East Magazine

Editor’s Note: To protect the identity and privacy of individuals the author knew when he was involved in the group in question, members’ names have been changed. East reached out to Sharon Gans and the School, but they declined to comment.

Michael Combs was going to be a plumber, or perhaps work on a New York City tugboat, like his dad. He was learning plumbing in high school in the 1980s in Greenport, and a skill in the trades promised job security and income. He’d grown up among baymen, market gunners, and hunting guides — hunters, foragers, and fishermen, many of whom were also, by need and nature, artists: decoy-carvers, lure-makers, self-sufficient men and women who could fix or build most anything. Young Combs watched and learned.

An action list for every household on the East End. Because, duh!, it’s time to take personal responsibility for the climate emergency

Gigging (or spearfishing) — a primordial method for nabbing eels and all sorts of other briny creatures — requires no special skills and just a few basic pieces of equipment. David Gibbons tries his hand with Kerry Heffernan, the celebrated chef, as guide.

As psychedelics gain scientific traction for their healing properties, enthusiasts are diving into enlightenment at weekend retreats by the beach. Sophie Griffin, a young writer, ran into tripping tourism on her spring break, and she had a few questions.

When was the last time you had something fixed? Reupholstered a chair? Brought a dress to be hemmed? Had an old stereo rewired? To someone born after 1985, these efforts can feel antiquated, effortful, slow. The kinds of chore we might think about but will never really get around to doing — like getting car tires rotated. We know we should, but it’s just not that pressing. Who has the time? And where would you even go?

Let’s all raise a glass to the Sunfish, that nearly ubiquitous icon of the American shoreline, a single-sail fiberglass boat that has glided, bounced, carried young love, and, often, flipped across lakes, harbors, and bays since the early 1950s.

East Hampton Village, 8:30 A.M. — Patricia ‘Pat’ Ryan makes her way down Dayton Lane, gently tugging on the thin red leash of her 14-year-old Cocker Spaniel, Lucy, who trots happily beside her. It’s a bright June morning and she is on her way to pick up a copy of The East Hampton Star, as he has every Thursday for almost fifty years. 

When a crowd gathers for the commencement of an event greater than itself, something like magic happens.  The relighting of the old Sag Harbor Cinema sign this past Memorial Day weekend was such a moment. So was the clear April day in 2007 when onlookers lined Pantigo Road to watch several 18th-century buildings carried down the road on trucks to become East Hampton’s  new Town Hall. These gatherings tend to evoke another era, when commemorations and celebrations were more abundant, from the moon landings to bicentennial parades of tall ships in harbors.

Every Tuesday, hundreds of people snake into the East Hampton Food Pantry’s small building off Pantigo Road to receive their share from tables laden with fresh fruits and vegetables, frozen chopped venison and other meats, milk, and baked goods. This scene is repeated at some nine food pantries from Hampton Bays to Montauk that feed upward of 3,000 people a week.

It took almost six years, but Adam Younes checked every conceivable box on the path to becoming a successful independent aquaculture farmer.

Undergraduate business degree from New York University, check. Graduate degree in marine and atmospheric sciences from Stony Brook, check. Aquaculture classes, check. Firsthand experience working at a shellfish hatchery, check.

In 1955, a 14-year-old babysitter was abducted from a summer house and raped by a masked stranger. Bizarrely, an intruder by the same description returned days later to the same house, terrifying a second babysitter. Despite a vast manhunt, the case went cold. But not long ago, a witness who grew up haunted by what she saw returned to East Hampton seeking answers.

With its open vistas of brown furrows, then low green plants dotted with white flowers running in parallel lines to the horizon, Bridgehampton used to be famous not for movie stars and mansions, but for potatoes. Today, the Wesnofske clan holds on against all odds: a squeeze on farmable land, the increasing difficulty of getting to market, and the deeper question of who will carry on.

With a third of all fish mislabeled at the point of sale, it’s time for us, the consumers, to become more proactive in checking the sources of our seafood.

The story of how your tilapia ended up swimming in basil and wine on your dinner plate is probably a more convoluted journey than Finding Dory's. But, as the concept of buying local expands to embrace seafood, it doesn't have to be that way. On an express trip from the ocean off Montauk Point to Nick and Toni's, Carissa Katz traces a few pounds of premium black sea bass.

Round Swamp Farm has become a mecca, from May to December, for anyone who embraces locally sourced food and loves home cooking (home cooking, that is, with a sophisticated twist). And the successful business has preserved a fishing and farming way of life for a family whose roots have grown here on land and sea for three centuries.

HE WORKS OBSESSIVELY every night, often till the sun comes over his compound: the farthest-out home on Long Island’s South Fork. Hours later, after a restless sleep, Peter Beard walks out to the edge of the bluff, sits on a boulder, and watches the birds wheel and keen over the sea. “I always feel better,” he says, “when I’ve done a bit of this.”

HE HAS ONE of the last great farms in the Hamptons, 33 acres in Wainscott north of old Main Street, and he is, in fact, East Hampton's last bona fide potato farmer. Strong and healthy at 58, Peter Dankowski plans to work those acres —and 400 more that he leases between Mecox and Amagansett —another decade or so. But at some point, he'll have to sell, and when he does, he fears farming here will cease.

Even as EAST observes and celebrates this region as it is today, we are rooted in the past. We intend for EAST to stand out as the magazine for people who feel easternmost Long Island is home - could be your only or your second or third home, but home.