Villages

Regular East Hampton Town beachgoers may notice a big change this week: the closure of many lifeguard stands.

This invitation to the 1973 Ladies Village Improvement Society Horse Show feels particularly timely considering this year's Hampton Classic Horse Show starts Sunday.

"We joke and say it's the world's second oldest profession," said Ike Birdsall, owner of Birdsall's Hotshoe, a farrier based in Sag Harbor. Farriers, who tend to horse hooves, are an essential but unheralded segment of the $122 billion horse industry, and the job hasn't changed substantially since 400 B.C. when the earliest horseshoes were made.

The 46th weeklong Hampton Classic Horse Show, one of just nine five-star-rated shows in the country, is to begin at the 60-acre Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds on Sunday at 8 a.m. with leadline classes for children judged by Joe Fargis, an Olympic gold medalist, in the Grand Prix ring.

The subcontractor that will perform the onshore cable installation for the South Fork Wind farm plans to use an approximately one-acre area at the end of an abandoned East Hampton Airport runway, adjacent to Industrial Road in Wainscott, as a laydown area. 

This early photograph shows a group of people in the surf, identified as “Maidstone Club Bathers,” with the esteemed Dr. Everett Herrick in the middle of it all.

A seemingly routine request for a new crosswalk at the Amber Waves market, the hugely popular farm market just west of the Amagansett Firehouse, set off a series of increasingly testy exchanges at the August meeting of the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee.

From an 1897 sidewalk outrage to a 1997 conflict between beachgoers and beach drivers, the news of yore rivets.

Concerned Citizens of Montauk, which monitors enterococcus bacteria and blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, levels in local waters, has issued a warning about rising levels of the latter in Fort Pond in Montauk, which the group has been monitoring since June.

Despite the confusion and tragedy of American life in 2022, they somehow return each spring; like flying foil-wrapped gifts come to life. And now, as early as this week, the males will depart from our area to begin their largely daytime migrations south. This is one of the most entertaining weeks to “feeder watch,” as they defend their last sips.

On Saturday night well after hours, when most lifeguards are home and dry, Thomas Casse was at a dinner party at the Montauk Shores Condominiums just east of Ditch Plain when another attendee, Sophie Walton, first heard a faint cry for help.

It's news that neither a commercial bayman nor those who enjoy bay scallops wanted to hear: For the fourth summer in a row, there has been a significant die-off of mature bay scallops in local waters.

“It was Black gold and soul all in one place,” said Suzan Johnson-Cook, one of several honorees at a Saturday gala at the Bridgehampton Community House to celebrate 75 years of Azurest, a historically Black resort community in Sag Harbor. Her sentiments were echoed by many and highlighted the rich and resonant history of Azurest, one of three communities that comprise the so-called “SANS” enclave that also includes Sag Harbor Hills and Ninevah Beach.

A complaint over an inundation of bicycles in 1897, a 1922 film shoot that had the dunes of Napeague substitute for a Middle East desert, and more from the old-time pages of The Star.

This engaging, relatable photograph shows a group of young adults posed in front of a tent, presumably camping at Montauk.

A recent water-quality report from Concerned Citizens of Montauk identified dangerously high levels of the enterococcus bacteria at the East Creek area of Lake Montauk — but the cause remains a mystery.

Peter Gundersen, a son of Martha and Peter Gundersen of Amagansett, married Samantha Haney, a California native and daughter of Jane and Keith Haney of Gulf Breeze, Fla., on April 16 in Pensacola, Fla. 

Just because there is flat water doesn’t mean lifeguards can relax. It was a green-flag day up at Maidstone Park last Thursday when lifeguards needed to call in a Jet Ski for assistance for a father and son who were swimming in the calm waters but got too close to the jetty on an incoming tide, according to John Ryan Jr., chief of the East Hampton Town’s lifeguards.

“Trees at Sunset,” a 1931 painting by Renwick Taylor, has returned to Long Island after many years and will be temporarily exhibited at the Amagansett Library. The painting is a decorative landscape created during Taylor’s residence at Laurelton Hall, Louis Comfort Tiffany’s estate near Oyster Bay.

East Hampton Town closed Amagansett ocean beaches to swimming around 2 p.m. Wednesday after a surfcaster caught a six-foot spinner shark, and East Hampton Village followed suit, closing all five of its beaches to swimming. 

Controversial bicycle riding on the Amagansett sidewalks of 1897. A citizens’ revolt over the number of tourists clogging Sag Harbor in 1997. And more ripped from the pages of The Star.

This drawing is for the Frederic Gallatin House, designed in 1877 and constructed by 1878. It was considered one of the grandest "Stick Style" houses in East Hampton.

Sam Gershowitz, an UpIsland recycling magnate who owns the Star Island Yacht Club in Montauk, is the new owner of Liars' Saloon and the Offshore Sports Marina on West Lake Drive in Montauk.

Dramatic rescues may grab the most attention, but lifeguards in East Hampton Town and Village save more swimmers each week than the average beachgoer might realize.

Kristofer Kalas, the owner of Hello Oma, a farm stand and coffee shop on Race Lane in East Hampton, was wearing board shorts and walking barefoot across the street last week, with a sleeve of ice over one shoulder. It's hard to imagine a greater contrast from where he was just a month ago, in a war zone in Ukraine.

Affordable housing is a problem not just here, but nationwide, so it makes sense, especially given its size, that a 79-unit complex with housing above and retail space below proposed for downtown Sag Harbor is generating spirited conversation and debate. Some see it as welcome housing, others say its more of a "shopping mall with an affordable housing component."

"For the first time ever in the village's history, we've been given an AAA rating by Moody's," said East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen at Friday's village board meeting. The village's former credit rating was Aa1, the second-highest rating possible.

A year after a group of preservation-minded citizens successfully endeavored to dismantle and preserve the historic Little House on Wainscott Hollow Road, a new organization, the Wainscott Heritage Project, has emerged with an expansive vision and hopes that it will be able to carve out a historic district in the hamlet similar to those in Springs, Amagansett, and Montauk.

Blooms of toxic cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, have been confirmed in Sagg Pond in Sagaponack. 

The Suffolk County Water Authority declared a Stage 1 water emergency on Tuesday and is asking its customers across the East End to stop irrigation between midnight and 7 a.m., limit their shower times, and "refrain from all nonessential water usage."