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Published by David Rattray, 2024-05-27 14:28:31

EAST July 2023

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The East Hampton Star magazine

THE EAST HAMPTON STAR MAGAZINE • July 2023 THE EAST HAMPTON STAR MAGAZINE JULY 2023 Volume 7, Issue 1

Get the facts about ticks. Protect yourself and your family! Regional Tick-Borne Disease Resource Center Visit EastEndTickResource.org or call our help line at (631) 726-TICK. Stay on the asphalt or pavement. Walk in the center of the path, avoid tall grass, or avoid the woods all together. Keep o the grass! Do a thorough check at night, and then again the following morning. Check the kids and ffi ffi flffl Tick checks twice a day. Tuck your pants into your socks and spray your skin and clothing with repellent. (Preferably ones with DEET, permethrin or picaridin.) Most ticks get access to you on your shoes and socks, so don’t forget to ffiffiflffl of the month during tick season (April through August). Tuck & cover. You love your cats and your dogs. So do ticks. So don’t sleep with your pets, don’t even invite them up on the couch. They’ll forgive you (especially if you give them treats). No pets in the bed. Ever! When you come in from the outdoors, put your clothes in the dryer on high heat for 15 minutes. Don’t wash them first! Ticks survive, and even thrive, in a water bath. Dry your clothes, before you wash them! Stony Brook Southampton Hospital is an equal opportunity employer.

ffifl flffi fl fl flflfl All we do is all for you. Every consultation. Every minimally invasive technique. Every strengthening exercise. Every question. Every answer. Every step of the way. We are Stony Brook Medicine. All we do is all for you. We provide a faster way to recover from joint surgery, so Anne can keep pace. southampton.stonybrookmedicine.edu

The new private school everyone’s talking about Sora is the online private middle and high school where students can follow their curiosity and work on real-world problems. Now fully remote from the Hamptons. A full-time school program accredited by Cognia, WASC, and approved by NCAA. www.soraschools.com/hamptons Register to join one of our 30-min Virtual Info Sessions

100% Satisfaction Guarantee Scheduled Treatments On Call Pest Support Service Visits Treatment Targets All Mosquito and Tick Species All Weather Liquid & Granular Treatments Family and Pet Friendly Treatments 631.201.8443 [email protected] | www.nopests.com Call us to protect your home today! All New York Yankees trademarks and copyrights are owned by the New York Yankees and used with the permission of the New York Yankees. Enjoy your backyard this season! JP McHale oers the ultimate in mosquito and tick protection! JP McHale's expert technicians have eectively treated residential and commercial properties across NYS for over 50 years. Our Tick and Mosquito service visit includes an inspection of your home and perimeter to identify conducive conditions that harbor mosquitoes and ticks—followed by scheduled tech visits and treatments that will reduce and eliminate mosquitos and ticks, eradicate insect breeding sites and give you peace of mind. Call today to speak with one of our specialists. fi fi fi fi fi fi MOSQUITO AND TICK PROTECTION fifffflffi NOT JUST GOOD. GUARANTEED.

Edward R. Petrie, Licensed Associate Real Estate Broker | James E. Petrie, Licensed Real Estate Salesperson | Charles Forsman, Licensed Real Estate Salesperson. Real estate agents affiliated with Compass are independent contractor sales associates and are not employees of Compass. Equal Housing Opportunity. Compass is a licensed real estate broker located at 90 Fifth Avenue, 3rd Fl. NY, NY 10011. All information furnished regarding property for sale or rent or regarding financing isfrom sources deemed reliable, but Compass makes no warranty or representation as to the accuracy thereof. All property information is presented subject to errors, omissions, price changes, changed property conditions, and withdrawal of the property from the market, without notice. To reach the Compass main office call 212 913 9058 Petrie Team Lee Avenue, East Hampton $24,500,000 | 8 Bed | 8F/3H Bath | 10,000 SF | Legal Three Story | 1 AC James Petrie Licensed RE Salesperson [email protected] 631.830.2084 petrieteam | [email protected] Charles Forsman Licensed RE Salesperson [email protected] 917.208.2480

Timeless & Inspired. Elegant Landscapes by SUMMERHILL. After 30 Years, we remain humbled by the beauty surrounding us and strive to honor our environment with landscapes that evolve over time, becoming richer, deeper, and more beautiful. summerhilllandscapes.com LANDSCAPE CONSTRUCTION ° GARDENS LIGHTING ° TREE FARMS CELEBRATING 30 YEARS Landscape Architect: Rees Roberts + Partners Photograph: Scott Frances

Photo by Adrian Gaut. Works pictured: [left to right on wall] Megumi Shauna Arai, めぐりあい II and めぐりあい III (2023); [on daybed covered with Larsen fabric] two hand-stitched pillows by Kiva Motnyk with pillows from the collection of LongHouse; Cody Hoyt, Untitled Vessel (Curved Walls 02) (2017); [foreground] Rashid Johnson, Untitled Ceramic (2019) on a table by Wharton Esherick from the collection at LongHouse. LongHouse, 133 Hands Creek Rd, East Hampton, NY 11937 631-329-3568 longhouse.org Alma Allen Megumi Shauna Arai Paul Arnhold Ludmilla Balkis Simone Bodmer-Turner Julia Chiang F. Taylor Colantonio Liz Collins Sarah Crowner Enrico David Andile Dyalvane Jeremy Frey Sonia Gomes Laird Gough Cody Hoyt Sophie Lou Jacobsen Rashid Johnson Wyatt Kahn Julia Kunin L.A. Door Jennifer Lee Raina Lee Luck Carpentry Jim McDowell Kiva Motnyk Sam Moyer Jolie Ngo Johnny Ortiz-Concha Frances Palmer Gaetano Pesce Adam Silverman Teague's Path Faye Toogood Thaddeus Wolfe A SUMMER ARRANGEMENT OBJECT & THING AT LONGHOUSE MAY 27SEPTEMBER 3, 2023 Featuring works by:

Join us at the largest cultural event of The Hamptons summer season Presenting important 20th/21st century art, Featuring 130 select international galleries showcasing 800 respected artists JULY 1316, 2023 | SOUTHAMPTON, NY Benefiting Guild Hall | Sponsored by Rivage Bal Harbour and The Residences at Six Fisher Island Hosted by Media Partner Luxe Interiors + Design HamptonsFineArtFair.com/tickets Sponsored by Media Partner SCAN FOR TICKETS

fifffflffifflflflfifflflflffiff A Sparkling Celebration of Songs and Scenes from The Producers, How to Succeed..., Victor/Victoria, Plaza Suite and many more!!! flfffl Join us as we transform Bay Street Theater into an intimate and behind-the-scenes setting for a gala like no other! With tributes to... Drinks! Dinner! Dancing! Live Auction! Stars of Stage and Screen! Sarah Jessica Parker Lifetime Achievement Award Matthew Broderick Lifetime Achievement Award Julie Andrews Lifetime Achievement Award (Via Video) and flffifflfflflffifflfflflfl ffffffi flffffifflfflflffiflfflffi ffffifflffl Derrick Davis Performer Isaac Mizrahi Performer Email [email protected], call 631.725.0818 or click to purchase online at www.baystreet.org John Benjamin Hickey Presenter Emma Walton Hamilton Presenter fl Tiffany Moment: Catering by: More Info:

12 / OUT HERE

OUT HERE / 19 Skaters these days, they’re spoiled for choice. It wasn’t so in 1977, when skateboarding — like other youth subcultures, from punk on the Bowery to DJ Kool Herc in the Bronx — was still very much D.I.Y. As The Star reported on August 11 of that year, boarders on the East End really only had two destinations when they wanted to ride: “unused swimming pools” and “smooth, paved hills” like that at Mako Lane, down which the blond-haired boys of summer would bomb on their Santa Cruzes, scaring the bejeezus out of the grownups. And so the Amagansett crew made their own plywood ramp, four feet wide and five feet tall, and plunked it down in the parking lot at the Amagansett railroad station. (The railroad station! In August! If that doesn’t tell you how much has changed since then, we don’t know what does. The days were long and the hair was longer.) The ramp broke apart pretty quickly, but no biggie. A year later, they were at it again, this time going even bigger, with a ramp eight feet wide and 12 feet high, hammered together at the East Hampton Town recreational zone on Abraham’s Path. Within days, though, the town had forced them to remove it, citing a lack of insurance. Buzz kill. When asked by a reporter if they imagined local government ever financially supporting the construction of a real skateboard park, like those that had popped up in 1977 in California, the boys only laughed. — EAST From left: Brian Hensler on the ramp, Lee Minetree standing, Harry Minetree, and Chris Sibelia, Amagansett, 1977. Cal Norris photograph / East Hampton Star archive. (Note the Dog Town deck: Is that a Wes Humpston original, or did he D.I.Y. the logo on there with spraypaint?) STEEZY RIDER

Established 1967 in Sagaponack, NY STEAK HOUSE AND SUSHI BAR NOW OPEN WEDNESDAY THROUGH SUNDAY 3516 Montauk Highway, Sagaponack, NY 631-537-3300 oldstovepub.com

Kym Fulmer Look at That (2023) Kym Fulmer intentionally blurs the line between hands-on and digital manipulation, which is how she went about creating this month’s magazine cover. She began with a physical sketch in marker — “I used some of my professional markers and some of my son’s dried-up Crayolas” — then incorporated photoreal imagery, smudged some lines, and played with color palettes. The almost sultry end result speaks to the kind of summer that we want to have. Fulmer, the mother of a 9-year-old boy and a frequent teacher of block-printing and other kinds of art classes, is based in Springs, which has a long history of hospitality toward artists. Educated at the University of California in San Diego and at New York’s School of Visual Arts, she loves to spend her days looking at things and thinking about how they are made. She can spend hours on end in a museum and dreams of seeing her designs on beach towels, swim trunks, shirts, and bags. She notices the art in everyday things, right down to children’s books and consumer-goods packaging. “I like to do work that is figurative and recognizable but also stylish and fun,” Fulmer, 48, says when asked to describe her style. “Whimsical is overused — but maybe a little childlike? Technically good, neat and clean and simple.” Fulmer often has pieces on view, for sale, at the Greenport Brewery tasting room, the Golden Eagle Art Supply store in East Hampton, Mind Offline in Sag Harbor, and touchGOODS in Southold. Find her online on Etsy, at kymfulmer.com, and on Instagram at @kymfulmer. 22 / ON THE COVER DESIGNING TIMELESS HOMES SINCE 1965 bates masi+ ARCHITECTS

J Brooke Isabel Carmichael Nina Dohanos Laura Donnelly Biddle Duke Christopher Gangemi Tom Gogola Carissa Katz Stephanie Krikorian Jennifer Landes Christopher Walsh John McCaffrey Amanda Seekamp Irene Silverman MASTHEAD / 25 Contributing Writers & Editors Advisers & Friends Scott Bluedorn Spencer Lee Schneider Illustrators Kym Fulmer Durell Godfrey Peter Spacek Graphic Design Matthew Charron Paul Friese Business Manager Robin Kuntz Etc. Russell Bennett David Rattray & Helen Rattray Publishers Bess Rattray Christine Sampson Editors Sales Zach Zunis Jane Bimson “Let’s talk summer romance!” EAST (2023, Volume 7, No. 1) is published three times a year, in June, August, and November, by The East Hampton Star, 153 Main Street, P.O. Box 5002, East Hampton, N.Y. 11937 Subscriptions and circulation: EAST is distributed as an insert in The East Hampton Star on the applicable publication dates and at select locations around the East End of Long Island. To become a subscriber please call 631-324-0002, reach us via email at [email protected], or go to www.easthamptonstar.com and click on subscriptions. We welcome your letters, comments, queries, and ideas. Send them to [email protected] or EAST, P.O. Box 5002, East Hampton, N.Y. 11937 When I first met my man, he worked all summer long on fishing boats out of Montauk Harbor. How my heart raced when the boat came in for ice, bait, and fuel! He still works like a dog all summer long, but now he comes home to me and our son. My spouse and I have August birthdays on consecutive days. On her night, we’d go to one of those upscale restaurants that can’t sustain longevity; on mine, we’d get pizza from Conca D’Oro and eat with our kids at the picnic table on the bay next to the windmill in Sag Harbor. My birthdays were clearly the romantic ones. I met my future husband at the Stephen Talkhouse when it still had a jukebox. We got married in a field on my family’s property in East Hampton — with a steel band and a chocolate-chocolate wedding cake. I will always be grateful to my parents for letting us do it that way. Our way. Summer of ’92, I was crazy about a boy from Indiana who lived in a shack behind Little Rock Rodeo, a Tex-Mex restaurant on the highway. He carried a Leica camera everywhere and I drove the newspaper-delivery van to the ocean for midnight swims. We danced around the shack to Cream and Leonard Cohen. A perfect moment of youth. I was 11 or 12. We were playing Frisbee on the beach. I chased the disc up the dunes into one of those deep craters of sand and beach grass. Pam followed me. We sat in the sun out of the wind to catch our breath. Her father, George, a formidable man and a Southampton fireman, was sitting under an umbrella in the distance. “Do you want to kiss?” She asked. Covered in dust and dirt from a landscaping job on a horribly hot day, a friend and I were invited to take a late-afternoon swim in the pool of a home owned by a family with relatives visiting from abroad for the summer. Two beautiful daughters our age joined as we jumped and dunked the work and heat from our skin and our soul. After a deep dive and holding my breath in the sparkling water as long as possible, I surfaced to see one daughter smiling at me. I was instantly in love. I worked at Sportime summer camp ten years ago with my current boyfriend. He owns Hamptons Surf Company, and I recently reconnected with him to design surfboards, sweatshirts, and hats for my family business, the Beach Hut. We went from business partners to best friends. In the early 1960s, the junior dances at the Orient Yacht Club almost always led to a summer romance. The following year, another dance, another romance. We were very young and innocent in those days, so a romance was slow dancing and a kiss goodnight. Fell for a cute hang-gliding instructor in Kitty Hawk, N.C., one summer in my 20s. I came very close to getting a glider-pilot’s certification that year.

SATURDAY, JULY 22, 9AM–2PM 76TH CLOTHESLINE ART SALE Jessica Dalene Photography GUILD HALL 158 Main Street East Hampton NY, 11937 GuildHall.org @Guild_Hall #GuildHall fie 2023 Clothesline Art Sale is dedicated in memory of Barbara McClancy, a longtime volunteer who was the heart and soul of this event. MEDIA PARTNER

C ONTRI BUTORS / 27 S T E P H A N I E K R I K O R I A N A New York Times best-selling ghostwriter and Emmy-nominated producer, Krikorian is also a contributing writer for Vanity Fair. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and O, the Oprah Magazine. In 2019, she wrote her own book (after working on about 20 for other people) called Zen Bender, A Decade-long, Enthusiastic Quest to Fix Everything (That Was Never Broken). When she’s not at the computer working to ensure her scrappy dog, Skippy, lives the high life, she’s on her paddleboard, doing yoga, or hanging out on the beach. J B R O O K E An essayist whose work has been published in Electric Lit, The Normal School, and The Fiddlehead, J Brooke (they/e) are the winner of Columbia Journal’s 2020 Nonfiction Award, maintain an extensive collection of rare cigar boxes, and once dined alone with Bob Dylan. Brooke is the former nonfiction editor of The Stonecoast Review and is visiting faculty at University of Southern Maine’s M.F.A. program. The property in Sag Harbor they share with their spouse, Beatrice, was originally stolen from Algonquian-speaking Native Americans. Brooke’s misspent youth was spent in advertising. JOHN MCCAFFREY The author of four published books — The Book of Ash (2013) , a science fiction novel, and the short story collections Two Syllable Men (2016), What’s Wrong With This Picture? (2019), and Automatically Hip (2022) — John is also an award-winning playwright, a columnist for the Good Men Project, and a writing professor. He attended Villanova University and received his M.A. in creative writing from City College of New York. He lives in Wainscott. AMANDA SEEKAMP Among this summer’s crop of new contributors, Amanda was born and raised in East Hampton. For this issue, she reported on a beachy tequila brand out of Montauk and a bright fashion-and-homegoods label founded by another local girl. Amanda studied literature at Hofstra, and then got her master’s degree in business and marketing from the University of Durham in the United Kingdom. Hers will be a familiar face to denizens of East Hampton’s Main Beach, because she runs the Beach Hut on Main, the seasonal snack bar at the pavilion, with her mom, Susan. When she’s not working, she enjoys surfing, traveling, and discovering new restaurants. A FEW OF THE COOL PEOPLE WHO BROUGHT YOU THIS MAGAZINE DURELL GODFREY If you’ve ever been to an event on the South Fork — pretty much any event, from a kids’ ballet production to an invitation-only movie premiere or political protest — you will have crossed paths with Durell and her trusty Canon. An illustrator and photographer who shoots frequently for The East Hampton Star, she has snapped or drawn a picture of pretty much everything that holds still on the East End. She is the author of coloring books for adults, and, in this issue, her cheeky coloring page for East debuts (July 5th, Page 63).

CONTENTS THE ROWDY ISSUE: HOT NIGHTS, BAD MANNERS, & THE MORNING AFTER 27 CONTRIBUTORS 31 MASTHEAD 33 EDITOR’S NOTE Out of Order On Independence Day, we pay our respects with a little light misbehavior 35 EAST ILLUSTRATED Beach Rules By Peter Spacek 37 DATEBOOK 39 OVERHEARD The In Crowd It’s crowded, sure — but just how many people are out here, anyway? 41 Rabbit Season, Duck Season In the woods with the last rabbit hunter 43 Hello, Operator? Stalking the Hamptons’s last payphones 49 NEIGHBORS The Light-Seeker William Norwich, society observer 53 DIVERSIONS Rock the Boat A democratic approach to getting out on the water: Party boats for all! 57 Colorforms Patternier, a fashion brand with pedigree 59 Oh, Behave! Do’s and don’ts of summer etiquette 63 COLORING July 5th By Durell Godfrey 65 BOUNTY Raw Power Beyond sushi rolls — fun, easy ways to prepare uncooked fish 71 Berry, Berry Good July joie de vivre means making the most of the strawberry and blueberry harvest 77 With Salt Meet Montaukila, a seaside tequila 79 Basket Case You need to picnic more often. We’re here to help, with the world’s best pasta salad 86 FEATURES The Last Dance Memories of disco nights, as a landmark nightclub on Three Mile Harbor Road is slated for teardown 96 The Champions of Briar Patch Priscilla Rattazzi bids farewell to Georgica Pond, with her stunning photography book Three Lindens 106 MEMOIR Reduce, Reuse, Remember J Brooke on the South Fork’s unique scavenger culture 114 BACKSTORY Reefer Madness Fun facts about weed, from the archives of The East Hampton Star

TRIA GIOVAN

AIN’T MISBEHAVING JULY FEELS LIKE THE RIGHT MOMENT FOR A LITTLE DISORDERLY CONDUCT, MAYBE A FEW IMPROPRIETIES. ROWDY SUMMERS, DONTCHA KNOW, ARE AN EAST END TRADITION may not know what you’re missing, but, if you don’t know what we’re talking about, ask your Great-Aunt Dolores, who partied with the Beatniks on Asparagus Beach in the 1950s and painted herself purple and pink at hippie Happenings in the 1960s. Are we the only ones who kind of wish the neighborhood children would plant fake shark fi ns in Town Pond once in a while, or that the visual-arts crowd would act even a little a bit more like the Abstract Expressionists (brawling, gossiping, and bed-hopping)? This summer, we’re seeking out opportunities for — light — misbehavior. For the Fourth, we’re going to stage a backyard re-creation of disco nights at Mellow Mouth (the freewheeling 1970s club that’s remembered in The Last Dance, Page 86). We’re going to eat our fl ounder raw (Raw Power, Page 65) and our tequila straight (With Salt, Page 77). What passes for a good night out in the Hamptons, circa 2023, may be a $20,000 table at a cookiecutter charity gala or $700 bottle service at a so-called “exclusive club,” but, in EAST’s book, real fun, like talk, is usually cheap. — EDITORS Who’s going to wag their fi nger if we get a bit rowdy this Independence Day? You? The general mood, chez nous, is Party at a Rich Dude’s House — inspiration from the 2010 Ke$ha song in which she brags about waking up in the front yard the morning after a sloppy night. Her excuse for letting loose: “We’re young and we’re broke.” Our excuse? Nothing much, other than putting Covid-19 in the rearview mirror and just generally feeling the urge to kick out the jams. (At least a little bit. At least in our own mind.) We’re arrived at an odd place, when it comes to social norms out here in the Hamptons. It’s pretty clear from the way people behave in parking lots and restaurants that general civility has been on a steady decline for decades now. (The motorists who speed by — or honk at us — when we pull over to let an ambulance pass are defi nitely going to Hades.) But, at the same time, public life has gotten a bit too conformist, a bit too dull, for our liking. South Fork society is currently defi ned by an odd combination of rude plus boring. If you’re under 30, you EDITOR’S NOTE / 33 K8most / Adobe Stock

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EAST ILLUSTRATED BY PETER SPACEK

SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY It’s a backyard Fourth — with paper lanterns, sparklers, oysters on the grill, and O.V. Wright on the turntable Poem-a-day: Whitman’s I Hear America Singing (“at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly . . .”) Blowfish + dusting of flour, salt, and breadcrumbs + melted butter in iron skillet = chef’s kiss A better beach read: The Prince, the Showgirl, and Me, Colin Clark’s memoir of Marilyn (Slightly Foxed) Kaboom! Picnic at Fresh Pond, Amagansett, to watch the Devon fireworks. Pick up fried chicken from Brent’s What would Grace Kelly do? Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder, adapted for the stage, at Bay Street Theater, Sag Harbor Play art critic for a day at the Hamptons Fine Arts Fair, on the County Road fairgrounds, Southampton Vino on the green-o: Cutchogue hosts North Fork wine fest; tickets at eventbrite.com Craft brew, car show, kiddie games, food trucks — it’s on like Donkey Kong at Alive on 25 street fair, Riverhead Wave riders from 7 to 70 compete at Rell Sunn surf competition, Ditch Plain, Montauk. We watch from the beach Sunday means Springs Farmers Market. Go for peonies, peach pie, and porgies Check onlone at ocearch.org to see if any great white sharks are patrolling nearby. Tell annoying houseguest one is 10 yards off It’s National Ice Cream Day but we don’t need an excuse for chocolate icecream sodas at the Magic Fountain in Mattituck 2 0 JULY 2 3 Right: Slightly Foxed. Top: Allison Seiffer Poem-a-day: Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s I Am Waiting (“for the Age of Anxiety to drop dead”) Rainy day? Go to the Hampton Designer Showhouse prepared to criticize everyone else’s taste New Orleans comes to ’Gansett when the Rumble, featuring Chief Joseph Boudreaux, plays the Stephen Talkhouse Poem-a-Day: The Outer Banks, Joe Brainard (“That was the summer of Campari and sodas . . . remember?”) Poem-a-day: Immigrant Picnic, Gregory Djanikian (“I’m grilling, I’ve got my apron, I’ve got potato salad . . . ”) First person to hear song of the elusive wood thrush, during evening walk on Barcelona Neck, gets $5 Drop hints that a blue-eucalyptus massage at Naturopathica would make you more jolly Peach-picking at Harbes Farm, North Fork this morning, peach cobbler tonight Rhubarb cocktails at sunset, on Sagaponack Farm Distillery’s Tasting Room patio Roller boogie! Adult skate at Greenport’s American Legion roller rink The season’s first tomatoes + Hellman’s + white bread = heaven The Barbie movie opens. Peak summer, 2023. Go with your rowdiest friends The “next de Kooning” is yours for cheap ($75 to $5,000) at the Clothesline Art Sale, Guild Hall Count blessings. Take dogs, kids, and grandma for afternoon walk on Barcelona Neck with dogs and kids Count blessings. Take dogs, kids, and grandma for afternoon walk on Barcelona Neck with dogs and kids Count blessings. Take dogs, kids, and grandma for afternoon walk on Barcelona Neck with dogs and kids DATEBOOK / 3 7

OVERHEARD CONVERSATIONS, CONTROVERSIES, COCKTAIL CHATTER The “In” Crowd Do the math, or try to; it’s a squishy question: What is the actual goshdarn population of the Town of East Hampton during the summer? “Spoiler alert — nobody has a great number,” says Jeremy Samuelson, head honcho at the Planning Department. “Lots of people have theories, and we are on that list.” Here’s how to begin to sort the signal from the noise, as the data-crunchers and stats junkies like to say. Let’s start with an easy question: What’s the full-time population of the Town of East Hampton? The official 2020 census count was 28,500 full-time residents — only 1,517 of those in the village proper and up significantly from 21,000 in the 2010 census. But the 2020 figure may fairly be described as “controversial.” In 2022, the U.S. Census Bureau issued a report and findings that acknowledged that Latinos had been significantly undercounted in the Trump-era census. Undercounted by a lot. And so that first easy question is not so easy after all. The undercount issue is especially and obviously acute in East Hampton. Samuelson estimates that there are perhaps another 7,000 full-time residents from “working class communities of color and the Latino community” here. His department, he says, felt legitimate concern in 2020 that “people just did not feel safe offering their presence.” “If somebody forced me to offer a number of the actual year-round population,” he continues, “my guess it would be approaching 35,000.” The 35,000 number has, since early 2022, been unofficially acknowledged by follow-on census research. So how do we get from Question A (year-round) to Question B (summer population), without road-raging about the politicization of simple math to arrive at a fair and balanced estimate? > OVERHEARD / 39 What is the year-round population of the Town of East Hampton? How many people are here on a hot July weekend? How crowded are we, really? Weirdly, no one knows for sure. But EAST magazine has spoken to those equipped to make an educated guess. Kym Fulmer illustration.

and say, ‘How many signals are there in town at any given time — pick a date, and how does that range grow and ebb?’ You can buy that data at any moment in time, and we’re going to, in rather short order.” Yet a very savvy statistician friend of this writer, trained at Harvard but preferring anonymity (perhaps given her preference for Fire Island in the summer), warned that these population-count gambits all have their vagaries and weaknesses. Even the cellphone data has holes. “How many cellphones per household or family?” she wonders. “Are landlines a factor?” And here’s another: How about all those burner cellphones out there — whether used by ne’er-do-wells or immigrant newcomers? Who knows. “It’s imperfect,” Samuelson concedes of the cellular-data methodology. But it is perhaps the best of the data-collection tools now at hand. When thanked for his time, the gracious and knowledgeable town official, who has given a good part of his busy day to EAST magazine, only replies: “Yes, but notice I didn’t give you a number?” — TOM GOGOLA Rabbit Season. Duck Season Dead leaves, bare trees, brown brush, and a hunter without a gun. It’s February and Bruce Cullum stalks rabbit along the western edge of Barcelona Neck, in Sag Harbor. He could have a gun — small game season lasts until the end of the month — but he’s just out giving his two beagles, Bell, a blue tick, and Coby, a tricolored, exercise today. The dogs are up ahead: working, trying to pick up an invisible line of scent. Three beeps sound from a tracking device attached to Cullum’s hip. “I like to listen to the dogs,” he says. not just staying in hotels — this season. Another town official is in basic agreement, but makes a further distinction: “I think I would estimate the population at around 120,000 on prime summer holiday weeks, Fourth of July and Labor Day,” says Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc. “I think there are approximately 22,000 residences, all of which are probably filled with friends and family those weeks,” he added. He notes that “there was an estimate of around 78,000 prior to Covid.” But let’s move on. How do we even calculate these estimates, given the messy census count and all? Historically, the town tried to get a bead on the summertime population by tracking electricity hookups and demand. Decades ago, the Long Island Lighting Company issued public reports on the total number of households it provided power to, but PSEG, its successor, doesn’t issue such reports. The town would crunch that electric-use data with transportation figures from road and rail, if not plane. The approaches were imperfect, and produced an estimated population range that, says Samuelson, “was always squishy.” Per “signal and noise,” Samuelson says, the current method in fashion in municipal circles is to buy cellular data and compare how it fluctuates over time, but doing that may require approval from the town board. “We are probably going to want to buy some data that helps us have a more current tool,” he says. “We can turn around to the folks who provide the cellular infrastructure, Fortunately, and to ground us a bit here, the town has a tried-and-true formula “going back to when I worked here 20 years ago,” says Samuelson, “where the rule of thumb is that there is a four to five multiplier that people have consistently offered over time,” to get to a summertime population range. In other words, if we accept a figure of 35,000 for the town’s year-round population, that number might bulge to between 140,000 and 175,000 during crowded weeks in July and August. The problem is of course that if the 2020 census were correct, our population would only be about that of the town of Aberdeen, S.D., and if Samuelson is correct, East Hampton’s in summertime is somewhere between New Haven, Conn., and Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (That is, presuming that the additional 7,000 undercounted people are themselves subject to the same 4 to 5 times multiplier or one that’s greater than that range.) The fact that there is no official hard tally is no small matter for town planners and engineers when they are asking themselves “baseline questions” about peak capacity around water use, electrical load, and cable services, says Samuelson — all the “core deliverables” of everyday life in East Hampton. Samuelson’s conversations on population contain more hedges than you’ll find south of the Highway between Gin Beach and Southampton Citarella, but, when pressed, he estimates that the Town of East Hampton is home to between 114,000 and 140,000 summer residents — people actually living here, 40 / OVERHEARD I F T H E 2 0 2 0 C E N S US W E R E C O R R EC T, O U R P O P U L AT I O N WO U L D ONLY BE ABOUT THAT OF THE TOWN OF ABERDEEN, SOUTH DAKOTA, AND IF SAMUELSON IS CORRECT, EAST HAMPTON’S IN SUMM E R T I M E IS S O M E W H E R E B E T W E E N N E W H AV E N , C O N N EC T I C U T, AND FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA.

“I love it.” Cullum has been hunting rabbit for 40 years. In the distance, a hoarse wail from Coby. Bell has circled back, scuffling through the leaves, nose left to right and then right to left and back again, even as a metronome, searching for scent. “That’s what they’re supposed to do. They lose the scent and then they come back and check where they started. You want a dog that doesn’t have a wide check.” Coby gives another howl. “I know his bark,” says Cullum, unimpressed. “When it’s hot, he’ll give a real good bark.” Nonetheless, Bell runs off in Coby’s direction. “It’s called harking in. When one dog barks, the other is supposed to go and check it out. But Coby’s a cold barker. I’ve always just dealt with him. He wasn’t too bad when he was younger. If Bell doesn’t bark, you know it’s old. But sometimes it comes into something good. If he stays with it, a lot of times, it comes good. He’s got a better nose than her.” Coby is now 13, old for a hunting dog. Cullum says he rarely shoots anymore. He bagged 10 rabbits last season to eat. Cullum may not be the very last rabbit hunter on the East End, but he’s one of very few that remain. A century ago, rabbit hunting was common. In 1923, 14,919 rabbits were hunted from Suffolk alone. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation estimates 2,480 were harvested from all of Long Island in the 2019 to 2020 season. Andrew Gaites, the principal environmental analyst in the East Hampton Town Land Acquisition department, has hunted rabbit on the East End for 15 years. In that time, he has met only a few other rabbit hunters. Because small game harvests are no longer reported to the town, it’s hard to know how many guys like Cullum are out kicking around in briar patches. “Most local hunters are pursuing deer and ducks,” says Gaites, in an email. Terry O’Riordan, a director of the East Hampton Sportsmen’s Alliance, says to his knowledge, only one or two rabbit hunters work our woodlands. It’s “virtually disappeared,” he writes in an email. “Another guy, Frank, I think his name was,” says Cullum. “Said he wanted to get together, but I don’t know. I never heard from him.” He works farther north up the neck, ducking under thorny vines toward phragmites. “A lot of people don’t know, but rabbit is not dumb,” he says. “Everything eats a rabbit, and somehow, they’ve survived. Only thing with these rabbits, they’re not very big. They used to be big.” A hoarse wail, more intense, from Coby, still out of sight, but closer. “The rabbit probably ran through there 20 minutes ago,” says Cullum. “I’ll give them a little bit of time and then I’ll get them. ‘Let’s go find a new one,’ I’ll say. I’ll go kick the brush or something, you’re trying to look for a hot one, you know? You like to find a rabbit.” Down at the end of the point, a single house, which sold for $10.2 million in 2021 to the fashion designer Helmut Lang, looks toward the Cedar Point lighthouse, which still awaits renovation. The other side of Barcelona Neck seems less wild. A lifestyle-branded woman gets her steps in, eyes and thoughts stuck on her phone, trapped. Her dog is off in the woods rummaging, picking up a scent of something. It shits. Bruce’s beagles are braying on the other side, but with each step south toward the golf course, the sound fades. — CHRISTOPHER GANGEMI Hello, Operator? A payphone still stands in East Hampton, behind Town Hall on Pantigo Road. Pick up the receiver and you’ll get an actual, albeit staticky, dial tone. Got your quarters ready? Thanks to 20- plus years of inflation, you’ll need two. A working payphone, in 2023 — is this really happening? If you’d like to make a call, well, you’d better have a cellphone handy. The too-good-to-be-true phone turns out to be a disappointing, inoperable vestige of the past. A museum-worthy Robert Rauschenberg, Rabbit Chow, from the series Chow Bags, 1977, screenprint and stitching on paper. Smithsonian American Art Museum. OVERHEARD / 43

relic or monument to simpler times, before we all started carrying tiny, expensive computers in our pockets and unlimited data plans became a musthave. If a payphone is of any use to most Americans today, it’s as the subject of an ironic Instagram post. That the last pay phone in town doesn’t work shouldn’t surprise anyone, considering most major players in telecommunications got out of the payphone business years ago. Sprint ditched theirs in 2006, followed by AT&T in 2008, according to a March 2018 report by CNN. Verizon sold its last 50,000 payphones in 2011, according to an industry publication called Fierce Telecom. Payphone trivia time:. They were invented in 1889 by William Gray, who two years earlier had patented a piece of padded chest-protection equipment for baseball catchers. NPR reported in May of 2022 that New York City had removed its last two working city-owned payphones, a double booth in Times Square, and replaced them with LinkNYC kiosks featuring revenue-generating charging ports, public Wi-Fi, and screens with maps and other services, plus buttons to press for 911 calls. Several privately operated payphones remain, though, mostly on the Upper West Side, according to The New York Times. In 1999, there were five million payphones in the United States. Nearly 20 years later, CNN reported, about 100,000 remained, many of them owned by a San Ramon, California-based company called Pacific Telemanagement Services, or PTS for short. The nonworking payphone behind Town Hall bears a PTS label, along with a yellow sticker that advertises several free — and amusing — dialing options. To receive “God’s blessings,” dial *10. Need help finding a job? Press *12. Gotta reach the Social Security Administration? Dial *13. The list goes on. In March of 2021, the Federal Communications Commission — which deregulated the payphone industry in 1984 — officially listed PTS as “inactive.” A call to its main line “cannot be completed as dialed,” says that still-familiar recorded operator’s voice. However, two emails sent to company representatives whose addresses were found via Google searches that turned up government payphone contracts don’t get bounced back, suggesting the existence of someone, somewhere, on the receiving end of those messages. According to Mark Thomas, a New York City blogger whom AT&T has credited with tracking “the de-evolution of payphones and phone booths” with his Payphone Project since 1995, PTS is still in business, though he hasn’t heard from them in a while. “They’ve diversified into vending machines, and with Covid they got into hyper-sanitation supplies and other things,” Thomas said in an email to The Star. “The core of their payphone business today is in places like rehab facilities, hospitals, jails, and other nonpublic places where PTS typically collects a monthly fee per phone to keep the dial tone alive. “ “They also have long-term contracts with government buildings, national parks, transit hubs, etc. These are places where a payphone being ‘profitable’ on coin or credit-card revenue does not matter. The entities retain PTS to provide the phones as an amenity.” There’s at least one other PTS payphone in town that East is aware of: the one at the West Lake Drive comfort 44 / OVERHEARD New York City removed its last working city-owned payphones from Times Square last year. There are two payphones that we know of in East Hampton. EAST magazine illustration

station in Montauk. But that one won’t even give you a dial tone. The Pew Research Center found in April of 2021 that 97 percent of Americans owned a cellphone, up from 83 percent about 10 years before. But cellphones, and smartphones in particular, are obviously pricey when compared to their coin-operated counterparts. In February, the research website Statista reported the average cost of a smartphone in the U.S. was about $718 — though that’s expected to decrease in the future — and in 2022, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics pegged the average monthly cost of having a smartphone at $114. This cost of technology can be seen as a barrier to equality, creating a reality of digital “haves” and “havenots.” Some people can afford high-tech devices plus access to regional wireless infrastructure, and some people cannot. The Pew Research Center reported in August of 2021 that the percentage of rural Americans who own smartphones, 80 percent, lagged urban smartphone owners by 9 percentage points. That’s why old-school, copper-wired payphones still serve a purpose, says Anthony Lepore, an attorney who is president of Cityscape Consultants Inc. of Orlando, Fla. “You want redundancy in communications,” says Lepore, whose company partners with municipalities to improve communications systems. “Everybody who’s involved in communications always has redundancy; it’s why NASA built two space shuttles instead of one. The two systems, although one is obviously much older than the other, complement each other. However, maintaining that old, copper-wire network is expensive and can be a black hole for phone companies because everybody’s cutting the cord. The remaining people who have it pay more — just like cable TV. You can overlay those two scenarios and exactly the same thing is happening.” When a hurricane blew the roof off his Florida house years ago, Lepore’s landline still functioned properly. “Thankfully, it’s not quite as bad on the eastern end of Long Island, but you still have to deal with the potential for hurricanes and other issues that make having a redundant communications system important. Copper is less of a desired methodology, but having fiber and wire-line phones that work on fiber is an important asset to have. . . . There’s a place for both technologies in today’s world.” Long Island’s East End is still kind of a mixed bag when it comes to cell service. Just ask anyone trying to send a text message on a summer Saturday in Sag Harbor, or anyone trying to make a cellphone call near Fort Pond Boulevard in Springs. It doesn’t matter how much money you spent on your phone. If the wireless infrastructure isn’t there, those calls and texts are just not going through. Fortunately for cellphone users here, East Hampton Town is trying to remediate those dead zone. The municipality has contracted with Cityscape to improve cell phone infrastructure in town. “It’s being actively worked on,” says Lepore. If we get a call back from anyone at PTS, we’ll let you know. — CHRISTINE SAMPSON 46 / OVERHEARD T H E E A S T E N D I S S T I L L K I N D O F A M I X E D B AG W H E N I T C O M E S TO CELL SERVICE. JUST ASK ANYONE TRYING TO MAKE A CELLP H O N E C A L L N E A R F O R T P O N D B O U L E VA R D I N S P R I N G S . I T D O E S N ’ T M AT T E R H O W M U C H M O N E Y YO U S P E N T O N YO U R PHONE IF THE WIRELESS INFRASTRUCTURE ISN’T THERE. Christine Sampson

We are excited to annouce our two new exhibitions: Glamour, Whimsy & Awe 60 Years of Judith Leiber’s Artful Handbags Fourth Annual Garden of Friends Exhibition THE LEIBER COLLECTION 446 Old Stone Highway, East Hampton, NY / 631-329-3288 / [email protected] Open Saturdays, Sundays and Wednesdays from 1 - 4 PM or at other times by appointment Monica Banks Roisin Bateman Scott Bluedorn Philippe Cheng Pipi Deer Jeremy Dennis Sabra Moon Elliot Saskia Friedrich Robin Gianis Donna Green Jeremy Grosvenor Candace Hill-Montgomery Sylvia Hommert Erica-Lynn Huberty Chris Kelly Laurie Lambrecht Lindsay Morris Jill Musnicki Bastienne Schmidt Christine Sciulli Bill Stewart Sabina Streeter Shane Weeks Almond Zigmund The Garden of Friends: Bastienne Schmidt Monica Banks Scott Bluedorn

W I L L I A M N O RW I C H — C H RO N I C L E R O F S O C I E T Y, A P P R EC I - ATO R O F B E AU T Y — C LO C KS T H E C H A N G E S O N T H E S O U T H FORK. BY JOHN MCCAFFREY THE LIGHTSEEKER Early in the summer of 1973, William “Billy” Norwich, 20 years old and not yet a force in literature and fashion — a writer and reporter who would later, among many professional accomplishments, pen a social column for The New York Daily News, serve as an editor for Vogue, and publish My Mrs. Brown, an iconic novel about couture culture — made his first visit to the East End. Fatherless from the age of nine, and reeling from the recent passing of his mother, Billy found respite and rejuvenation that initial weekend in Southampton with friends. “It was an enormous contrast to how I felt emotionally,” he says. “It was beautiful here. It was serene. It was kind. It felt like the East End was home, or could be home for me.” So began Billy’s lasting connection to the South Fork, an affinity for the land and the sea, the people and the places, the quaint and the quiet, as he describes in this Q. and A. Bring us back to 1973 and your first time on the East End. What do you remember most? I tagged along with Breck Costin, who grew up summers in East Hampton, and his first wife, the late Serena Van Ingen Costin McCallum. Serena’s best friend, Scarlett Leas Robertson, invited us to stay with her mother, the late Fernanda Wanamaker Leas at her house. It was an impressive brick Georgian place built in 1929. It’s now owned by Tory Burch. Mrs. Leas’s house was filled with her children and their friends, and it was wonderful. We had free rein but within the ground rules of politesse. Before dinner, a drink at the pool house with Mrs. Leas, wearing an orange-red evening dress by Giorgio di Sant’ Angelo. To my eye, she was more glamorous than any Slim Aarons photograph. I remember asking Mrs. Leas who designed her dress? The kids laughed. The writing was on the privet about me; everyone else was discussing tennis and golf. But Mrs. Leas understood and talked to me about Giorgio di Sant’ Angelo and other designers whose clothes she liked. My lasting impression, though, was the grandeur of green-perfected gardens near the ocean. The quiet. The few cars. And soon seeing my favorite house, August Moon, a Japanese style one-story place on Heady Creek owned by Margaret and Winston Frost. Their daughter, the artist Dora Frost, would become one of my best friends. Decorated with massive Audubon prints and Harry Hinson blue-and-white spatter prints was this Photobomb! The author and editor at one of his perennials: Loaves and Fishes on Sagaponack’s Main Street. Geir Magnusson photographs. NEIGHBORS / 49

house, built onto the creek so that during high tide one thought one was floating. And after that experience? I was fortunate the Frosts took me in and I spent many happy weekends with them before I found my own place in 1985. I rented a cottage year round from a wonderful lady named Abigail Halsey Van Allen. I went almost every weekend, to write and have dinner with friends. There were not as many “events” in the summer back then. There was the fund-raiser for the Parrish Museum, the Southampton Hospital, and the art show at St. John’s Church. Sometimes, I wrote about the Parrish and the Hospital, to help them with promotion. I always attended the St. John’s show. I used to draw caricatures for them to sell. I remember one of the apartment buildings melding into the beach club and St. Andrew’s Dune Church on Gin Lane. I titled it: Park Avenue Ends in Southampton. But as time passed, I began to see and sense a difference on the East End, particularly after the publicist and event planner Peggy Siegal organized her first screening. Taking over one of the cinemas, inviting the city and national press. This coincided with the opening of many trendy restaurants, starting a shift in social life, from intimate gatherings at houses to public dining. Busy restaurants and valet parking! It was a scene, and I started to make up catch phrases about the East End for my column, including “the Cashamptons.” It felt to me like the bumptious, party-hearty East Village on a Saturday night but with more trees. When my city apartment was more serene and quiet than my weekend retreat, I knew “the Hamptons” had changed. So what did you do? I changed. And my circumstances, as I no longer had the cottage. But my partner, the artist Garrett Chingery, lives year round in East Quogue and I have become a fulltime resident. I’m happy. I visit friends for walks and meals, but I do not go to events. My idea of an event on the East End is any talk the writer Bob Colacello hosts at the Peter Marino Foundation in Southampton or any art show at the Quogue Library. I like visiting the bookstores, swimming late in the day at Flying Point Road when the sun is soft, and visiting farm stands in search of a sweeter blueberry and ear of corn. I like Loaves and Fishes because its offerings are delicious, and because it is so laid back in presentation. I like watching the customers, some of the customers, not understanding this simplicity. I think they are expecting something flashy Real Housewives-style marble and chrome and it’s so quaint. What current projects are you working on? After eight years commissioning and editing books for the Phaidon Press, I am now just writing my own things and taking on some assignments. Currently, I am finishing a novel, a contemporary murder story, set on the Upper East Side. In September, a beautiful book titled Linda Evangelista Photographed by Steven Meisel, with more than 180 images they shot together since their first shoot in 1987, will be published. This was on the top of the list of books I wanted to do for Phaidon, and I was thrilled when Linda and Steven agreed to do the book and asked me to write the introduction. Last question. In My Mrs. Brown, the heroine sets out to buy the “perfect dress.” Have you ever pursued perfection on the East End, only to find, like your character, that the journey is more important than the end result? Oh, sure, along the way I learned a lot. Looking for love, looking for family, looking for everything and anything, even roses that grow when there’s no one around to water them . . . looking for the right and good things but in all the wrong places, sort of thing. This has been the adventure of my lifetime, looking for perfection in people, places, and things only to discover, well, no one said it better than Albert Camus, “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.” For me, that was always the promise of the East End. Finding the East End light, within. I do see that it is a place where people chase the glitter, but the glitter, as we know, isn’t gold. Geir Magnusson 50 / NEIGHBORS In September, Phaidon publishes Linda Evangelista Photographed by Steven Meisel, for which he wrote the foreward. Next: a “contemporary murder story” set on the Upper East Side.

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