Across America, community is built around the simple act of getting a fade or flat top — and stories among men are shared as freely as the clippings of hair that fall after the snip, snip of the scissors. On the South Fork, the professionals who cut hair have tales of their own to tell.

Dubbed the “Save Montauk’s Waters” campaign, the plans to help the beleaguered water body were equal parts education and action. “The ultimate goal of this study is solid, evidence-backed recommendations for remediation of toxic blue-green algae and pathogenic bacteria in the pond, that will be cost effective and long lasting,” said Rebecca Holloway, Concerned Citizens of Montauk’s manager of environmental advocacy.

Bruce Collins was a pilot and co-captain on a bunker steamer and shrimp trawlers in the 1950s. He took a camera. The images he created of a lost working-man's life along the eastern and southern coastline are not just invaluable as social history, but stunning in their artistic merit.

The “apparent decline in our civil liberties and the unusual and extraordinary accretion of executive power that we’ve seen since Donald Trump was inaugurated” were considered with a mixture of gloom and optimism alongside denunciations of the conservative majority on the United States Supreme Court and a spirited call for citizen action to defend democracy at “Guardrails on Democracy,” the first Hamptons Institute discussion of the 2025 season.