Villages

While the overstuffed bookstore is no longer, whatever comes next at 290 Main Street in Sag Harbor, locals will always know it as Canio’s.

"Because of the weather, the only day we could go out clamming was Friday. We were out there for five hours," said Michael Fromm of Amagansett, whose efforts paid off when he emerged the overall winner of the East Hampton Town Trustees' 33rd Largest Clam Contest on Sunday.

Voters in Sag Harbor, North Haven, and Noyac turned out last Thursday to approve, by a wide margin, the John Jermain Memorial Library's 2025 budget as well as tax-levy propositions for the Eastville Community Historical Society and the Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum.

Anxious Montauk residents can breathe a little easier now: While the hamlet’s only pharmacy, White’s Drug and Department Store, will close on Oct. 31, its pharmacist, Frank Calvo, has secured a location for a new iteration, to be called Montauk Chemists.

The East Hampton Housing Authority’s affordable housing project the Green at Gardiner’s Point is on its way to clearing the last few hurdles before its first tenants can officially move in.

Two of the most visible properties at the entryway to Sag Harbor, at 2 Main Street and 22 Long Island Avenue, are in contract to be sold, the listing agent, Hal Zwick of Compass, confirmed on Thursday.

I-Tri, the South Fork-based girls’ empowerment program, will host its annual Ride and Wine fund-raising cycling event on Oct. 5, with a new route and a new spot for its afterparty.

With a final tally of 158 “yes” votes to 37 “no” votes, the East Hampton Library’s 2025 budget plan was approved by the community on Saturday.

Carolyn Tyson, former owner of an estate off Further Lane, left eight acres, part of the Double Dunes, to the Nature Conservancy, helping to preserve the landscape for coming generations.

“Civility in the Era of Division,” a panel discussion at the LongHouse Reserve on Saturday afternoon at 4, will tackle a subject often on people’s minds. “Whether you identify as conservative or liberal, extrovert or introvert, aesthete or utilitarian — or any combination of contradictions — there are some things we can all agree on. But how do we muster the courage to live with candor and what are the leadership building blocks that can shape our future?” LongHouse asks on its website.

The Jewish High Holy Days begin on Wednesday at sundown, and there will be Rosh Hashana observances in Sag Harbor and East Hampton.

The East Hampton Town Trustees’ annual Largest Clam Contest will be held on Sunday from noon to 3 p.m. at the Amagansett Life-Saving and Coast Guard Station on Atlantic Avenue.

Some things are inevitable in these pages over the years. Like rumrunning, breakwaters and dredging, and Fred Thiele.

Kmart, a longtime anchor tenant in the Bridgehampton Commons, has hired the liquidator Eldon W. Gottschalk & Associates to handle the sale of the store contents in advance of the store's permanent closure on Oct. 20.

This whaling log, kept by Edward Mulford Baker (1810-1856), documents two voyages aboard the ship Daniel Webster. The first took place between 1833 and 1837, departing from Sag Harbor for the Pacific Ocean. Baker was first mate under Capt. Philetus Pierson (1801-1879) and documented the journey only between Aug. 27 and Sept. 19, 1833.

Voters will gather next Thursday at the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor to vote on the annual budget, elect three library board members, and weigh in on propositions to provide funding for the Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum and the Eastville Community Historical Society.

A minke whale touched down briefly, alive, just west of Montauk’s Kirk Park Beach on Monday. It later moved off the beach, died, and has since been drifting about a mile offshore, according to Timothy Treadwell, East Hampton Town’s senior harbormaster. Marine Patrol had been monitoring the animal but lost sight of it by yesterday.

A peek into the past, courtesy of the East Hampton Star archive.

A floating whale that has been a mainstay of Sag Harbor's Harborfest for many years was the object of political vandalism when someone defaced it with the words "TRUMP MAGA."

The Shinnecock Canal remains open to limited boat traffic despite the failure of a hinge on one of the lock gates overnight on Tuesday. The county is discouraging all non-emergency boat traffic.

While East Hampton Town boasts some large, well-known, historic cemeteries, less visible are the smaller family cemeteries dotted throughout the area. Some have just a single headstone. They’re visited infrequently, the families buried are older, and a handful have fallen into disrepair. Last week, restoration was completed on two of the town’s smaller colonial-era cemeteries.

Dr. N. Patrick Hennessey, who has practiced dermatology out of the Wainscott Professional Center on Montauk Highway for the last 22 years, has relocated his practice to Southampton Village after being told to vacate the center. He was left scrambling, he wrote in a letter to patients, to see those who had booked appointments months in advance into September.

“People buy them from stores in the spring and then when they get big and messy, they no longer want them,” said Adrienne Gillespie, the hospital supervisor at the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Refuge in Hampton Bays. “They find local ponds thinking they can survive, but they can’t for long.”

The application to install a pool and hot tub at the historic Huntting Inn, parts of which date to 1699, has been in front of the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals in one form or another for more than three years. On Friday, it is expected the owner, Tilman Fertitta wíll make a new appeal to the board.

As Sag Harbor gears up for Harborfest weekend, work behind the scenes has focused on the popular whaleboat races. “There was a tremendous community effort to rebuild the whaleboats,” Ellen Dioguardi, the president of the Sag Harbor Chamber of Commerce, said. A weekend of fun lies ahead.

This photograph from The East Hampton Star’s archive shows part of the Old Whalers Festival parade, possibly from 1963, with four men dressed as sailors riding in a whaleboat. Behind them is a car towing a whale float.

PSEG Long Island, the region’s electrical power provider, announced this week that work has begun to prepare for winter storms and improve the reliability of its circuits in East Hampton Village, Springs, and Northwest Harbor.

“It’s all in line with what Sag Harbor wants to do on paper, and now it’s something we have to do in reality,” Drew Harvey said at the Sag Harbor Village Board meeting Tuesday night. Mr. Harvey, a member of the village’s parks and open space advisory committee, was speaking of a plan to preserve water access points at seven locations in the village, which, he warned, “are at risk of being lost to adjacent homeowners.”

Moments in local history, from the archives of The East Hampton Star.

In March, a dead bald eagle was found below a nest in Montauk County Park, a victim of rodenticide. Another nest at the edge of Georgica Pond in East Hampton was lost when the pitch pine it was built in was removed because it had been killed by a southern pine beetle infestation.