Record crowds turned out for New Year's Day polar plunges at Main Beach in East Hampton and Beach Lane in Wainscott, helping to raise some $40,000 for local food pantries.

It's a happy new year, indeed, for people in New York who earn minimum wage. New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul announced on Dec. 27 that the minimum wage for Long Islanders will now be $16.

With “Quiet Street,” Nick McDonell has penned the unlikeliest of memoirs, detailing success and more success among the one percenters.

East Hampton Town will have a town administrator for the first time, there will be new members appointed to the planning board, zoning board of appeals, and architectural review board, and a new chairman for the A.R.B. in 2024. 

"It's such a small town, but the history is so vast," the East Hampton Historical Society director said. And he's looking for a place to store it all.

“The Glass Show” at Halsey McKay Gallery features an impressive variety of treatments and uses of the medium by 25 artists.

The Fireside Sessions with Nancy Atlas are back at Bay Street on Saturday, along with Verdi’s “Nabucco” from The Met: Live in HD.

Bill Evans, WLNG’s Emmy-winning meteorologist, is up next in The Church’s Knowledge Friday series, a Tom Petty tribute band will rock the Suffolk in Riverhead, the Cherry Bombs will bring '80s music to Manhattan, and winter gardens are the subject at the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons.

Paul Pavia remembered at Ashawagh Hall, East End artists featured in the city, and Leiber's outside artists come in at Markel.

Brave souls will descend en masse on Main Beach on New Year's Day for the annual Polar Bear Plunge, a bracing event the $40 entry fee of which benefits the East Hampton Food Pantry. There's another plunge, too, off Beach Lane in Wainscott.

Bedell Cellars will host a four-course prix fixe dinner with wine pairings, the Cookery is expanding its GrubHub offerings, and L&W Market trades coffee for used coats.

Best-read man picks 10 best books, for the best year-end list you’ll find.

At the East Hampton Town Board’s final meeting of 2023, there were fond farewells upon the retirement of Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc and Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, and a proclamation for Rebecca Morgan Taylor, the executive director of Project Most, recognizing her nearly two decades of service to the children and families of the town.

Work continues this month on a $1 million New York State effort to prevent wildfire spread at Napeague and Hither Hills State Parks in Amagansett and Montauk.

Coast Guard Station Montauk will soon be without its 87-foot cutter, Bonito, it was revealed at the town board’s Dec. 19 meeting. A personnel shortage is blamed.

Low spawning levels have spurred the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to put forth a comprehensive management plan to rebuild the stocks of striped bass.

Each year, only about 220 students from across New York State schools are selected for the New York State School Music Association’s all-state choir to take part in the festival, which culminates in a performance at the historic Eastman Theater in Rochester. To achieve it once is a capital-A Achievement. East Hampton's Nick Cooper did it twice.

The next children’s theater workshop at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor is an adapation of the classic Disney musical “101 Dalmatians,” kicking off Jan. 20 with a culminating performance on March 16. Plus: kids' movies, video games, sewing club, and more coming up this week.

In this photo from The Star’s archive, N. Sherrill Foster shows a visitor to Clinton Academy a clock that once hung from the Presbyterian Church’s belfry.

Town and village police charged two men with felonies in recent days following separate incidents, one at a house in East Hampton and another in the Reutershan Parking Lot.