125 Years Ago - 1897
From The East Hampton Star, August 6
Amagansett
Complaints are loud and numerous against the bicycle riding on the sidewalks. True, there are those who use great care in passing pedestrians, but every day can be seen those who go along regardless of age, infirmity, or childhood. Within a few days, an old man and a woman have been run into by bicycles. It’s time such ones should be shown their places.
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While many summer resorts on Long Island are losing business on account of the mosquitoes, East Hampton is enjoying perfect freedom from such insects. But that is not unusual. East Hampton has been noted for its immunity from mosquitoes.
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We attended the excursion given the editors of Suffolk County by the Montauk Steamboat Co., to Block Island on Wednesday. Twelve of the County quill drivers responded to the invitation. Our time is so short and the time we had was so big that we shall not attempt to describe it until next week.
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The presentation of the operetta “The Last of the Lorelei,” by a company of children of East Hampton, will occur the week after next. Full particulars will be given in our next issue.
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The full-rigged ship Otto, from Germany, laden with cement and rags, went ashore opposite Sagaponack yesterday morning at 8 o’clock, on a comparatively smooth sea. The patrolmen of the Georgica crew discovered a signal burning over the bar to the westward. The patrolmen answered with torch signal and returned to the station to report. Immediately afterward the Bridge Hampton crew arrived and went to the vessel in their life boat.
75 Years Ago - 1947
From The East Hampton Star, August 7
Sixteen members of the crew of the bunker steamer Stephen W. Mckeever, Jr., owned by the Smith Meal Co. of Promised Land, Amagansett, were arraigned in District Court at Warren, Rhode Island, on Tuesday, on charges of taking fish out of Rhode Island waters. The arrests were made in a test case to determine whether non-resident menhaden interests could be prevented from seining in Narragansett Bay.
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The actor to single out as The Man Most Likely to Succeed in this two weeks’ production at the John Drew Theatre, “The Shape of Things,” is George Hall, a Canadian-born comedian, whose individual style brings back memories of famous comedians of old vaudeville days. George Hall’s comedy is refreshing at a time when few young men are coming on with a brand of real, clean, clowning humor. To see him in his single act, orating on the Old Mother Hubbard, or Little Bo Peep; in the Street Noises act with Larry Baker, as the musician, and Harry Fleer, the doorman, is a treat to most theatre goers. He won recognition in “Call Me Mister,” giving 509 New York performances. He next played Irwin with a road company of “Three Men on a Horse.”
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About forty-five yachts in the harbor and one anchored out in deeper water gave Three Mile Harbor a festive air Tuesday afternoon, when the American Yacht Club’s annual invitation cruise made this port one of the stops in its five-day event. The impressive sight drew numbers of sightseers to the vicinity. The crews stayed overnight and enjoyed a beach party. At 9:00 a.m. yesterday they started on the 16.5-mile race to Fishers Island, where the cruise was concluded.
50 Years Ago - 1972
From The East Hampton Star, August 3
“Now we’ll come to the most pleasant part of the evening,” said Mayor Harry Fick, with rather subdued relish, unleashing the customarily rampant vocality which was to mark Tuesday’s less-than-eventful meeting of the Sag Harbor Village Board.
Charles C. Saunders, the chairman of Sag Harbor’s Commission for Commerce and Industry, was the first to accept the Mayor’s implicit challenge. “I most respectfully want to argue,” he said, “for the reconsideration of your decision to fail to appoint David Lee to the commission. . . .”
Mr. Lee, president of the Merchants’ Association of Sag Harbor, had asserted at a previous Board meeting that he had been kept off the Commission because the Mayor hated him.
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Montauk Fish Notes
The Helen II went bluefishing in the Race last week, and took a group of divers to the wreck of a submarine off Block Island on Saturday. They reported that the submarine, which lies in about 150 feet of water, was interesting to explore, and that it had a good concentration of cod and pollack on it.
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Beach-goers who may have wondered Saturday just what it was that was not enough, once, as heralded on a banner towed by a passing aircraft, may relax. “Once Is Not Enough” is the title of Jacqueline Susann’s new book, to be published in the spring by William Morrow and Company.
Miss Susann, author of the best-selling “The Love Machine,” was here for the weekend; the message, a birthday surprise, appropriately startled her as she was having a drink at the Sea Spray Inn on the dunes.
Later Saturday, she was the guest of honor at a Hampton Waters cocktail party, given by Sherry Arden and attended by a number of publishing-world figures.
25 Years Ago - 1997
From The East Hampton Star, August 7
In late-night sessions over the weekend, the New York State Legislature approved a bill allowing East Hampton to put a real estate transfer tax referendum on the November ballot. If the voters say yes, East Hampton could become the first town in the state with a dedicated fund for open space, farmland, and historic preservation, built from a 2-percent tax on high-priced real estate sales.
First, however, the bill has one final hurdle to clear. Gov. George E. Pataki needs to sign the legislation, which appears to have broad-based support. The State Senate passed the bill almost unanimously, while passage in the State Assembly was by a two-thirds majority.
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Even as the Teamsters president, Ron Carey, took his strike message on the road yesterday, and United Parcel Service customers all over the country began scrambling for other ways to send packages, most business owners on the South Fork had not yet felt the need to panic.
“One week is the limit. After that, my sense of humor is going to start disappearing,” said Pat Mansir, who runs the J.C. Penney catalogue showroom in East Hampton.
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Sag Harbor has become a decidedly busier village this summer, with throngs of visitors spilling off Main Street, their cars seemingly parked on every available square inch along side streets.
On Tuesday, a group of 25 residents, who said the arrival of three new popular nightspots this season — Boom Bistro and Chili Peppers on Water Street and the Harbor House on Bridge Street — had shattered their peace and quiet, told the Village Board, “Enough already.”
Mayor Pierce Hance, urging patience and persistence, said the village would respond to the complaints. He told residents to continue to make noise complaints to police. “We have to document the problems you have,” he said.
