Villages

East Hampton Town closed Amagansett ocean beaches to swimming around 2 p.m. Wednesday after a surfcaster caught a six-foot spinner shark, and East Hampton Village followed suit, closing all five of its beaches to swimming. 

Affordable housing is a problem not just here, but nationwide, so it makes sense, especially given its size, that a 79-unit complex with housing above and retail space below proposed for downtown Sag Harbor is generating spirited conversation and debate. Some see it as welcome housing, others say its more of a "shopping mall with an affordable housing component."

Dramatic rescues may grab the most attention, but lifeguards in East Hampton Town and Village save more swimmers each week than the average beachgoer might realize.

"For the first time ever in the village's history, we've been given an AAA rating by Moody's," said East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen at Friday's village board meeting. The village's former credit rating was Aa1, the second-highest rating possible.

Kristofer Kalas, the owner of Hello Oma, a farm stand and coffee shop on Race Lane in East Hampton, was wearing board shorts and walking barefoot across the street last week, with a sleeve of ice over one shoulder. It's hard to imagine a greater contrast from where he was just a month ago, in a war zone in Ukraine.

Sam Gershowitz, an UpIsland recycling magnate who owns the Star Island Yacht Club in Montauk, is the new owner of Liars' Saloon and the Offshore Sports Marina on West Lake Drive in Montauk.

This drawing is for the Frederic Gallatin House, designed in 1877 and constructed by 1878. It was considered one of the grandest "Stick Style" houses in East Hampton.

A year after a group of preservation-minded citizens successfully endeavored to dismantle and preserve the historic Little House on Wainscott Hollow Road, a new organization, the Wainscott Heritage Project, has emerged with an expansive vision and hopes that it will be able to carve out a historic district in the hamlet similar to those in Springs, Amagansett, and Montauk.

Controversial bicycle riding on the Amagansett sidewalks of 1897. A citizens’ revolt over the number of tourists clogging Sag Harbor in 1997. And more ripped from the pages of The Star.

Blooms of toxic cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, have been confirmed in Sagg Pond in Sagaponack. 

The Suffolk County Water Authority declared a Stage 1 water emergency on Tuesday and is asking its customers across the East End to stop irrigation between midnight and 7 a.m., limit their shower times, and "refrain from all nonessential water usage." 

Following her residency, Dr. Gail Schonfeld was hired to work on the East End because there was no pediatric practice in the community. Then: “The community grew, so the practice grew itself," she said. That was 40 years ago, and East End Pediatrics is still going strong.

On Long Island, while we are not technically in a drought, unusually dry conditions are prompting the Suffolk County Water Authority to ask residents to cut back on water usage. “It’s not that the aquifer is in danger of drying out,” said Joe Pokorny, deputy C.E.O. for operations at the water authority. “It’s that the demand is outstripping the water authority’s ability to pump fast enough.”

Warren Whipple (1910-2003), a renowned cartoonist and former art teacher here, created this map for the 1948 East Hampton tercentenary celebrations.

Thirty years later, Patty Eames says it was “a day that’s right here at the front of my brain.” She was one of many locals and luminaries who were arrested at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett on July 28, 1992, during a storied protest that found the East Hampton Baymen’s Association in open defiance of a 1990 state ban on haulseining for striped bass off the ocean beaches.

From the pages of The Star, it’s the sweet smell of industrial germicide at the Beale home at Apaquogue Road and complaints over a Steven Spielberg film shoot on Napeague.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Suffolk County had documented 16 cases of monkeypox in total, the second-highest case count in the state outside of New York City. Across the United States there have been just shy of 3,500 cases, including about 1,000 in New York, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Dr. Gregson Pigott, Suffolk County’s health commissioner, said that even though Suffolk’s case count is relatively low, those numbers are expected to increase and the department is watching them with concern.

The five-foot-tall MTK letters on the front lawn of the Montauk Chamber of Commerce have been a popular selfie spot for visitors since being installed a couple of years ago. Now, they're getting a new look at the hands of the artists Kylie Ogburn.

From a summer camp scam on Shelter Island to a tony East Hamptoner's brush with the serial murderer who killed Gianni Versace, it happened here.

Molly Scheider is doing well these days, with a new job at an East Hampton veterinary practice, plans to enter Suffolk Community College in the fall, and a creative writing project in the works, but it wasn't always that way for the Pierson High School graduate, who manages major depressive disorder, anxiety, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Her success is due in part to help from Career and Employment Options, Inc., a Hauppauge company that provides job counseling and training, internship placement, and other support services for people with disabilities.

Each year, there were dozens of people anxious to learn English left on the waitlist of a local E.S.L. program for adults. Ruta 27, newly named and with a plan to offer Thursday evening classes at East Hampton High School in the fall, will now be able to accomodate many more — if it can find the volunteers to teach them.

Following an unusually contentious meeting of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee last month, during which a member of the committee interrupted speakers repeatedly with angry outbursts, the group’s top three officials got together and drew up a code of conduct, which they presented to the committee on July 11.

Once a small collective that started gathering in people’s houses, the Islamic Center of the Hamptons now meets at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the South Fork in Bridgehampton on Friday evenings and holidays.

This photograph, from the East Hampton Star photo archives, shows Candace Catlin Woodruff Benjamin, Lela Harkness Edwards Cook, and Janet McCord Cook eating lunch on the deck at the Maidstone Club. The three women were in a similar place in life, and their families were active in the club.

It’s the kind of real estate transaction that often flies under the radar: A high-end property never hits the market publicly but captures people’s attention once its address appears in the county’s recorded deed transfers — usually with an eye-popping price and limited-liability corporations listed as buyer, seller, or both.

Closing the Racial Wealth Gap, a fund-raiser at Loida Lewis's Lily Pond Lane estate on Saturday, will benefit All Star Code and Giving Gap, both aimed at correcting the persistent systemic issues that have historically barred people of color from accessing economic opportunities.

High bacteria levels that exceed health standards continue to afflict many waterways on the East End, according to the Eastern Long Island Blue Water Task Force, which issued its 2021 water quality report on Tuesday at Long Beach in Noyac.

Devon Luckey, a daughter of Joanne and Thomas Luckey of Wantagh and Montauk, was married to Jaime Daniel Alava on June 25 at the Montauk Lake Club.

Amid the New York City Health Department’s recommendation that face masks should once again be worn in public indoor settings and crowded outdoor settings due to high transmission levels of Covid-19, the number of new infections and hospitalizations on the South Fork is of growing concern, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby told the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee on Saturday.

The Clamshell Foundation’s Great Bonac Fireworks Show is set to go off over Three Mile Harbor on Saturday night at 9:30, with Fireworks by Grucci providing the pyrotechnics.