Villages

    A roomful of people, including East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Theresa Quigley, a town board member, listened on Friday as the East Hampton Village Board voted to reduce the allowable size of real estate and contractor signs from 7 square feet to 18 by 18 inches.

    Local brokers and builders have until at least June 1 to roll out the smaller size, and also to post them parallel to properties, instead of perpendicular.

    Celebrating their 50th anniversary, the Montauk Friends of Erin have a full weekend of activities planned tomorrow through Sunday.

    The annual grand marshal lunch will be tomorrow starting at noon at Gurney’s Inn. Tickets, which can be purchased at the door, cost $40. At the event, Mickey Valcich, this year’s grand marshal, will be roasted and handed his top hat, parade sash, and shillelagh.

    If you see a miniature donkey in these here parts, whether it’s at a parade, on local television, or at a farm day, chances are it’s one of the six small burros owned by a group of women who call themselves the East End Ass Whisperers.

    Barbara Bornstein, a Sagaponack resident who still retains a little of her Alabama twang, said she was the first in the group to get a donkey — her Sicilian burro, Peso. “We were all members of the East End Livestock and Horseman’s Association,” she said on Monday, referring to the group of which the Ass Whisperers are “an offshoot.”

    Passenger ferry service proposed for a route between Sag Harbor and Greenport moved one step closer to reality after the Sag Harbor Village Board decided to schedule a hearing on temporarily lifting a local law that would have prohibited it.

    The 53-person passenger ferry operated by the company that owns Hampton Jitney would run 14 daily loops from Mitchell Park in Greenport to Long Wharf, during a trial period ending Oct. 31.

    It only took five minutes on March 7 for the East Hampton Village Design Review Board to end the East Hampton Library’s nine-year wait for site plan approval so that it can finally begin construction of its new children’s wing.

“All we need now is a building permit,” Dennis Fabiszak, the library’s director, said after the meeting. “That will probably take a couple of weeks.”

    On Sunday after the 10:30 a.m. Mass at St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church in Montauk, a small crowd marched from the church to the parish center across the street to commemorate St. Baldrick’s by shaving or watching others shave their heads to raise money for children’s cancer research.

    Among the brave ones was Simone Monahan, who started the tradition three years ago, and was the only one that first year to work up the courage to trade her long curly locks for a bald head.

    Tomorrow’s East Hampton Village board meeting will offer people a chance to air their opinions on the new proposed law limiting the size of real estate and contractor signs, and two other issues.

    There is life, and even fun, on a winter Thursday evening in Sagaponack in the form of a weekly quiz night at Townline BBQ, according to Alex Prime of East Hampton, who competed last month as a member of the Most Interesting Team in the World.

    Formerly called the Smarty Pints, the team has won “about 40 times,” so far, according to Mr. Prime, who credited his teammate Ted Benjamin with being “the brain of the team.”

    Today marks the 50th anniversary of an event few or many will want to celebrate, depending upon your point of view: the final day of the great northeaster of 1962.

    The Lamb-Baker house at 88 Newtown Lane, which East Hampton Village purchased in 2007 for $1.4 million — and which Robert Hefner, an historic preservation consultant, called “a pretty ambitious Greek Revival-style cottage” — has been sitting unused for several years, but now, the property, perched next to the East Hampton Middle School, is ready to be renovated, Mr. Hefner said at the village board meeting last Thursday.

    About a year ago, John Behan of Montauk, a Marine Corps veteran of the Vietnam War, received a phone call from Tom Morrison, who was also a marine in Vietnam. Mr. Morrison told him that he was the crew chief on the helicopter that picked up Mr. Behan on May 23, 1966, the day he lost both of his legs in battle.

    Nick Kraus emerged the winner of the third annual Mr. Amagansett contest held on Saturday to benefit the Donald T. Sharkey Community Memorial Fund. As the manager of the Stephen Talkhouse, where the event was held, it would seem to some that this was an easy win, but his fiercest competitor was his boss, Peter Honerkamp.

    Last week for Mardi Gras, the East Hampton Town Senior Citizens Center was decked out for the occasion, with masks adorning each table and purple, green, and gold streamers hung from the ceiling. There were beads for all, and the kitchen staff had prepared the traditional king cake, a cinnamon roll with multicolored icing that is a New Orleans specialty.

    It was up to Fighting Chance, a free-of-charge cancer counseling center serving the East End, to help a young cancer patient continue on his chosen path as a composer.

    Sybil Christopher, a founding member of the Bay Street Theatre and its co-artistic director, is stepping down after 20 years.

    Approaching her 83rd birthday next month, Ms. Christopher remains a strong supporter of the Sag Harbor institution, and is staying on as a consultant. But, she said on Tuesday, “I had to decide how I was going to leave — was I going to be carried out feet first?”

    For want of a nail, a shoe was lost. And for want of the exact lumens generated by a light in a parking lot, the plans to break ground on the East Hampton Library’s children’s wing will have to wait another day.

    The room was full to capacity at the East Hampton Village’s Design Review Board meeting on Feb. 15, mostly with supporters — including Tom Twomey, the chairman of the library’s board, and Sheila Rogers, a library trustee — hoping to see a green light at the end of an eight-year tunnel.

    Further discussion about an upcoming change to the laws governing the size of real estate and construction signs was eclipsed at Friday’s East Hampton Village Board meeting by a preliminary talk about placing cameras in the Reutershan parking lot behind Main Street.

    On Jan. 31, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared the Atlantic sturgeon an endangered species. Both industry leaders and fishery regulators oppose the listing, saying it will have a severe impact on a number of fisheries, the near-shore gillnet fisheries for striped bass, bluefish, and monkfish in particular.

    The ongoing saga of the 16-foot “Legs” sculpture on the Lehr-Vered property in Sag Harbor has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New Yfork Times, newspapers in Australia and New Zealand, and on “News 12 Long Island” and the CBS affiliate in New York.

    Now the village’s zoning board of appeals will hold a hearing on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. to determine whether the structure can remain where it stands, at the corner of Madison and Henry Streets.

It’s customary on Valentine’s Day for a husband to give his heart to his wife, but a kidney?

    A request by the Three P. Corporation to add approximately 400 square feet to a 1,400-square-foot contemporary saltbox located on a .1 acre on Collins Avenue was denied by the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals on Friday.

    “It’s just too big,” said John L. McGuirk III, who sits on the board.

    “You’re looking for a variance of almost 30-percent gross floor area,” Andrew Goldstein, the chairman of the zoning board, said. “That’s a substantial variance.”

    What will take place on the downtown green in Montauk on Memorial Day weekend is now up for determination by the East Hampton Town Board. Two groups, the Montauk Artists Association and the Montauk Memorial Committee, have filed applications for gathering permits to use the site for a full weekend of activities.

    “The first thing to make clear is that White’s is going nowhere,” said Hal Zwick, the Devlin McNiff Halstead Properties broker who recently listed the building at 81 Main Street, home to White’s Pharmacy since 1873, for $7.75 million. “The business is going very strong,” Mr. Zwick said.

    On Tuesday, Benito Villa, a founder of the Harborfrost festival, was en route to the Sag Harbor fire marshal’s office to request that ice sculptors be granted last-minute permission to set fire to their sculptures, in keeping with this year’s “Fire and Ice” theme. Also freshly added to this weekend’s lineup — which includes a Grucci fireworks display and live music, in addition to the artwork in ice — was an icy ring toss using glow-in-the-dark necklaces that participants will be encouraged to wear into the evening.

    “The town will be glowing,” Mr. Villa said.

East Hampton Town Councilman Dominick Stanzione got an earful of complaints.

Sitting beside a 20-foot altar set with flowers, bowls of water, crystals, and statues of the Buddha, Gen Nordin guided about 20 students through stages of prayer, silent concentration, and discussion

    David Conlin of Springs was having his cesspool pumped on Jan. 10 when his dog Mookie ran out the back door and fell some 18 feet into the open cesspool.

The new configuration for entering and exiting the Montauk I.G.A. parking lot has locals, the East Hampton Town Police Department, and motel owners perplexed.

More than 100 people turned out for an informational forum at the Bay Street Theatre organized by its management team and members of its board to discuss the theater’s future home last Thursday.

Jonathan Russo of Shelter Island was the winner of the East End Classic Boat Society’s 2011 fund-raising raffle.