its inaugural launch on the weekend of Sept. 21 at the Montauk Marine Basin on West Lake Drive from noon to 5 p.m.

    The two-day event will be held under a tent near the Hula Hut and have nonstop music by three bands, food from at least 12 local restaurants, a snapper derby, goldfish races, and fish printing and airbrush painting on T-shirts and hats. In addition to seafood there will be burgers and hot dogs for the landlubbers.

    Bivalves got a brief respite this week after the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation early yesterday ordered East End bays and harbors closed to all shellfish harvesting following heavy downpours in Tuesday’s thunderstorms.

    The order covered enclosed water bodies from Moriches Bay in the Town of Brookhaven east to Lake Montauk and will remain in place until the D.E.C. announces that unsafe conditions have dissipated.

    While public libraries everywhere are adapting more or less effectively to the many challenges posed by the technological revolution, the East Hampton Library — known not so very long ago for its dusty stacks, once-a-year book sales, and “Shhh, quiet, please” admonitions — is fast becoming a pacesetter among its peers. Not only is it keeping up with digital change, it is running a step or two ahead.

   Four days of performances, exhibitions, demonstrations, and food will kick off at 3 p.m. tomorrow at the 67th annual Shinnecock Reservation powwow, one of the largest in the country. Over 100 tribes and 100 vendors will be on hand.

    Activities include native drumming and dance performances, an art display, crafts, food, raffles, and fire lighting at sunset. Contests will be held with $50,000 in prize money.

    Page at 63 Main, a restaurant in Sag Harbor, took a giant leap Tuesday toward the establishment of a backyard seating garden there. A permit approval of the newest site plan is expected at the village planning board’s next meeting, on Sept. 24.

    Previously, Neil Slevin, the chairman of the planning board, had serious concerns about the plan by Gerard Wawryk, the restaurant’s owner, to eliminate a driveway off Division Street, at the rear of the Main Street eatery, to make room for a courtyard where customers could take food and drinks purchased inside.

    The East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals heard emotional appeals from two residents who spoke on separate applications before it on Friday.

    Don Horowitz, a co-owner of Wittendale’s Florist and Greenhouses on Newtown Lane in East Hampton, took more than a wealth of knowledge home from the Cornell Floriculture Field Day, held Aug. 13 at the Bluegrass Lane Horticultural Research Facility in Ithaca, N.Y. He also brought back a medal, awarded for his winning entry in the Kathy Pufahl Container Design Competition.

    In its first meeting of the new fiscal year, the East Hampton Village Board considered and quickly adopted three laws aimed at tightening existing regulations and reducing vehicular traffic on Huntting Lane, and fielded a request for new signage regarding pets in cars.

    The Springs Fisherman’s Fair is taking place Saturday on the grounds of Ashawagh Hall and the nearby library and Parson’s Blacksmith Shop.

The longstanding annual event will offer food booths, with homemade jams and jellies, a bake sale, hot dogs and corn on the cob, and seafood delicacies including mussels and clam pies, as well an opportunity to buy produce and other items from Springs Farmers Market vendors.

    The Long Island Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Network will open its first East End center  at the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor on Saturday.

    The G.L.B.T. center will offer year-round programs for students, adults, and families, and it has been predicted that over 1,000 East End residents will participate within the next year.

    The Montauk Village Association, which is responsible for the flowering plants sprinkled about the hamlet, including those in the trees, is getting ready for its annual Greenery Scenery party. It will be held at the Montauk Lake Club on Aug. 16 from 6 to 9 p.m. Mickey Valcich Vanessa Trouble and the Red Hot Swing will provide the music, and the event will include a live auction and dinner. Tickets are on sale at $125 per person. Mickey Valcich is this year’s honoree.

    On July 14, Lenny Ackerman, whose wife faced life-threatening heart complications last year, held a celebration at his house in honor of the Stony Brook University Hospital staff who cared for her during her medical journey.

    East Hampton Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. announced Monday the village board’s adoption of a bicycle policy that aims to create a safer environment for cyclists and pedestrians. This followed the board’s vote to adopt the “General Principles for Introducing Bike Lanes in East Hampton Village” at its fiscal year-ending meeting of July 31.

    The mayor’s statement described the policy as a template in which “the village commits to do the utmost in working with the cycling community” to ensure safe roadways.

    The Amagansett Presbyterian Church, founded in 1860, will hold its 100th annual summer fair on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the church grounds.

    If you are looking for some deep thoughts after your beach time, the Watermill Center’s lecture series may have something to offer. 

        Tonight at 7:30 it continues with “A Parallel Universe: Alternatives to Conventional Performance Spaces.” In a multimedia presentation, Victoria Newhouse will discuss unconventional spaces being used for operas and concerts and how they compare to more traditional venues.

    The Village of East Hampton has started an effort to comply with the federal Americans With Disabilities Act, which it incorporated into its code in 2005.

Topping the weekend’s agenda here in the village must be the Ladies Village Improvement Society fair on Saturday, the organization’s 117th, by the way. The gates at 95 Main Street open at 10 a.m. One can also enter via a gate in Herrick Park near the basketball courts.

All the usual attractions, including for the young ones, games, a carousel, a petting zoo, pony rides, and children’s authors are being prepared. For adults there will be vintage goods, select highquality clothing, plants, and a range of raffle items. Food choices will range from hot dogs to gourmet.

    Larry Cantwell, the Democratic and Independence Party candidate for East Hampton Town supervisor, will lead a Montauk “listen in” with his Democratic running mates, Job Potter and Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, on Monday at 6:45 p.m. at Gurney’s Inn. They have invited residents to discuss their concerns about the hamlet and share ideas for what town government can to improve things.

    This will be the second in a series such events the candidates are holding in East Hampton Town’s various hamlets. It will begin with refreshments, with discussion slated to run from 7 to 9 p.m.

    Dennis Downes, the attorney representing the restaurant Page at 63 Main, returned to the Sag Harbor Village Planning Board on Tuesday evening with threats and photographs in response to an ongoing discussion of the restaurant’s request to renovate the rear of its property to create a courtyard for takeout food and drink.

    The area is currently used for Dumpsters and a driveway.

    In an ongoing attempt to encourage more people to use the ocean beach at Kirk Park in Montauk, East Hampton Town officials have embarked on a restoration project there. The plan is to widen the beach’s main sandy path across the street from the parking lot, where parking was made free last year, reduced from a $10 fee for those without East Hampton Town resident parking permits.

    The path will be widened and clearly defined with wooden slats over the sand. Rope railings, nautical in style, will help senior citizens and others unsteady on their feet.

    Jeffrey M. Smith, a leading consumer advocate for non-genetically engineered foods, will be the keynote speaker at a preventive health and sustainable technology expo this weekend at the Dodds and Eder store at 11 Bridge Street in Sag Harbor.

    General admission tickets, at $25, will include a screening of a documentary, “Genetic Roulette: The Gamble of Our Lives,” based on Mr. Smith’s best-selling book, on Sunday at 1 p.m. A question-and-answer session will follow.

    An informational meeting on the future of police service in Sagaponack and a hearing on limiting yard sales to one per year were scheduled on Monday at a meeting of the village board. The board has been discussing the cost of its contract with the Southampton Town Police Department for some time. “I think it’s time for us to make a decision,” Mayor Donald Louchheim said on Monday.

The Great Bonac Fireworks Show, an annual event at Three Mile Harbor in East Hampton, will take place on Saturday, beginning at about 9:15 p.m.

    Weekend access to public bathrooms at the Sag Harbor Municipal Building was on Nada Barry’s mind when she spoke to the Sag Harbor Village Board on July 9, hoping that new board members might listen to her pleas. By Tuesday, a few possible solutions were on the table, according to Kelly Connaughton, president of the village’s Chamber of Commerce.

    Ms. Barry, a co-owner of the Wharf Shop, joined Ms. Connaughton and Robert Evjen to represent chamber members at a meeting on the subject with the village trustees Ken O’Donnell and Robby Stein.

    It seems as if someone has been taking it upon him or herself to remove no-parking signs from a stretch along the south and north sides of Industrial Road in Montauk. The signs were posted two years ago to prevent patrons of the Surf Lodge from parking their vehicles on the environmentally sensitive strip of land that borders Fort Pond on the south and a smaller pond on the north.