Long Island’s Car Free Day is next Thursday, with people encouraged to get around without cars, instead traveling by train, bus, bicycle, subway, on foot, or by car-pooling.

The cocktails will have to wait, but the boat slips are back in business. The Montauk mecca formerly known as Liars’ Saloon, which also was home to the Offshore Sports Marina, has a new sign out front from its new owner, Sam Gershowitz, signaling a new chapter is indeed afoot at 408 West Lake Drive in Montauk.

The food critic and writer Florence Fabricant will serve as a judge of clam chowder entries at the East Hampton Town Trustees’ Largest Clam Contest, which happens on Oct. 9 at noon on the grounds of the Lamb Building on Bluff Road in Amagansett. Those residents entering clams or chowders have been asked to arrive a little before noon.

America’s 9-year-olds “are performing at a level last seen two decades ago,” said Daniel McGrath, the acting associate commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the United States Education Department. His announcement addressed a recent federal study that exposed the devastating effects of Covid-19 on the nation’s schoolchildren.

The basketball court at the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center was redone Sunday — the first step in a much larger plan that’s to include a new gymnasium, an indoor swimming pool, a regulation-size tennis court, and soccer, baseball, and kickball fields on the five-acre Sag Harbor Turnpike property.

Adults and children of all ages have been invited to the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill for this year’s Welcome Day, set for Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m., plus other activities for kids and teens.

Suffolk Health Department officials and environmentalists alike have been keeping an eye on the new, innovative and alternative septic system at the Springs School, hoping it will serve as a model for other large-scale septic systems in the county. Recent test results, as presented at the Sept. 6 Springs School Board meeting, showed that it was headed in a promising direction.

At an East Hampton Village Design Review Board meeting last week, village code was found to be in direct opposition to a state law that sets standards for lighting around automatic teller machines, or A.T.M.s, and the Bank of America branch at 14 Newtown Lane was uncomfortably caught in between.

“The same costs that a lot of people have at home,” such as electricity, fuel, and insurance, have also gone up for the East Hampton Library, Dennis Fabiszak, its director, said this week ahead of the library’s annual budget on Saturday.

The East Hampton Village Board will dedicate the gardens at Home, Sweet Home to Loretta Orion, who died in July.

This is the last weekend of the year that East Hampton Town beaches will have lifeguards. Lifeguards will protect East Hampton Village beaches during weekends until Columbus Day, Oct. 10.

“Todd” was the only identity a man would give when police found him sleeping in the doorway of Stella and Ruby, a children’s clothing store on Main Street in Sag Harbor, last Thursday night. Todd, who said he had come from the city to look for work, was told he couldn’t sleep in the street.

East Hampton Town Justice Court records show several defendants recently paid their fines after being arrested in late August or early September of last year.

Seven men, all of them in their 30s or 40s, were charged last week with drunken driving. One allegedly damaged several pieces of property before being arrested.

An East Meadow woman whose 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee was stopped on Sept. 7 near CVS on Pantigo Road in East Hampton Village for lacking tail lamps and brake lights was later charged with two misdemeanors for driving without a license.

On Sept. 17, 1943, in a time of wartime rationing, Norma Edwards (born 1924) married James A. Corwin (1921-1944) in a small ceremony at the home of Norma’s cousin Mary Louise Dodge. The Rev. Francis Kinsler of the East Hampton Presbyterian Church did the honors.

Mucho reader comment.

Is East Hampton Town unwittingly playing a part in the secretive practice of shielding foreign wealth that may have been obtained improperly?

There is a growing sense that town and village zoning laws are not up to the task of maintaining the region’s character.

For all the boats kept around here, most are idle most of the time.