East Magazine

If there’s a way to be here and not here at the same time — like a ghost you can hear laughing, or a well-dressed omniscient narrator — Mike Lavin has figured it out. A photographer and filmmaker, podcast engineer and videographer, Lavin has been building a name for himself as the talent behind the camera that has captured some of today’s hottest comedy and rap stars.

There is an artifact that is now housed in the Long Island Collection at the East Hampton Library — framed, and hung on the wall behind protective glass — that dates back 323 years. It measures just under four-and-a-half inches long and less than half that high.  It is only a small fragment of cloth, woven of silk, cotton, and metallic gold and silver thread. Yet, this remarkable remnant of sumptuous silk is the very stuff of pirate legend. 

As all good foodies (and school kids on field trips) know, apple-picking time is upon us. Nina Dohanos speaks to a farmer for tips on choosing, storing, and cooking East End apples — the best apples on God's green earth.

Sometimes time telescopes and a personage from one epoch appears in a contemporary context causing cognitive dissonance: Harriet Tubman, for example, lived until the age of the Model T Ford. And so it was perhaps with some puzzlement, if not awe, that Hamptons art-world habitués must have regarded the Ukrainian poet and painter David Burliuk, the “Father of Russian Futurism,” when he appeared in the somewhat poky-prosaic setting of art openings at Guild Hall at midcentury.

Hot cars have always raced between the hedges on Hamptons roads. But a few special societal factors — from the aging of Boomers and Gen X to the idle hours of the Covid-19 pandemic — have coincided to create a moment when demand for a classic Porsche, Cadillac, or Model “A” is outstripping supply. EAST investigates an obsession

The bobwhite makes both a song and question with its name. This is appropriate, since questions abound about this bird. Long Island is at the northern edge of the bobwhite range, but they have disappeared. Where did they go? Will they come back? Locals haven’t heard their familiar song for decades. Even its name —  northern bobwhite, bobwhite, common bobwhite, quail, or partridge — is tensile and open to interpretation.

Most would agree that Dora Frost, unmarried and unburdened by children, is a true 21st-century woman. At 71, Frost still paints daily in her West Palm Beach studio and posts an artistic offering a day on Instagram, to the delight of her followers. 

Samantha French's subjects are clearly not lounging poolside, but on a beach. It’s a moment that we recognize, here in our beach town: We know they know one-another intimately;  a pair of sisters, perhaps, lifting their eyes from their books as they talk, while the boyfriend’s attention is elsewhere?

For decades, East Enders feeling the pinch from out-of-control real estate prices have felt the pull of Riverhead’s affordability, but declined to go west: “It’s a great price,” they’d say, “but it’s in Riverhead.” Now, however, people who have spent decades on the South Fork are increasingly finding shelter in Riverhead and loving it so much that the narrative is starting to change.

Part art studio and gallery, part boutique and café, Poppy Heart in Montauk is just one of those places with feel-good energy all around.

Once upon a time on the East End, grown-ups hosted or attended dinner parties every single week. For the parents of Nina Dohanos — a Sag Harbor food blogger and accomplished home cook, herself — that meant dreaming up more than 100 dinner parties back in the 1970s. Using a family notebook as her guide, she re-created a marvelous meal from the summer of 1973, down to the heirloom checkered tablecloth...

These horses aren’t here anymore. But you might remember them? They used to live at Cove Hollow, gamboling and grazing in the green meadow of the farm on your left as you drive into East Hampton Village, a glimpse of an agricultural past that some of us make a point of quickly turning to glance at — a split-second hit, a micro-respite from the modern day — before we turn back to cursing the crowds and the nagging of the iPhone alerts and the price of gas.