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Medford Mother Allegedly Murders Toddlers

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Sean Ono Lennon: Bringing The Beauty

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9 Bedrooms | 12.5 Baths | 10,927+/- sq. ft. | 2.96 Acres Now completed, this extraordinary oceanfront estate with bay views includes an oceanside infinity-edge pool and tennis, many unique state-of-the-art interior amenities and an elevated walkway to ocean beach.

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“Saunders, A Higher Form of Realty,� is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Please refer to our website for the names under which our agents are licensed with the Department of State. Equal Housing Opportunity.

December 25, 2019

Best Of 2019 Covers

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rederico Azevedo, the owner of Unlimited Earth Care in Bridgehampton, is known as a leading landscape designer on the East End. His first book, “Bloom: The Luminous Gardens of Frederico Azevedo,” published by Pointed Leaf Press, will be available June 22.

For over 25 years, Azevedo’s goal has been for people to fall in love with color and he accomplishes this with the gardens he designs. He has been recognized for his ability to enhance natural landscapes through his comprehensive landscape designs.

On June 22, a book launch will be held at Unlimited Earth Care. There will also be an opening reception for the “Garden of Eden” exhibition with works by Zurab Tsereteli. The event will be held from 4:30 to 7:30 PM. Indy caught up with Azevedo to discuss the new book, landscape design, and the upcoming celebration.

Tell us a little about your new book “Bloom: The Luminous Gardens of Frederico Azevedo.”

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The Next Generation: Rufus, Roseanne, Teddy, & More

Mayor-Elect Warren Is Youngest Yet

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Christopher Nuzzi: The Advantage Of Experience

The book was a chance for me to really meditate on landscape design as a medium. It’s unpacked into essential elements such as “vista” and “border,” and explored through hundreds of vibrant photographs.

Pointed Leaf Press and I worked so hard to create a book that would reflect my work and also really be a full experience.

Smith Makes USA Lacrosse Roster

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Describe your holistic approach to landscape design.

When I refer to my approach as holistic, I’m referring to two aspects of my process. The first is working sustainably, which has always been at the center of my work. I’m constantly looking to incorporate environmentally friendly and recycled materials, and I use native or well-adapted plants in my gardens. Choosing and designing with intention often results in gardens that require less maintenance as they are better able to thrive on their own.

Rally To Get Rid Of Signs

The other aspect of my approach is about visual effect. Flowers are at core of my designs, and I employ them strategically and according to the cycles of the seasons. I design gardens that feel natural, but elevated.

Flowing floral borders, accented with sprays of fountain grasses, can carve out stark expanses of lawn. In recent years, I’ve often done away entirely with larger grass lawns, replacing them with a more sustainable and aesthetically designed meadow.

They’re very beautiful, and better for the environment. I imitate the unpredictability of nature in my

Christopher Nuzzi: The Advantage Of Experience

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Tell us a little about your process when starting a landscape design.

I always begin the creative process by considering the landscape from different perspectives. I begin with a strong view, and I work outwards, gradually. How will the garden look if I stand here, or there? What will come forward, and what will recede? I acquaint myself with the environment, and let my palettes and ideas form, at first unconfined.

everyone at the Unlimited Earth Care headquarters. It’s also the opening of Tsereteli’s exhibition, so it’s going to be a night of art and design.

My team and I, along with Pointed Leaf Press, worked so hard on this book and I’m really looking forward to sharing it. I really centered my

thoughts on natural design as a medium in the book, so the event is going to be a chance for me to discuss that with people in person, and of course share the hundreds of stunning photographs.

To RSVP to the launch and exhibit, email info@unlimitedearthcare.com.

Frederico Azevedo’s book “Bloom” will be released June 22.

What transforms a garden into art?

Nature, and flowers in particular, are inherently beautiful. When I design a garden, I’m not competing with nature, I’m collaborating with these natural colors, forms, and patterns to create something new and intentional.

How does the natural beauty of the East End inspire you?

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The light of the Hamptons is so beautiful, and the environment is incredibly unique; there’s the sea, the bay, the fields, the woods — and every season. I enjoy the challenge of creating living, adaptable landscapes in such a diverse, sensitive, and constantly changing environment.

All of the landscapes that I’ve designed are equally important because I’m involved in the entire process. Once a project is executed, the process of transformation, experience, and memory making begins for both myself and my clients.

Home & Garden: Azevedo’s “Bloom” Covers Luminous Gardens

Tell us a little about Zurab Tsereteli’s “Garden of Eden” exhibition.

Zurab Tsereteli is a Georgian sculptor, painter, and architect known for his unconventional and dramatic work. This exhibition, “Garden of Eden,” represents a selection of mosaic pieces over a 20-year period of his work, centered on Tsereteli’s interpretations of nature. The pieces are colorful and elegant, and even a little magical.

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What are some of the most memorable landscapes you’ve created on the East End?

Sean Ono Lennon: Bringing The Beauty

Real Realty Advantage Title’s regional SVP explains how titles can make or break a deal

gardens and instill it with my own sense of color and form.

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The Independent

Feature

Bonackers Eliminated By Harborfields

May 29, 2019

An Indy investigation

A freshwater crisis is building across the East End. The time to act is now.

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By Kevin Gray

Not A Drop 10 To Drink

A toxic algae bloom. Excess nitrogen and other nutrients from septic systems and agriculture are causing similar algal explosions in fresh and salt water across the East End.

Helicopters: Fight Or Flight?

nyone who has ever trekked to the back parking lot of the Bridge golf club in Bridgehampton, past the glassy and futuristic clubhouse on the hill, has heard the ruckus. While the nearby fairways provide Instagrammable views of Noyac Bay, with only a sea breeze soundtrack, back here the grinding of gears and composting machinery breaks that spell. If you’re curious enough to plunge your rented golf cart through the secondgrowth pitch pine and mountain laurel, as Sam Christiansen did on a recent spring Tuesday, you’ll come to a rusted lawn chair that serves as a lookout over a Dantesque hellscape.

“Most people don’t even know this is back here,” says Christiansen, a 28-year-old private investigator in a teal muscle polo shirt, flared designer jeans, and distressed cowboy boots. “It’s so ugly and out-of-place inside these forests.”

Reflected in his blackout Oakleys was a 31.5acre industrial crater known as Sand Land. The decades-old pit is home to a multi-million dollar sand mining and mulch-composting business that activists say has not only been churning out dust, noise, and various stenches for years, but has actually polluted the groundwater beneath the site.

Tell us about the reception and book signing on June 22.

Multi-million dollar estates with swimming pools and tennis courts dot the woodlands radiating out from this noxious but extremely valuable hole in the ground.

Christiansen, who was hired to monitor the site using tree- and scaffold-mounted cameras strategically placed on the periphery, stood on a ridge separating the pit from the southern edge of the golf club’ s property, as landscaping trucks regularly lurched into view, stopping at the base of a black mulch mountain. Next to an industrial trommel screen or “blender” that refines the compost, a front loader piled the trucks high with mulch destined for local lawns and gardens.

“That stuff is black poison,” says Christiansen.

“No one even asks or cares what’s in it.”

Hiring a private eye to surveil a sand pit may sound extreme, but this is what it’s come to out on the East End. Recent research has shown that commercial composting operations like this can dangerously affect their surroundings. While seemingly part of a virtuous ecological circle of repurposing grass, leaves, and trees into soil-nourishing mulch, they actually release harmful levels of metals and radiological elements into the groundwater. And Sand Land is one of the most egregious:

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Environment: Water Quality On The East End A

Loudon III, “Surviving Twin”

Kyle McGowin Is Back In The Bigs

It sits directly over the East End’s only aquifer in an area designated by New York State as a Special Groundwater Protection Area.

But Sand Land is merely one expression of a regional disaster in the making. In 2015, the Suffolk County Department of Health Services warned that water quality here — spanning everything from our ponds, estuaries, and bays to our drinking water — is at an alarming “tipping point,” suffering from manifold afflictions. Backyard septic systems and farm fertilizers ooze nitrogen and trigger pond and bay algae blooms that kill off sea and shellfisheries, while shriveling wetlands and making us vulnerable to storm surges. Old industrial sites and emerging contaminants in household products are spreading cancer-causing pollutants into drinking water. And hillsides full of organic junk are generating harmful amounts of metals and other toxins.

“No matter how you slice it, we are living in the midst of a number of disconcerting trends that are putting our waters under assault,” says Dr. Christopher Gobler, a coastal marine scientist and the director of Stony Brook University’s Center for Clean Water Technology. “And if these trends continue, then it’s only going to get worse.”

The event on June 22 is to celebrate the book of course, and share it with

Independent/Courtesy of Advantage Title

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Montauk Murder Suspect Indicted pg. 5

Lighting Up The Town p. 31

Memorial Day Observances Set p. 25 Independent/T. E. McMorrow

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SchumerDesigner Slams talks fashion, wine, and Local Internet philanthropy Providers

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The Independent

Feature

July 31, 2019

more than 200 researchers across the globe. The research the foundation conducts is the basis for developing minimally toxic treatments for patients. Through its collaborative group of world-class scientists, the Institute Without Walls, researchers share information and tools to speed the pace of cancer research.

This summer’s event will also include honorees Chef Lidia Bastianich; Ian Duke, local restaurant owner of Southampton Social Club, Union Cantina, and Union Burger Bar; and Antonella Bertello, the owner of the Baker House 1650 in East Hampton. Guests will enjoy food tastings by restaurants like Bastianich’s Becco, Felidia, and Del

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Vintage Base Ball Takes Over Herrick Park

Corcoran Superstar Susan Breitenbach: How Does She Do It?

There Goes The Neighborhood

Sole Searching With Bridget Moynahan Affordable

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The region’s punishing housing crisis is driving many lifelong East Enders into exile.

Here are some of their stories.

By Kim Velsey Photography by Eric Striffler

Continued On Page B27.

Independent/Ty Wenzel

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Mercer Built Comes Into The Spotlight Of Hamptons Luxury Builders

Robyn Blair Davidson creates candy coated décor

What is your favorite candy?

To eat, I love sour belts from makeyour-own candy bag stores. To work with, I love using movie theater candy boxes. They’re so colorful!

Why candy as a focal point?

I love candy. Growing up, candy was always a treat, and I still appreciate a good piece as an adult, clearly. Looking at candy has always made me innately happy, and smile, which my art now tends to do.

The owner of TENET is a dear friend, and I’ve shopped with him for years.

When I started my business, we caught up over lunch and he offered to display my pieces in his store over the summer, his busiest season, and the rest is history.

Baybi Pop was opening mid-summer and started collectively pulling some of the coolest brands to showcase in its store. A friend of mine was working with the owner, shared my art, and they reached out instantly to request

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Still No Varsity Football In East Hampton

Real Realty

Independent/Robyn Blair Davidson

How did you come to partner with TENET and Baybi Pop?

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Ellie Hunter: Steeling Beauty

How Sweet It Is! Robyn Blair Davidson

By Nicole Teitler nicole@indyeastend.com Based out of New York City, Robyn Blair Davidson’s artwork is pretty sweet to look at. She combines art and candy to create wall pieces that bring out the most colorful parts of a client’s personality. Davidson, who has a house in Water Mill, has collaborated with TENET in Southampton and Baybi Pop in Montauk to showcase her delectable pieces. Saturated in color, each piece includes a phrase that pops off plexiglass. She’s also recently partnered with Dormify to sell print versions of her work.

The 2019 Hampton Classic

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How Sweet It Is!

East Quogue: A Village On The Horizon?

MLB’s Carlos Beltran More Than A Ballplayer

Independent/Ty Wenzel

pieces. They are currently selling my original art and candy dishes.

Tell me about your artistic process.

For the actual candy, I only use packaged pieces, never loose candy. I also use a special glue to help preserve each piece, and I work with expert plexiglass manufacturers to tightly seal my pieces, making sure that nothing can get in and nothing can get out. I tend to get lost in the candy packaging.

Sometimes I’m looking more at shapes, other times at colors. I go through phases of what I gravitate

Ellie Hunter: Steeling Beauty

toward and what I want to see come to life. Right now, I’m obsessed with monochromatic colors of candy in my pieces and gradient colors in the text.

What made you decide to do this?

From trading to luxury building . . . to horses

When I started, I actually had no intention of turning my love of candy into a full-time business. I was sitting in my living room in 2018 staring at a bowl of candy on my coffee table. I was really into making my space a reflection of who I am, and it hit me that I needed to put candy on the wall. I knew exactContinued On Page B26.

Bridget Moynahan has co-written “Our Shoes, Our Selves,” with Amanda Benchley, published by Abrams. Independent/Melanie Dunea

complished women — from Misty Copeland to Bobbi Brown to Katie Couric — share memories and stories through their stilettos and sneakers, combat

boots or slippers. The result is an insightful series of interviews and portraits proving that sometimes the soles of our feet are somehow connected

to, well, our souls. It also explores the human connection with inanimate objects, how we hold on to sentiment, and Continued On Page B16.

Panel Discussions on the local level and beyond

MONDAY, AUGUST 5

The Youth Climate Movement Could Save The Planet

MONDAY, AUGUST 12

Latino Immigration Issues On The East End And Beyond The Future Of Women In Leadership

MONDAY, AUGUST 19

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Arts & Entertainment

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Sole Searching With Bridget Moynahan

Housing Crisis In The Hamptons Bridget Moynahan is best known as an actress (“Blue Bloods,” “Sex and the City,” “Coyote Ugly”) and former cover model, but now she is dipping her toe — so to speak — into the world of books, with “Our Shoes, Our Selves,” co-authored with journalist Amanda Benchley and featuring photography

by Melanie Dunea.

Moynahan, an East End resident, will be one of the writers participating in the East Hampton Library’s Authors’ Night on Saturday, August 10, in the “555” field in Amagansett. The local library’s largest annual fundraiser offers up about 100 authors — some worldfamous, some up-and-coming — talking to guests and signing copies of their books.

“Ask any woman about her favorite pair of shoes, and the answer may surprise you,” teases the back cover of “Our Shoes, Our Selves.” Inside, 40 ac-

Mercer Built Comes Into The Spotlight Of Hamptons Luxury Builders

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Plans are afoot to attend EH Library’s Author’s Night

By Bridget LeRoy bridget@indyeastend.com

Posto; bites by Indian chef Palak Patel; along with samplings from Centro Trattoria & Bar, Sydney’s “Taylor” Made Cuisine, Saaz Restaurant, South Fork Bakery, among many others. There will also be live music from Pat Farrell and the Cold Spring Harbor Band — “The Billy Joel Tribute Show.”

As a designer, Miller has always been on the cutting edge of latest trends. What she’s most enjoying this summer? “I am loving all the vintage crepe dresses that are so similar to my dresses from the ’80s which everyone wears with sneakers today!” stated Miller.

VOL 26 NO 42 JULY 3 2019

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cancer research and its mission is to eradicate cancer by funding cuttingedge research that identifies and corrects abnormal gene function that causes the disease. The theme of this year’s event is Tour de Cuisine, so that guests can savor the flavors of the world without leaving the East End. “I have known many people the disease has affected, and we desperately need better solutions to fight it. I like the work that Samuel Waxman does because they are funding innovation and breakthrough technology,” Miller continued.

Since its inception in 1976, the SWCRF has awarded approximately $100 million to support the work of

July 31, 2019

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Bernette Schoenster of East Hampton finally decided to move to Florida after realizing that her husband, an electrician, was going to have to work until he was 77 if they stayed. “I’ve seen a lot of people work until they’re 77,” she said. “And when they retire, they die.”

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Nicole Miller To Be Honored

By Waxman Foundation

By Jessica Mackin-Cipro jessica@indyeastend.com

Nicole Miller is a globally recognized fashion designer, known for her colorful prints and patterns and designs that are bold, yet classic. The latest additions to the Sag Harbor resident’s resume include rosé creator, and a sunglass line for Optyx in East Hampton.

Miller will also serve as the fashion honoree at this summer’s Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation’s 15th annual Hamptons Happening on Saturday, July 13, starting at 6:30 PM. “I did a fashion show benefit for Samuel Waxman several years back and I knew about all the good work they do supporting cutting-edge research and technology. I was happy to help such a great organization,” said Miller.

SWCRF is a nonprofit organization dedicated to curing and preventing cancer. The foundation is a pioneer in

Corcoran Superstar Susan Breitenbach: How Does She Do It?

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Nicole Miller To Be Honored By Waxman Foundation

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Apollo In The Hamptons Turns 10

pg. 18

pg. 8

Fourth Of July Celebrations pg. 5

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DWI Charged After Fatal Montauk Crash

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Susan Lacy Presents HBO Documentary on Ralph Lauren

Emma Walton Hamilton: Hollywood Royalty Graces Bay Street

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Whalers Earn Fifth Straight County Crown

Designing Man Isaac Mizrahi Fashions New Show

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No topic is off-limits at Bay Street Theater

Food Trucks At Farm Stands Voted Down

Tell us a little about “Isaac Mizrahi: Queen Size” and what the audience can expect during the show.

The show “Queen Size” is very autobiographical. I was very overweight as a kid and I never got over that body image, no matter how thin I’ve ever been, and it’s a dominant part of my identity.

If there’s one issue that defines my life, it’s the struggle to be thin. The show

covers a lot of biological ground but always seems to default to my weight issues.

How long have you been performing?

I started performing at a very young age. At eight, I built a puppet theatre in the family garage and created shows until I started high school. When I was 10 or 11, I started doing female impersonations for friends and family and would draw crowds at the beach club or the lobby of temple with my impersonations of Barbra Streisand or Liza Minnelli.

I went to Performing Arts High School in NYC and then started doing cabaret shows in my early 20s and never stopped. I’ve worked at all kinds of little clubs in the city, from a now defunct place called Eighty Eights to Joe’s Pub to, most recently, Café Carlyle.

How do you go about selecting the songs in your show?

The song selection for a show begins

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Shoshi Builders: A Story Of Escaping War To Build A New Life In Luxury

Designing Man Isaac Mizrahi Fashions New Show

By Jessica Mackin-Cipro jessica@indyeastend.com

Isaac Mizrahi — the accomplished actor, host, writer, designer, and producer — returns to Bay Street Theater on Monday, August 26, with his all-new show, “Isaac Mizrahi: Queen Size.” The evening is part of Bay Street’s Music Mondays concert series.

Joined by his band of jazz musicians, led by Ben Waltzer, Mizrahi will perform classics by Leonard Bernstein, Cat Stevens, Jimmy Webb, John Kander, Cole Porter, James Taylor, and Jerome Kern. And no topic will be offlimits. Get ready for politics, sex, prescription drugs, millennials.

Indy caught up with Mizrahi to discuss.

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Belle Smith Scores Big With USA

Starring: Lewis Black, Chris Bauer,

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Early on I wanted to distinguish myself and Dayton-Halstead, the agency I co-owned and managed, by offering information. We were the first in the Hamptons to compile sales data and prepare a market report. We also were the first to engage advertising and public relations agencies.

Our messaging was informational, not self-promotion; we thought through the flow of information about the market, we would become known.

I still use that model in my monthly blogs, on my website, and on social media.

Learning to listen has been enormously helpful. And, having seen upfront the utter sadness of severe and chronic illnesses has helped me to put and keep things in perspective.

I don’t miss the medical field but I do miss the pace and the intellectual collegiality of an academic environment.

Care to tell us of any interesting building or interior/landscape trends you’ve noticed?

ity to kill the tune. But really, the ideas for songs come from the ideas about the story telling in the show.

Independent/Ty Wenzel

Continued On Page B6.

CELEBRITY

Susan Lucci, Alan Zweibel, Eugene

How have you differentiated yourself through digital marketing?

Your background is in mental health care, and you were director of therapeutic services at New York Hospital. Has this given you an edge with clients? Do you miss the medical profession?

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In the 1980s, the “typical” Hamptons second home was labeled contemporary and had one large living/dining/kitchen space with smallish bedrooms. By 2000, traditional style homes were popular, the living room and dining rooms became “formal,” kitchens got smaller, folks hung out in family rooms, and bedrooms all had large closets and “en suite” baths. Soon thereafter basements became lower levels and, in general, homes got larger and larger.

Those two diverse layouts/sizes found a balance in what is now known as “transitional style.” From the exterior, the look is traditional but inside the spaces are open and the materials and trim are more akin to what would be at home in a modern house.

VOL 28 NO 19 JANUARY 23 2019

For someone looking to sell their Hamptons home, what should they do so that it sells quickly and efficiently?

Discover Long Island special section inside

Take Me Out To The Bill Game

The short answer is price it correctly.

Two factors, price and location, account for a sale and just one of them is within our control.

What marketing do you implement to secure a luxury exclusive?

I find social media and online advertising websites effective for capturing buyer interest. Ironically, home sellers who are not also home buyers do not notice those ads and, as such, measure agent effort by the frequency of placement and size of print ads .

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Brody-Lederman’s Parisian Dream Come True

Independent/Gregg Richards

very early. Certain songs resonate and become obsessions and relate to stories I want to tell. The ultimate way they get selected is by their suitability to my singing voice and the band’s abil-

The Independent

Therapy with a specialty in psychiatric rehabilitation. I was also on the faculties of SUNY-Downstate, NYU, and Cornell.

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There’s Something Fishy About Our Fish

Real Realty: Diane Saatchi

Bonackers Come Into Own; Win 2 Straight

What are some areas of the East End that you consider up-and-coming?

The neighborhoods popular in the 1970-1990s are coming back, largely offering tear downs on lovely properties with mature landscaping. The Georgica section of East Hampton and the areas just outside of historic Sag Harbor Village are two such examples. Those 1980s contemporaries described above are today’s tear downs.

How did the Hamptons home-sales market fare in 2018?

It started strong and then an increase in inventory morphed us into a buyers’ market. I don’t remember any other time when the stock market soared and our market was not in lockstep. Yet, as last year came to a close, the volatile stock market seems to have had no effect on a recent uptick in deals. Go figure!

Sister team Diane Saatchi and Elaine Stimmel partner on key listings and are Saunders & Associates superstars in their own right. Independent/Courtesy Saunders & Associates

Center and when there was an active real estate board, I served as chair of the Grievance Committee. I am not sure what is next.

Do you ever miss living in New York City?

I never stopped missing New York City.

My husband and I have always had an apartment there. We try to get in most weeks.

What’s your elevator pitch?

I know the market, I understand people, and while the ultimate goal of my work is a real estate deal, I believe deals come about because of and through relationships with the principals, real estate colleagues, and the other professionals involved in the transactions.

To reach Diane Saatchi or inquire about her properties, call 631-375-6900 or email ds@saunders.com.

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Do you have a favorite building in the Hamptons, architecturally or otherwise?

That’s a hard question to answer. I fall deeply, madly in love with homes/ properties until the next one I love comes along. Most are original old classics that have been restored, but I also love some new and modern ones.

As a big part of the community, are you involved with any organizations?

I am between volunteer gigs right now, taking a break from what seemed like full time involvement in politics. In prior years, I served as co-chair of the board of what is now the Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Learning

8 Fair Hills Lane, Bridgehampton, NY Almost New Beautifully Designed Home $4,495,000 On a quiet lane in Bridgehampton discover this graceful, beautifully finished and turnkey traditional that's well suited to entertaining or unwinding. Wide plank wood flooring, and wainscoting on walls. Double height foyer opens to living areas with glass doors across the entire rear of the home. The light-filled kitchen is finished with marble counter-

tops and island. Glass doors open to the backyard and pool area. Outdoors entertain with the outdoor kitchen. Enjoy the heated saltwater gunite pool with spa and sun shelf. Elevator serves all three levels. Conveniently located close to Bridgehampton's town center, minutes to ocean beaches and within easy reach of Sag Harbor Village.

To inquire about this property, contact Diane Saatchi via email at ds@saunders. com or call 631-375-6900.

pg. 41

Keeping The Dream Alive p. 10

Independent/Gordon M. Grant

Independent/Lisa Tamburini

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The Independent

What’s Been And What Will Be It’s probably a universal lament this time of year that time moves quickly, sometimes too quickly.

We get older, we lose loved ones, and the world’s tragedies go on unabated, as does the sad revelation that life has its ups and downs, and we are along for the ride no matter where it leads.

When going through a year’s wealth of photos and articles in anticipation of this, our annual “Best Of” issue, the negatives are quickly overcome by the positives. Smiling faces abound, and from summer parades to polar plunges the unmistakable joy of life nearly jumps off the pages.

This is us — our community, friends and families, neighbors and co-workers. We are there to support each other, to lift each other up, to remind each other how lucky we are that we get to play this game of life here, on one of Earth’s most beautiful playing fields.

We'll fight to for the rights of the mentally ill, and we'll fight to alleviate the wave of sexual violence against women and the underaged; we will celebrate

Tully’s View

champions, whether in the schools and in the courts; we'll band together to see what we can do to curtail pollution and turn this planet around. Yes, those are stories that shaped 2019, and they are reported completely and honestly in this edition. That is The Independent way: an unbiased reporting of the news, good and bad, along with the reminiscence of the year’s most astonishing events in the arts on the East End, plus profiles of the people we know and love.

And if we get you to laugh a little every once in a while, that’s OK, too.

You know us: we live here, we went to school here, our forefathers are buried here. This is your newspaper. If you want us to get something in, give us or call or drop by: bring LeRoy and Wyche some candy, but don’t feed McMorrow or wake up Murphy.

Our office reopens on January 2; we'll be back on the stands January 8 with the first issue of the new year. Let’s hope all the news is good news. Until then enjoy the Best of 2019. It’s been a labor of love.

Publisher & GM James J. Mackin Executive Editor & Associate Publisher Jessica Mackin-Cipro Executive Editor Rick Murphy

Director of Marketing & Real Estate Coordinator Ty Wenzel

Associate Editor Bridget LeRoy

Graphic Designer Lianne Alcon

Deputy News & Sports Editor Desirée Keegan

Contributing Photographers Nanette Shaw Kaitlin Froschl Richard Lewin Gordon M. Grant Rob Rich Jenna Mackin Lisa Tamburini Irene Tully Ty Wenzel Justin Meinken Tom Kochie

Senior Writer T.E. McMorrow Copy Editor Lisa Cowley Writers/ Columnists / Contributors Denis Hamill Nicole Teitler Zachary Weiss Dominic Annacone Joe Cipro Karen Fredericks Isa Goldberg Vincent Pica Bob Bubka Gianna Volpe Heather Buchanan Vanessa Gordon Joan Baum Jenna Mackin Georgia Warner Laura Euler Brittany Ineson Head Of Sales Daniel Schock Advertising Media Sales Director Joanna Froschl Sales Manager BT Sneed Account Managers Tim Smith Sheldon Kawer Annemarie Davin John Wyche Art Director Jessica Mackin-Cipro Advertising Production Manager John Laudando

Independent/Irene Tully

Director of Business Development/ Branding Amy Kalaczynski

Bookkeeper Sondra Lenz Office & Classified Manager Maura Platz Kathy Krause Delivery Managers Charlie Burge Eric Supinsky Louis Evangelista Published weekly by: East Hampton Media Holdings LLC Subscriptions by 1st Class Mail: $91 yearly The Independent Newspaper 74 Montauk Highway Suite #19 East Hampton, NY 11937 P 631 324 2500 F 631 324 2544 www.indyeastend.com Follow : @indyeastend Email : news@indyeastend.com ©2019 Entire Contents Copyrighted Financial responsibility for errors in all advertising printed in The Independent is strictly limited to actual amount paid for the ad.

B go eca he od us i a e gr s th lth gi ea e ft te . s t

December 25, 2019

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6

The Independent

News & Opinion ‘I Killed Them With My Bare Hands’ Medford mother murders toddlers during Montauk drive, police say

By T. E. McMorrow t.e@indyeastend.com

This article was published in our July 3 issue

Independent/T. E. McMorrow

“I killed them with my bare hands,” the Medford woman accused of murdering her twin toddler daughters in Montauk told her mother moments after the girls died, according to court documents on file in East Hampton. Tenia R. Campbell, 24, is being held in county jail in Riverside, not eligible for bail, charged with two counts of murder in the second degree.

Her mother told police her daughter had been “very irrational and nasty” the past week, and has a history of mental disorders, including being bipolar. At about 2 PM, Thursday, June 27, Tenia called her mother, hysterically crying. “She kept saying she was sorry, but she didn’t want to live anymore,” the mother told police. “She said she was going to kill herself and her babies.”

Tenia Campbell was the mother of two-year-old twins, Jasmine and Jaida Campbell. She also is the mother of a five-year-old boy, who was not mentioned in the police report, and appears to have not been with his mother and his sisters at the time of the girls’ death.

After receiving the call from an hysterical Tenia Campbell, the mother dialed 911 from a second phone, while trying to calm her daughter down. She knew she was driving east, because Tenia Campbell said several times that she was driving toward the beach. “I asked her about her twin baby girls, and she said, ‘They are already dead. I killed them with my bare hands.’”

The mother told the 911 dispatcher that her daughter was driving a 2001 Chrysler Town and Country. Police put out a “be on the lookout” call, and began what Suffolk County police termed a “massive” search for Campbell and her twins, with County police working with East Hampton Town and Southampton Town police, plus New York State police and County park rangers.

Tenia Campbell and her mother continued exchanging calls, with Tenia telling her mother that “she was going to find the ocean and walk into it and drown so she could be with her babies in heaven.”

At 4:05 PM, East Hampton Town police located her car near the entrance

to the county park at Third House in Montauk. Unsuccessful attempts were made to resuscitate the children. They were declared dead on arrival at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, while Tenia Campbell was placed under arrest.

She was held overnight, and brought to East Hampton Town Justice Court to be arraigned. At least a dozen news cameramen were around her when she was led into court by two officers. She kept her hands over her face the entire time she was walking, sobbing as she did so.

The arraignment was brief, a perfunctory procedure in which the courtappointed attorney representing her, Brian DeSesa, entered a denial to the pair of felony charges. She is not eligible for bail at the local level, due to the seriousness of the charges. If and when she is indicted, the real legal process for her will begin in county court.

According to prosecuting attorney Kerriann Kelly, who heads the district attorney’s homicide unit, Campbell will be under a suicide watch in county jail.

Campbell faces 25 years to life In prison on each of the two murder charges.

A woman who said she was a friend of Tenia Campbell arrived at the courthouse after the arraignment had ended, and Campbell had been taken back to East Hampton Town police headquarters, from where she was taken to the county jail. She did not want to give her name, but she spoke to a reporter in a halting voice, with tears running down her face. “It’s out of the blue. It’s so shocking,” the woman said.

Tenia was not a drug user, the friend said, and was a good mother. “I don’t know how this happened.” She said Tenia had been texting her, toward the end of her drive to Montauk, and her arrest. “Her last text message was, ‘I love you. Keep pushing.’”

A Facebook post by Campbell, on April 5, 2018, read “In they (sic) first year they have managed to stress me out to maximum capacity and still make me extremely happy. Such a blessing and a headache it is to have twins. I love you girls till the death of me.”

News & Opinion

December 25, 2019

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7

8

The Independent

Former Student Alleges Rape

By Rick Murphy rmurphy@indyeastend.com This article was published in our June 5 issue Riverhead High School Principal Charles Regan, when he was a teacher almost two decades ago, engaged in sexual intercourse with an underage student at least three times, the alleged victim said in court papers released May 31.

The alleged victim, now 35, did not reveal her identity.

Last month, a Riverhead High School student filed suit against Regan, alleging inappropriate behavior, sexual harassment, and a litany of related charges. Riverhead Town Police are investigating but have yet to charge Regan with criminal wrongdoing. Police Chief David Hegermiller said since both parties are above the legal age and the relationship may have been consensual, the investigation must be a thorough one.

The second alleged victim to come forward was 13 when Regan, a special education teacher, began coaching basketball at the Dayton Avenue School in

the Eastport-South Manor School District. In both cases, court papers allege he first built a one-on-one relationship with the youngster that eventually went beyond the normal educator-student dynamic.

The victim alleged that when she was 16, Regan took her to a Knicks game without the knowledge or consent of her family, took her to his home afterward, and made her perform oral sex. By the time she was 17, the abuse had escalated to include intercourse, on at least three occasions, according to court papers.

The relationship occurred from 1999 to 2002.

The Eastport-South Manor School District had yet to respond to the allegations as of press time.

“We just filed. We are expecting to hear from them,” said the attorney John Ray of Miller Place. Ray criticized school officials, saying they ignored clear signs

of sexual abuse. “Nothing was done,” Ray said. In fact, he charged school districts everywhere are pedophile havens, where abuse of students is widespread and either underreported or reports are buried, far from the public eye. In this case, his client’s mother went to school officials. “They did nothing,” Ray said.

The Suffolk County Police Seventh Squad will handle the investigation.

Ray also represents Anastasia Stapon, the 18-year Riverhead student who went public with her claim that Regan repeatedly tried to lure her into sexual encounters. “He followed the same pattern with both victims,” Ray said. Regan fired off over 15,000 texts to Stapon, some extremely graphic, others troubling — like allegedly stating he was going to kill a student and at one point even his own daughter, Ray said. He provided copies of the texts to this newspaper.

“We gave them these texts,” he said of the authorities. “We didn’t have to, but we’re interested in protecting kids.”

He bristled that Regan is still on the district payroll. “This is an extremely sick individual,” he said.

The Dayton Avenue School victim saw Stapon had the courage to come forward, and she saw “the same pattern in the relationship,” Ray added.

Regan had already been suspended on April 30 when Ray and Stapon held a

Riverhead High School Principal Charles Regan.

Independent/Courtesy law offices of John Ray

press conference on May 6 announcing his intention to sue the school district and Regan. Stapon spoke to those assembled. “Charles Regan and Riverhead school have destroyed my spirit,” she said. Stapon is seeking $10 million in damages; the latest victim asks the court to award her $40,000.

Regan has been principal at Riverhead since 2006. He is 48 and according to Ray, is married to a schoolteacher.

They have two children, Ray said.

Ray said he expected at least one other alleged victim to come forward.

She attends school in Eastport and was only 14 when the encounters with Regan allegedly occurred, he said.

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News & Opinion

December 25, 2019

9

10

The Independent

President Seeks Trump Change POTUS swells campaign coffers with local loot

By Rick Murphy rmurphy@indyeastend.com This article was published in our August 14 issue

President Trump landing at Gabreski airport. Independent/Courtesy Manny Vilar

In the final analysis, President Donald Trump’s foray into the Hamptons was much like his presidency: immersed in criticism and seemingly surrounded by haters. He nevertheless ended up with the biggest grin — and the money.

While pockets of protestors — reportedly about 80 on the Water Mill green — waited wearily for a glimpse and made impassioned speeches demanding an end to what they called Trump’s racist rhetoric, the President was outwardly oblivious to them, at one point doing crude imitations of South Korean leader Moon Jae-in and mimicking his accent.

Mostly though, he laughed and talked and yucked it up with the kind of supporters who build skyscrapers, manage billions of dollars, and find him compel-

companies from the event and Ross himself.

Melanie Whelan, CEO of SoulCycle, said “SoulCycle in no way endorses the political fundraising event being held later this week . . .”

Trump's arrival at Francis S. Gabreski Airport on Sunday, August 11, in Westhampton Beach received a warm welcome from Congressman Lee Zeldin, a strong ally, and his wife, Diana, and traveled to the Ross estate via limo. The Secret Service, Southampton Town Police, New York State Troopers, and Suffolk County law enforcement combined to limit traffic in the areas around the motorcade, and local police said the effort went smoothly.

Trump and his entourage then headed for the Bridgehampton enclave of the builder Joe Farrell dubbed Sandcastle, where Trump waxed poetic at some length, even promising some action on the gun control issue. Rudy Giuliani and Andrew Giuliani, who live nearby, attended, as did Joe Piscopo, Geraldo Rivera, Estée Lauder billionaire Ronald Lauder, Vornado founder Steve Roth, Senator Lindsey Graham, Richard Le Frak, and Ed Cox. And of course, there were Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend, former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle — the couple recently bought a house nearby.

Sandcastle, at this point, needs no introduction: Farrell’s $40-million play toy, at 612 Halsey Lane, is 17,000 square feet, with more bells and whistles than a fleet of fire

ling enough to make the trip east worth a reported $12 million in donations.

It started at the Stephen Ross estate on Shinnecock Bay, a tidy little luncheon for 60. Attendees — tickets ranged from $100,000 to $250,000 — laughed when Trump noted he had inadvertently drawn Ross into an unneeded controversy: His wife controls the Equinox and SoulCycle gym chains, and opponents of Trump sought to organize a boycott of those establishments.

“I have known Donald Trump for 40 years, and while we agree on some issues, we strongly disagree on many others, and I have never been bashful about expressing my opinions,” Ross said.

Meanwhile, both Equinox and SoulCycle released statements distancing the

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engines. It features a movie theater, bowling alley, walk-in refrigerator, wine room, climbing wall, basketball court, private gym, and spa. “Yes, I have my own baseball field,” Farrell answered to a press query. Halsey Lane was closed most of the day in anticipation of Trump’s arrival, which was pushed back to after 3 PM.

“It’s an incredible honor, the biggest in my life,” Farrell said about hosting President Trump. “So far, we have 45 people who paid $35,000 to take their picture with him.”

Trump boasted that he was well liked in the Hamptons and enjoyed coming here. In fact, though he did carry Suffolk County in the election, he lost decisively in the Hamptons. The Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said at the lunch, “The support for our President is unprecedented and growing.”

Guests dined on a buffet lunch of sirloin steak, shrimp with lemon chili, and charred broccoli. Trump left at about 5 PM for a short trip to New Jersey, where he will stay at his golf resort in Bedminster. He is not on vacation, he stressed, correcting the “fake news” — the White House is being refurbished.

But outside the gilded gates of Sandcastle, the prevailing sentiment was summed up by demonstrators who chanted, “Stop the violence, stop the hate.” One sign carried by a roadside demonstrator read, “Send Him Back.”

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December 25, 2019

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12

The Independent

Mayor-Elect Warren Is Youngest Yet 36-year-old edges out Southampton Village incumbent 450-405

By Desirée Keegan desiree@indyeastend.com This article was published in our June 26 issue

Jesse Warren is congratulated by family, friends, and campaign members following the announcement of his 450-405 win over incumbent Michael Irving for Southampton Village mayor. Independent/Desirée Keegan

Jesse Warren’s smile was beaming ear to ear as friends, loved ones, and campaign members surrounded him after the Southampton Village election results were announced on Friday night, June 21. The 36-year-old beat out incumbent Michael Irving 450-405 to become the youngest mayor in village history.

“We had every party, every group, every age group come out to vote,” said Warren, who’s owned Tenet on Main Street since 2010, and is a member of the village Planning Commission. “Even Southampton High School students came out to vote today. We reached out to every single person in the community, we canvased every single street, and we tried to connect

for the second seat. McLoughlin, also a lifelong resident, and the youngest of the group to run, at 29 years old, is also a member of the Planning Commission.

Irving, who had served as mayor the last two years, and was a trustee for over 10 years prior, said he can’t argue with what the people want.

“In any election, it’s the people of the community that are speaking, and they feel he can do a better job,” the incumbent said. “It’s been a lot of work — a tremendous amount of work — but it’s been an absolute honor to serve the village.”

He laughed when saying he’s looking forward to taking a break, adding

the best part is he can now go to the grocery store without getting stopped in every aisle. Irving said he does not plan to seek office in the future. For Warren though, it’s right to work.

“There’s a lot that needs to get done,” Warren said. “I feel extremely honored to be elected and honored to have the opportunity to serve every single resident and every single stakeholder and person in this village.

I could not be happier. I’m looking forward to getting to work, working hard, and bringing forward some of the needed change to Southampton Village; working with everybody and being extremely inclusive to get that done.”

Despondent fans and friends of the bird initially offered $5000 for his return.

The booty has since reached $12,500. A massive hunt is underway that reportedly stretches across the entire eastern seaboard with federal Fish and Wildlife Service Agents intensifying the hunt. Quogue Village Police Chief Christopher Isola urged anyone with information to come forward.

Sammy the bald eagle, according to lore, was shot when he was about four and lost his ability to fly when his wing

was partially amputated. He was shipped to the sanctuary to live and prospered, feeding off large rodents and fresh fish. He is extremely strong with razor-sharp talons. He is not tame, but is nevertheless one the major attractions at the refuge and can be very friendly.

Cara Fernandes, the refuge’s program coordinator, said the eagle weighs eight to 10 pounds. Bald eagles can live in captivity for up to 50 years. In the wild, their life span is significantly lower due to predation and competition.

with everyone. This campaign was about being open to everybody and representing everybody, and that’s exactly what I want to do.”

There will also be a slew of fresh new faces on the village board. Seeking their first two-year trustee terms were Mark Parash, Andrew Pilaro, and Joseph McLoughlin, looking to fill the shoes of longtime board members Nancy McGann and Bill Hattrick who had opted not to run again.

Parash, a lifelong resident and owner of Sip ’n’ Soda luncheonette, won over voters with 643 backers, while Pilaro, the president of CAP Properties Limited, a family-operated investment firm, edged out McLoughlin 443-433

Hunt For Beloved Eagle

By Rick Murphy rmurphy@indyeastend.com This article was published in our July 24 issue An eagle with one wing, held in a controlled environment for over three decades, was stolen from the Quogue Wildlife Refuge in the middle of the night on July 16.

Make no mistake about it, it was deliberate.

A few days after the Quogue Wild-

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The Independent

Restraining Order Against Billboards State Supreme Court issues temporary notice to stop work on Route 27

By Desirée Keegan desiree@indyeastend.com This article was published in our June 5 issue Construction of one of the Shinnecock Indian Nation’s 61-foot-tall billboards with double-sided 30-foot-high digital screens on the south side of Sunrise Highway has now been completed. Independent/Desirée Keegan

The state Supreme Court has issued a temporary restraining order to stop continued construction of two 61-foottall billboards along Sunrise Highway in Hampton Bays.

The notice targeted the seven Shinnecock Indian Nation Tribal Trustees and the billboards’ owners — Idon Media of La Quinta, CA — and contractors, according to filed court papers by state Attorney General Letitia James and the commissioner of the State Department of Transportation, which served a stop-work order in the middle of May after the double-sided electronic signs began being built.

“The state and the plaintiff’s state agency have a responsibility by law and to the people of this state to ensure that no person or entity, including a Native American tribe or their co-owner commercial advertising company, can illegally build structures on a state highway that pose significant hazards to the public at large both during and after construction,” the restraining order request read in part.

The complaint states that the Shinnecock Nation did not obtain the proper approval to perform work, and that the billboards pose safety concerns for the more than 15,000 people who travel across that stretch of Southampton Town every day.

“The construction of such massive billboards within the state highway rightof-way creates a substantial threat of harm to all people utilizing that portion of Sunrise Highway,” the notice reads, also stating that if the signs were to fall they “could crush vehicles traversing on Sunrise Highway, as well as completely block the flow of traffic.”

In a response to the action, members of the Shinnecock Indian Nation said they plan to fight the “illegal attack on tribal sovereignty and violation of federal law.”

“One of the inherent attributes of tribal sovereignty possessed by federallyrecognized Indian nations is immunity from suit. Accordingly, the Nation, its officials, and its agents acting in furtherance of the Nation’s authority are immune from any and all legal proceedings brought in state courts,” the Shinnecock Nation said in a May 28 press release.

“The state has a long history of bulldozing Indian lands and Indian people to get what it wants. We will fight against this most recent effort to attack our tribal sovereignty. The Nation has given notice to the State Supreme Court that it intends to exercise its rights under federal law and will seek a resolution of its rights through the legal process.”

On the same day papers were filed in state court, the Nation registered a

complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York against the State Department of Transportation, the State of New York, and Marie Therese Dominguez, who was nominated this month by the governor to be the next acting commissioner of the DOT. The Shinnecock Nation said that as one of 573 sovereign Indian nations in the United States, it’s granted immunity from lawsuit. The next court date at state Supreme Court is scheduled for Friday, June 7, in Central Islip.

One billboard has been constructed on the south side of Route 27, but still needs some finishing touches, like landscaping and the replacement of its temporary base, according to Lance Gumbs, vice chairman of the Council of Trustees. The billboard along the north side has yet to see much progress. Gumbs said that more than 70 local businesses have expressed interest in buying ad space on the billboards.

He added that East End residents have shown so much support that the Nation, after receiving several requests, is planning to start a fund to help offset legal expenses.

But more than that, the Shinnecock Nation stressed the benefits of its project, and how it sees the legal notices threatening the tribe’s economic well-being.

“The state’s lawsuit against Shinnecock officials is a thinly-veiled attack on the Shinnecock Nation and our right of self-determination,” the Shinnecock Nation said in its statement. “Throughout our history, our lands and economic future have been taken from us by the state and the surrounding community.

Our goal is simply to generate revenue to provide for our people.”

In a response to the action, members of the Shinnecock Indian Nation said they plan to fight the “illegal attack on tribal sovereignty and violation of federal law.”

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News & Opinion

December 25, 2019

15

Assemblyman Fred Thiele, Senator Ken LaValle, and County Legislator Bridget Fleming were on hand to welcome the launch next month of expanded rush-hour train service to the South Fork. Independent/Desirée Keegan

Connection Is Key For South Fork New rail service to make eight stops from Speonk to Montauk

By Desirée Keegan desiree@indyeastend.com This article was published in our February 6 issue

Assemblyman Fred Thiele held up a book “Blueprint for Our Future” that was written by the East End Economic and Environmental Task Force of Long Island. It was commissioned 25 years ago by then-Governor Mario Cuomo to examine the economic and environmental future of eastern Long Island, and developed as a template for the interaction of a local community with state government. The work was the first to reference a South Fork Commuter Connection train service, which remained a dream for 15 years, until a trial run was conducted 10 years ago. This March, the dream will fully be realized.

“We’ve seen study after study and we knew we had to have a good public transit system on the East End as an alternative to the backup on County Road 39,” Thiele said. “It is a pleasure, after all these years, with the president of the Long Island Rail Road to be able to announce that this service is finally going to begin March 4. It’s been a partnership, a team effort to get this done.”

The service, which was unveiled at a press conference at the Hampton Bays train station on Friday, will offer local LIRR trips for $4.25 for a combined train and shuttle service each way, with stops in Speonk, Westhampton, Hampton Bays, Southampton, Bridgehampton, East Hampton,

Amagansett, and Montauk. Select trains will connect with “last-mile” shuttle bus services operated by the Hampton Jitney and the Hampton Hopper to nearby workplaces and employment centers. Thiele worked with state Senator Ken LaValle last year to secure $500,000 in state funding for the towns to provide for the cost of the last mile of service.

With only two roads, Montauk Highway and Sunrise Highway, crossing the Shinnecock Canal, congestion on the East End has been growing year after year, especially over the summer months when area tourism is at its peak. It’s made it difficult for locals to travel and the area’s workforce to get to jobs in a reasonable amount of time.

“It’s pretty much a daily occurrence,” Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman said. “And then you see the railroad bridge empty — we’ve known for a long time that was a great potential.”

Besides helping commuters, East Hampton Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc believes the service will help local businesses find and retain staff, while speeding up commuting times.

“We hope that we can build up this service to make a more efficient use of transportation,” Van Scoyoc said. “We’re now at a promising time Continued On Page 20.

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The Independent

Is It ‘Taps’ For EH Music Permit Revision?

Overflow crowd at East Hampton Town Hall voices opposition

By T. E. McMorrow t.e@indyeastend.com This article was published in our March 27 issue

It was a standing-room-only crowd as Nancy Atlas and other East End musicians appeared before the East Hampton Town Board on March 21.

It was not a paying crowd and there were no instruments. Instead, the local musicians gathered to express their angst over proposed revisions to the town’s code regarding the issuance of music permits to restaurants, bars, and taverns. They were joined by politicians, lawyers speaking for clients, restaurant and bar owners, music lovers, and even a couple of teachers. More than three dozen speakers took to the podium that night, all speaking against the proposed amendment.

They were proceeded by Michael Sendlenski, town attorney, who explained the purpose of the proposed revisions, as he had done two days earlier during a town board work session.

Currently, restaurants, bars, and taverns must obtain a music entertainment permit before they can offer music, live or recorded, for their clientele.

That would not change under the new law. However, instead of a permit essentially lasting into perpetuity, owners and managers of restaurants would now have to apply annually.

Sendlenski explained that ownership and management teams of bars

and restaurants in a seasonal community come and go, and the permits need to reflect who is actually running the show.

Whereas music permits currently are free, the amended law would allow the town board, in the future, to set a fee for them.

The proposed amended law contains a clause, Sendlenski said, making it clear that having a music permit does not give an establishment the right to convert its space into a dancehall, nightclub, or concert venue. Sendlenski specifically named two venues permitted as restaurants that had been removing chairs and tables from their floor areas at night to create room for dancing.

The town has successfully addressed the issue in court against two Montauk restaurants, Ruschmeyer’s and Grey Lady, he said.

There are currently only three sites classified as dancehalls or nightclubs operating in the Town of East Hampton. Two are in Montauk, The Memory Motel and Sloppy Tuna, with the other being the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett. Such sites do not need music permits, Sendlenski explained, because music is inherent to their business classification.

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Nancy Atlas spoke at the packed Town Hall meeting on March 21. Independent/T.E. McMorrow

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Convictions Required Perhaps the most controversial proposed change to the current law, at least judging by the comments from speakers, involves the grounds for the denial of a music permit to an establishment.

Currently, the town clerk, upon learning that an establishment has been issued citations three times by code enforcement or police officers during the permit year for alleged violations of the town’s laws governing noise, should schedule a hearing before the town board to weigh the possible revocation or modification of the establishment’s music permit.

The problem with that approach, legally, Sendlenski said, is that the town then is potentially removing a music permit based solely upon an officer’s allegation. Instead, the new law requires convictions, not simply charges.

If the revision is approved, two convictions on violations of the town code in a year could result in the revocation of a permit. In addition, when applying for the annual permit, the town clerk can, at her discretion, deny an application for a music permit if the applicant has had two such convictions over the previous three years.

The town board would no longer be involved in the appeal process. Instead, a special committee would be set up for applicants who want to contest such a denial. That committee would consist of the town’s chief fire marshal, police chief, and the head of the town’s code enforcement and emergency pre-

Inda Eaton speaks out. Independent/Bridget LeRoy

paredness division.

After Sendlenski spoke, it became open mic night at Town Hall, with sporadic raucous cheering and laughter.

The hall was filled past capacity.

Lynn Blumenfeld, who goes by Lynn Blue when she sings, was first up.

She called the proposed amendment “anti-Montauk.” She said that two convictions for a small business owner on town code matters in a three-year period was too low a number to be used to trigger a revocation of a music permit.

Blumenfeld was followed by Nancy Atlas of the Nancy Atlas Project. Atlas was a major player in the large turnout at Town Hall that night, after she posted the following on her Facebook page: “They are trying to take away my Surf Lodge Wednesdays. They are proposing a bill that will effectively wipe out the right for businesses to have live music for whoever they choose but here is the catch. I’m young, I’m calling in the troops, and I’m ready for the fight. Bring it, Town of East Hampton.”

While Atlas appeared to be aiming her ire at the town board and its proposed amendments to the music permit law, it is the New York State Liquor Continued On Page 26.

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19

Police Popular Store Manager Pleads Self Defense Fellow East Hampton workers say she was the victim

By T. E. McMorrow t.e@indyeastend.com This article was published in our September 11 issue

FR EE

IN SP W EC HO TI LE ON H –C O AL USE LT OD AY

A popular manager at the CVS Pharmacy on Pantigo Road in East Hampton was arraigned the morning of September 7 in Southampton Town Justice Court on two felony charges following the shooting of her boyfriend in their Flanders home two days earlier. Patchita Tennant, 42, is said to have fired three shots from a .38 caliber revolver into Andrew Silas Mitchell, 46. Two of the shots entered Mitchell’s chest cavity, collapsing his lungs and diaphragm, while the third shot struck his arm, said Eric Aboulafia, the prosecuting attorney, during the arraignment.

Mitchell was flown to Stony Brook University Hospital, where he is in stable condition.

Tennant was charged with two felonies, assault with a weapon with the intent to cause serious injury, and criminal discharge of a weapon.

Tennant fled the scene after the shooting, Aboulafia told the court. The shooting was first reported to police at 8:20 PM on September 5. When police arrived at the Pleasure Drive property, they reported that Mitchell was still conscious, and he told them that Tennant had pulled the trigger. The couple, who jointly purchased the house in 2015 for $450,000, according to online records, have a daughter, three-year-

old Vanessa.

At about 7:20 the next morning, an Amber Alert was issued for the whereabouts of the child. Southampton Town Justice Barbara Wilson said that she had been awakened by the alert, which went out to cell phones across the area. Aboulafia asked Wilson to issue an order of protection for the child.

Tennant’s attorney, Austin Manghan, objected. He said during the arraignment that the alert and the police handling of it created an air of hysteria around Tennant, making her seem like an “armed and dangerous” mad woman. He said that the alerts “made my client look like a maniac.” One email sent out, for example, warned, “If anyone comes in contact with Tennant, use extreme caution.”

In fact, Manghan said, the child was not present when the shooting occurred. Manghan explained that Tennant’s niece had just arrived in town, on leave from the Air Force, and that his client had dropped the child off with a relative, planning a family gettogether. Tennant returned home to get clothing to stay overnight.

The two sides dispute what happened next. The prosecuting attorney said that Tennant was in a jealous rage

Bail was set at $250,000 for a woman accused of shooting her boyfriend in Flanders September 5. Independent/ Gordon M. Grant

over a perceived affair by Mitchell.

“The weapon belonged to the complainant,” meaning Mitchell, Manghan responded. “My client, before that evening, had never before seen a gun, let alone touched a gun.”

According to the prosecutor, Tennant was holding the gun, with Mitchell in a bathroom. “She began banging on the door,” Aboulafia said, and that Tennant shouted “I’m going to kill you, and I’m going to kill myself.”

After firing three shots, she left and drove to a nearby CVS, where she bought various items for travel, such as clothing, and a couple of cell phones, including a burner cell phone, which allows the caller to remain anonymous, the prosecutor said. Aboulafia asked that bail be set at $250,000. He said that the District Attorney’s office will be presenting the case in the coming days to a grand jury.

Manghan responded that Mitchell was holding the gun that the two struggled for. He said Mitchell grabbed her.

“She was fighting for her life,” the attorney said, adding that’s when the gun

went off. Tennant was not armed, and did not take the weapon with her. He said Tennant ran from Mitchell, who picked the gun up and tried to shoot her. “She is the victim in this case.”

He described his client as a “battered woman.”

Manghan said that his client surrendered peacefully after he spoke with her. He himself drove her to Southampton Town Police headquarters in Hampton Bays, where she turned herself in a little before noon September 6.

With the question of bail still being argued, Aboulafia said that, after her arrest, “the defendant was photographed from head to toe” by the police, and showed no injuries from a physical struggle, save for a scrapped knee. Police confiscated the clothing Tennant was wearing at the time of her arrest, possibly as evidence. Tennant faces 25 years if convicted on either felony, the prosecutor said.

Before setting bail at $250,000, with a bond alternative of $500,000, Wilson asked about the 12-plus people Continued On Page 21.

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20

The Independent

Man Charged With Strangulation In Montauk

By T. E. McMorrow t.e@indyeastend.com This article was published in our August 21 issue

A 26-year-old man from Washington, D.C. is facing multiple charges after allegedly brutally beating his girlfriend in their summer rental in Montauk Sunday evening, August 18. Robert Turner was sharing a rental on Gravesend Avenue with the woman, who is from New York City, as well as with other friends.

The woman spoke with police at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, where she was being treated for numerous bruises across her body, including a bruised throat and a fractured thumb.

She told police that Turner had been abusive, both verbally and physi-

cally, in the past. The two had gone to The Surf Lodge, where, the woman said, he became physical. She asked a bouncer to throw him out. In the end, both were asked to leave. They returned to the Gravesend rental separately. There, the two of them began screaming at each other, she told police in her statement, with Turner cursing at her and calling her a whore.

Turner allegedly grabbed her arm and twisted it, breaking her thumb.

He then choked her, kicked her in the chest repeatedly, and dragged her to the swimming pool by her ponytail.

Turner pushed the woman under water, refusing to let her up, until she began blacking out, the police said. She managed to break away from him, she told police, though she could not remember how. The woman said she told another renter at the house to call the police. Squad cars were quickly on the

scene, and Turner was soon under arrest.

He was charged with a felony, strangulation, as well as a misdemeanor assault charge and a misdemeanor choking charge. Bail was set at $5000 the next morning, which was eventually posted.

Connection

tion with the last mile shuttle service that they’re providing,” he said. “It’s entirely geared to meet the unique needs of the South Fork communities. The railroad, we know, is critical to supporting economic growth on Long Island and we remain committed to the quality of life issues of the communities we serve.”

Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming, a big proponent of the project, said she was excited to see the goal come to fruition.

“We know this is critical to the economic health of the East End and have known it for many, many years,” she said. “I’ve been fighting for improved county transportation for

some time and it’s been a slow process, but this is a big step forward.

The future of transportation is in integrated modalities.”

Southampton Town Director of Public Transportation & Traffic Safety Tom Neely said success will be measured through railroad ridership. He said besides comparing the number of users to when the service was provided 10 years ago, the LIRR agreed it’s also important to compare ridership on all trains before the service starts with the ridership on all LIRR trains after the first year of operation.

Besides benefiting local employers and their employees, he sees the new ride services as a tool to get lo-

cals off the road. Someone living on the South Fork can now board a train to visit a friend, or have lunch 15, 20, or 30 miles away, he said, for example, from Westhampton to Amagansett, and catch a train home two, three, or four hours later.

“This makes for a level of service that has never existed before on the East End,” Neely said. “We believe this may result in an increase in overall use of the trains, especially in the summer, when traffic is congested most of the day along most of the South Fork.”

A full South Fork Commuter Connection schedule can be found at www.sfcclirr.com.

Continued From Page 15. where we can make a significant impact to the quality of life of the people who live and work on the East End.”

With only one set of tracks, coordinating eastbound and westbound rides has proved challenging. LIRR President Phil Eng said finding a schedule that worked for employees and visitors alike was a must.

“Not only is the Long Island Rail Road adding trains between Speonk and Montauk, three eastbound and three westbound, but we’ve coordinated with town officials to ensure these schedules do work in conjunc-

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Robert Turner is seen here after being arraigned on multiple charges at East Hampton Town Justice Court Monday, August 19. Independent/T. E. McMorrow

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December 25, 2019

21

Alleged Montauk Murderer Has Long Prison Record DA: Joseph Grippo lured victim and attacked him with a pickaxe

By T. E. McMorrow t.e@indyeastend.com This article was published in our June 26 issue The Montauk man who murdered a former friend in a jealous rage over a woman both were seeing, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office, has spent much of his adult life in New York State prisons, according to state records.

Joseph Grippo, 47, has been charged with second-degree murder of Robert Casado, 38, also of Montauk. Casado was bludgeoned to death shortly after 7 AM on Thursday, June 6, on a narrow, shrouded path frequently used as a shortcut through Kirk Park, according to the police.

Grippo was remanded to county jail without the possibility of bail. According to District Attorney Tim Sini, Grippo used a pickaxe to murder Casado, both stabbing him with the pick repeatedly, as well as striking him in the head with the blunt side of the tool. According to papers filed in East Hampton Town Justice Court, Grippo also used a knife to kill Casado. Sini spoke minutes after Grippo was arraigned in East Hampton Town Justice Court on Friday, June 21.

Sini said that Grippo used a pretext to lure Casado into a secluded section of the path that connects Main Street and Second House Road and then turned on him and killed him.

Grippo was arrested on June 20 in

Store Manager

Continued From Page 19. seated in the courtroom, aside from the reporters. Three were Tennant’s sisters, and a fourth woman was her niece, Wilson was told. There were also about eight or nine of Tennant’s fellow employees from the East Hampton CVS. “She is a manager at CVS for the last nine years and has been employed by the same CVS for the last 15 years,” Manghan said.

Afterward, the family members and most of Tennant’s co-workers declined to talk about their friend. However, one man, who would not give his name, said only that he was a “friend of the family,” and described a time when

Montauk by Suffolk County detectives, who had conducted a two-week-long investigation, working alongside East Hampton Town detectives.

His case was presented to a grand jury in Riverside, which returned a sealed indictment the same day Grippo was arraigned in East Hampton.

Grippo will be arraigned on the murder charges in county criminal court in Riverside on Friday, June 28. In 1990, when Grippo was 18 years old, he was sentenced to up to four years in prison on an attempted robbery charge. He served two years at the Auburn facility upstate, before being paroled.

Then, six years later, in 1998, Grippo was convicted of armed robbery and assault with a weapon with intent to kill, along with several other felonies. His sentence at that time was a straight 15 years.

He served his time at the Collins facility upstate, and was released in late December of 2012. He returned to Montauk, where he lived in his mother’s house on Old Montauk Highway and worked as a landscaper.

“We used to hang out every single day,” Edgar Ramirez said of Casado on Friday. Ramirez was one of many from the Latino community in Montauk who came to justice court that morning to show their support for the dead man a woman the employees knew was homeless was repeatedly coming into the store. He said Tennant approached the woman and began talking with her.

“She took money out of her own pocket and bought her living necessities,” he said. He called her a “caring person,” and said that Mitchell recently “had become more and more aggressive towards her.”

Manghan said afterward that Tennant’s friends at the CVS used to help her apply makeup before work to cover up bruises.

Tennant remained in custody as of Tuesday morning, September 10. By law, if not indicted by September 12, she would have to be released.

Joseph Grippo being brought to court for arraignment on Friday, June 21. Independent/T. E. McMorrow

and his family. Many of them were from the Dominican Republic, as was Casado.

“I spent my whole winter with him. He didn’t have a job,” Ramirez added. “I helped him, with money and food.”

It is not unusual for laborers in the landscaping business to be unemployed during the winter.

At one point, Grippo had been friends with Casado and Ramirez, Ramirez said. “It is so, so sad,” he said.

Casado’s father, Benny Garces, an employee at Gurney’s Resort, arrived at the courthouse for the arraignment, being supported by friends. When the father left the courthouse, he nearly collapsed a couple of times. Overcome with emotion, he was helped to a car by a group of friends and family.

If convicted as charged, Grippo faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.

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The Independent

Best Of: Is It Just Me? I told you, no politics.

You do our cartoon.

Not our editoral.

Maybe it’s a cartoonitorial.

Or an editoonial.

The Independent

THE EDITOR

Is it just me?

Cartoon. Rainbows. Bunnies.

Smiling faces. End of story.

© Karen Fredericks

The Independent

CARTOONIST

THE EDITOR

CARTOONIST

Karen was chosen Best Cartoonist by the New York Press Association in 2017 and again in 2019. She’s the recipient of multiple awards for her illustration of the international bestseller How To Build Your Own Country, including the prestigious Silver Birch Award. Her work is part of the permanent artist’s book collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

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Is it just me? © Karen Fredericks

Karen was chosen Best Cartoonist by the New York Press Association in 2017 and again in 2019. She’s the recipient of multiple awards for her illustration of the international bestseller How To Build Your Own Country, including the prestigious Silver Birch Award. Her work is part of the permanent artist’s book collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Is it just me? © Karen Fredericks

The opera legend Placido Domingo has been accused of sexual harassment by nine women!

Let me guess. He put his hands in the wrong aria.

CHATEAU LA-DI-DA

Karen was chosen Best Cartoonist by the New York Press Association in 2017 and again in 2019. She’s the recipient of multiple awards for her illustration of the international bestseller How To Build Your Own Country, including the prestigious Silver Birch Award. Her work is part of the permanent artist’s book collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

December 25, 2019

B1

Arts & Entertainment Sean Ono Lennon: Bringing The Beauty Songwriter partners with Les Claypool for band’s third album

By Bridget LeRoy bridget@indyeastend.com This article was published in our May 22 issue

Some stories are more personal than others.

It would be disingenuous to start this article without full disclosure — the Lennons were our neighbors at the Dakota in New York City. John and Yoko, and their young son, Sean, were frequent visitors to the 22-room apartment, facing the park, that was shared by my dad, Warner LeRoy, my stepmom, Kay LeRoy, and my three halfsiblings — Carolyn, Max, and Jenny.

I was also a visitor, living most of the time with my stepdad and mom in another grand dame of the Upper West Side less than 10 blocks away.

John and Kay shared in common their land of origin, and both were brought up disadvantaged, having lost their mothers early. They bonded, and would chat for hours.

Still, it was always kind of a trip to come over and see John Lennon sitting at your kitchen table, shooting the breeze. Yoko Ono was like an aunt — the aunt who would tell you to straighten your posture and to be careful about getting wrinkles (when I was 12). She would also lend a kind and compassionate ear, and thoughtful advice, when necessary.

But it was Max and Sean, both before and way, way after Lennon’s assassination, who were inseparable. Almost from birth, the two did everything together. You can hear them laughing together at the end of the song “Beautiful Boy” on the “Double Fantasy” album, the last released by John and Yoko before Lennon’s death. They played in a band together, went on trips together, and spent close on three decades

speaking to each other almost daily.

When my brother was killed in a motorcycle accident in 2005 at the age of 30, Sean spoke at the memorial, while Yoko clasped my hand and sobbed through the entire service. Sean and Max were not on speaking terms at that time (if you want to know why, you can use the Google), but Lennon was able to channel his frustrations and sorrow into an album, “Friendly Fire,” released in 2006, which was dedicated to Max LeRoy. Since then, unintentionally, because of geography and general busyness, the visits with Yoko and Sean have become less and less frequent. So, to catch up with Sean Lennon — a dazzling musician and songwriter in his own right — was both profound and gratifying, and long overdue.

For a moment, it was like having my brother back.

We spoke about Lennon’s latest release — his third with Les Claypool — “South of Reality” by the Claypool Lennon Delirium, which is currently on tour. One can’t help but hear a bit of the Beatles in there, along with heavy doses of Yes, Pink Floyd, and utter originality.

How do you and Les play off each other’s strengths and weaknesses? And how does your writing process work?

I think the Delirium is very much a case of good chemistry when it comes to our writing process. Les has worked with many of the best musicians in the world, so when it comes to technical

Sean Ono Lennon. Independent/Zackery Michael

skills, I simply can’t compete or offer him anything useful. Instead I think my emphasis on harmony and chordal complexity is where I can contribute.

He is obviously one of the greatest players on his instrument [bass], so instead of trying to keep up with him athletically, I try and offer a different chordal context and perspective that may not have occurred to him. Les says he brings the balls and I bring the beauty, and I don’t think that’s far from the truth.

It sounds like something different is going on with the drums and bass on a few songs. Like they’re off beat, but on purpose. What creates that dynamic sound?

It could be because I’m not a real drummer. Again, Les is used to playing with some of the greatest drummers, so I think, for him, letting me play the drums was a kind of novelty, something that let him get creative in a different space. But yes, we do like odd time signatures — 5/8 over 4/4 for example.

What other bands influence your sound?

That’s a very long list indeed. For this specific band, it started with Les and I exchanging playlists of rare psychedelic and garage bands. Before we wrote any songs together, we started by playing each other rare music we were into.

Examples are Dukes of Stratosphere, White Noise, July, United States Of America, The Smoke. If you want to hear some of my favorites, you can go to Sean Ono Lennon Spotify public playlists.

What’s the story behind “Blood & Rockets”? It sounds a lot like a Beatles tune.

Well, the Beatles thing is kind of in me.

It’s harder to suppress than let out. The story for that tune comes from a Jack Parsons biography, “Sex and Rockets.”

I often look to real life for Delirium material. I find it’s fun to play off of the Continued On Page B24.

B2

The Independent

‘Very Ralph’ Susan Lacy presents HBO documentary on the life of Ralph Lauren

By Jessica Mackin-Cipro jessica@indyeastend.com This article was published in our November 16 issue

Independent/Les Goldberg/Courtesy HBO

It’s fair to say that Ralph Lauren, the man and the fashion empire, are staples in the East End community. It’s the East End where the fashion icon runs Main Street retail, with shops in East Hampton and Southampton. He’s lived in Montauk for decades and it’s not rare to see him driving around in a convertible on a summer day.

“Very Ralph” is the first documentary portrait of the fashion icon.

The film is directed and produced by Emmy award-winning Susan Lacy, a Sag Harbor resident. Lacy, well known for her insightful documentaries, most recently directed HBO’s “Jane Fonda in Five Acts” and “Spielberg.” She is also on the cinema board for the Sag Harbor Cinema Arts Center.

Lauren recently celebrated 50 years as a designer with an elaborate fashion show he dubbed Ralph’s Club, which created a theatrical art-deco experience to showcase his collection.

It’s perfect timing for “Very Ralph,” as he continues to lead one of the world’s most widely recognized clothing brands. His collection is more popular than ever. It’s a time of everything Ralph: coffee shops, restaurants, retail.

With an uncanny ability to turn his dreams into reality, Lauren has built a multi-billion-dollar, global powerhouse out of his aspirations, becoming a living embodiment of the American Dream.

“Very Ralph” debuts on Tuesday, November 12, at 9 PM, exclusively on HBO. The feature-length film reveals the man behind the icon and the creation of one of the most successful brands in fashion history. The world will be watching, and the East End and NYC will be front and center.

The film depicts the designer's life and work. Lauren speaks candidly in extensive interviews about his childhood, his five-decade-long marriage, the early days of his company, his response to criticism, his inventive multi-

page ad campaigns, and his pioneering vision which includes many firsts.

Lauren was the first designer to create and market a complete lifestyle brand and expand into home furnishings. He was one of the first to promote diversity on the runway and in advertising. And he was the first to create immersive retail environments that transformed the shopping experience.

The film also features archives from 50 years of the fashion brand, as well as intimate, revealing interviews with Lauren’s family, long-standing colleagues, and admirers, including Anna Wintour, Karl Lagerfeld, André Leon Talley, Hillary Clinton, Robin Givhan, Jason Wu, Naomi Campbell, Martha Stewart, Calvin Klein, Tyson Beckford, Tina Brown, Diane von Furstenberg, Jessica Chastain, Vanessa Friedman, and Paul Goldberger.

The Independent caught up with Lacy to discuss the making of “Very Ralph.”

What inspired you to create the documentary ‘Very Ralph’?

Since creating “American Masters” and producing films about America’s leading creative artists in all fields — literature, music, visual arts, dance, photography, media, etc. — I always wanted to produce a film about a fashion designer and the opportunity never came up. But the person I always felt would be the most appropriate was Ralph Lauren. As someone says in the film, if America had a national designer, it would be Ralph.

So, when I made the move to HBO from PBS about six years ago, after producing and directing films about Steven Spielberg and Jane Fonda, Richard Plepler (former head of HBO) asked me if I would like to make a film about Ralph. I jumped at the opportunity.

You and Ralph Lauren are both embedded in the East End community.

Will viewers find East End influence in the film?

Ralph is far from finished, but it made sense to make a thorough film about this very complex man and his brand around the celebration of the 50th anniversary of his company.

Ralph has a beautiful place in Montauk (my favorite of all his houses) and the film reveals the grounds and the house, but also how much the beach and the simpler life of the East End affected Ralph. He has been going out there since his kids were small, and it is where he was able to spend family time away from the pressures of work and the city. The images of him driving his kids on the beach in his vintage Jeep are priceless.

Any behind the scenes stories while filming?

What is your relationship with Ralph Lauren? How did you meet?

I didn’t know Ralph prior to making this film, and we both felt a need to meet before making a commitment to each other. My first meeting with him was in his office, and we connected immediately. I can’t really say why or how, except I think we saw in each other empathy, a certain kind of gentleness and kindness, and it was very easy to talk to each other. He is a very private man, but he opened up to me that day in ways that surprised me. As did I to him.

From that moment, we built a relationship of trust and sharing. He is somewhat uneasy having his life and work documented. Like most of us, he prefers the images of his younger self, but he was game and went with it. Seeing this 80-year-old man go to the office every day and still be as passionate and devoted to excellence as he was when he was initially building his business, was pretty inspiring.

Why is this the ideal time to release a documentary on Ralph Lauren?

The only one which comes to mind is when I interviewed Kanye West in Los Angeles. Despite being a huge admirer of Ralph’s, I think he was somewhat hesitant about doing the interview.

But, when he realized I was not going for the easy soundbite, but wanted to genuinely understand what drew him to Ralph’s clothes and Ralph himself, he did a wonderful interview, and it went way beyond the time he had allotted.

He was building a house at the time, so when the interview was over, instead of disappearing, he insisted on taking me and Jessica Levin, one of the film’s producers and a close friend, to see the house under construction. I was absolutely gob-smacked at how big all the rooms were, including a closet that was as big as most people’s living rooms. In any case, he showed us around like a proud homeowner and then took us back to the studio where our car was.

What do you hope viewers will take away from this film?

It sounds corny, but I think the film shows that no matter where you come from, a strong vision, hard work, and perseverance can take you from nowhere to the top of the mountain.

Ralph had dreams of a life he wanted, which he saw in the movies. Ultimately, he embodied those dreams and turned them into his life and a brand which has spoken to the dreams of millions of people — for 50 years!

Arts & Entertainment

December 25, 2019

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The Independent

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A Full Heart For A Full Life: Antonella Bertello

By Nicole Teitler nicole@indyeastend.com This article was published in our June 12 issue The Baker House 1650 is set to celebrate its 15th summer under the ownership of Antonella Bertello. She originally purchased the property as a 1031 exchange (redo and resell) but couldn’t let it go.

When the doors officially opened to the public on Valentine’s Day in 2005 she likened the experience to inviting strangers into her home, having become incredibly attached to her project.

“There’s so much history that goes with this house and that’s why I love it so much. I even saw these beautiful trees and tried to work around them. What right do we have to knock them down when they’ve been around hundreds of years before us?” Bertello expressed of her passion for the existing elements on the property. From the trees outside to the Sandra de Ovando flower artwork inside The Baker House, she looks for the unique and interesting in everyday life.

Her passion for design, and life, is an inherited trait from her father, one that continues to run through her blood in everything she does. Born and raised in Peru, Bertello recalled going out with her father, mother, and two younger brothers on Sundays after lunch, driving past the buildings and admiring their structure.

“From the moment I was born, my father would take me everywhere with him,” she reminisced, from car rides to Formula One races.

Her father was a pioneer in banking, “a frustrated architect,” and an avid polo player, a tribute with tin-foil polo artwork throughout the property. However, his life was cut short at age 46, in 1992, due to cancer. While the primary cancer was never discovered, he ended up suffering from lung, lymph, and bone cancer, an atrociously painful experience. At only 22 years old, Bertello flew back to Peru from Spain to help her younger brothers and was in charge of buying her father’s morphine.

“It was very difficult because he started sounding very normal, and then he would go off into crazy things and you didn’t know where he was.” Looking into her eyes, a strong woman on the verge of celebrating 51 years of life, the memory of “a brilliant man, big and strong” remained as clear as the day he was breathing. She would always be his little girl and he would always be her hero. “Is he nice to you? Does he respect you? He asked the normal questions,” she recalled of his

6/9/17 3:57 PM

Antonella and her father Lucho.

dating advice. “It was very funny because my father knew exactly how to handle me in the sense that he never imposed anything on me, yet I did exactly what he advised me to do all the time.”

After her father, Bertello lost her aunt to pancreatic cancer, which swiftly took her in five months after she complained about stomach pain. When Bertello was 35 she lost her cousin, age 36, to a birthmark that grew into melanoma.

She left behind two children that Bertello still watches over today. In addition, Bertello’s best friend lost a daughter, at 18, to a brain tumor. “It’s anti-nature for a parent to have to bury a child,” she said.

And finally, without children of her own, Bertello lost her 14-year-old yellow lab to melanoma. “Cancer doesn’t only affect people. It happens to animals too,” she said.

As her 14-week-old puppy, Bella, and nine-year-old dog, Sophie, played in the Italian styled backyard, Bertello recalled the best advice she has ever been given.

“A wiser man, like a grandfather, told me ‘You need to switch the perspective. You cannot just focus on what you’re feeling and how sad you are, you need to focus on what the person that passed would have liked for you to do. How would he or she have liked to be remembered?’ Smile, with all the love in our hearts.”

When the Hamptons Happening co-chair, Randi Schatz, asked Bertello to be the business honoree at this summer’s Samuel Waxman Cancer Research event, Bertello had no choice but to support to the efforts of such a collaborative, authentic organization. “I do things fullheartedly or not at all. If I’m going to be involved, I’m going to make a difference.”

The culinary event is held on Saturday, July 13, in Bridgehampton and also honors Chef Lidia Bastianich, fashion designer Nicole Miller, and local restaurant owner Ian Duke.

Learn more about The Baker House 1650 at www.bakerhouse1650.com. For tickets to the Hamptons Happening, visit www.waxmancancer.org.

Arts & Entertainment

December 25, 2019

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Pat Benatar Tells All Her real-life Romeo & Juliet story with Neil Giraldo

By Nicole Teitler nicole@indyeastend.com This article was published in our August 14 issue The 1980s were defined by a rock-androll voice so profound, so powerful, that women today still define love as a battlefield. Lindenhurst native and four-time Grammy Award winner, Pat Benatar’s songs of female empowerment, both tragic and hopeful, have transcended decades. Benatar and her husband and guitarist, Neil Giraldo, aka “Spyder,” have a real-life Romeo and Juliet story, but with a not-sotragic ending. Together, in conjunction with Guild Hall, Jamie Cesa, and Bel Chiasso Entertainment, they present a free concert and staged readings of “The Romeo & Juliet Project” at Bay Street Theater’s “Under The Stars” free concert at Mashashimuet Park in Sag Harbor on Friday, August 16, and Saturday, August 17 at 7 PM.

der and I decided we didn’t want to do another biographical musical. So, we called Bradley. What he had done was so brilliant, it was amazing. The songs that are being played are done in the form they were written in but it wasn’t the form we wanted. Then, we all got together, us, Jamie, and Bradley, and we came up with what we have now. A reimagined story of “Romeo & Juliet,” the original in some places with a detour into things more relevant for right now.

What was your reaction the first time you came across ‘Romeo & Juliet’?

Out of all plays to emulate, why ‘Romeo & Juliet’?

The first time I read it was in seventh grade and I fell totally, and madly in love. I was a romantic fool. It was perfect. It was everything I loved — the historical fiction, the romance, and the entire life. I was 13. It fit right into my lexicon of the universe at that time.

How did all of this come together?

About four years ago, Spyder and I met with Jamie Cesa, the producer of the show. We met with him with the idea of doing a biographical musical, a jukebox musical. We were working on that for a couple of years, getting our writers and false starts, meanwhile continuing to do performances. In the first two years, Bradley Bredeweg was producing a small version of a musical called “Romeo & Juliet: Love Is A Battlefield.”

You obviously can’t have two performances going on at once, so we sent people down in Los Angeles to check it out and they said it was really good. I said, “Oh shit.”

So, we shut the production down.

We had to. He didn’t have the rights to the music anyway; it can only go so far. Then he was at a benefit and came up and introduced himself. Then, Spy-

What is the music like in the show?

A hybrid. It’s our music reimagined as a musical theater number. It’s remarkable how the lyric content fits in the story.

Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo. Independent/ Travis Shinn

say, “Hey, man, can I borrow your axe?”

And I thought, oh my gosh, he didn’t even bring his guitar? I was ready to turn around and skewer him. Then I saw him and that was the end of that.

My brain literally shut down, the rest of my body lit up on fire. I tried to compose myself, like “What the hell are you doing?” I was madly in love with him. I composed myself, shook his hand, and he got on stage to play the most unbelievable guitar chord I have ever heard.

I wouldn’t have worked with him if he hadn’t been the right guy, the right guitar player, but he was exactly what I

was looking for.

Was the first song about you two?

“Promises In The Dark.” We were dying to be together. I was still married; he was in a relationship. So, we were not together. We made that whole record with all of that emotional, physical tension going on. We were trying to figure out how to start the relationship, because they don’t make it. We were Continued On Page B24.

Everyone has always called us the Romeo and Juliet of rock and roll because they’ve thrown everything at us on Earth — trying to split us up, all of this horrible stuff that people do — and we’ve managed to survive it. It has relevance for us. We’ve been married for 37 years and have been together for 40.

You know, I’d love to say that this has been a picnic, but it has not.

How did you and Neil Giraldo meet?

I signed to Chrysalis Records and the company put together a group of studio musicians. We were putting things together and doing demos with wonderful studio musicians. It just wasn’t raunchy enough. It wasn’t rock enough.

I mean, it sounded beautiful, but it wasn’t what I meant. I met with Mike Chapman a few times and I told him what I was trying to do, so he said he had a guy. So, Spyder came down the day I was doing auditions for the other band members and just came so we’d meet. He was already too accomplished to audition. He came in with everybody else. I didn’t know he was there. Someone told me Neil Giraldo was there, but I didn’t turn back.

Then, I heard someone behind me

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The Independent

Hampton Bays’ Padavan Talks ‘American Idol’ Contestant reflects on trip to Hollywood

By Jessica Mackin-Cipro jessica@indyeastend.com This article was published in our April 10 issue

“Do rich ladies loaded up on wine try to hit on you?” asked country music star Luke Bryan during Hampton Bays resident Christiaan Padavan’s audition for “American Idol.”

“That’s the Hamptons in a nutshell,” joked Padavan.

The 19-year-old singer auditioned for judges Lionel Richie, Katy Perry, and Bryan, and was told “You’re going to Hollywood!” after performing a chilling rendition of Billy Joel’s “Vienna.” The singer made it to the top 98 in the competition before returning home. Indy caught up with Padavan to talk about the experience and what comes next.

Tell us about the process of auditioning for ‘American Idol.’

I’ve been auditioning for “American Idol” since I was eligible. It’s not like it seems on TV. There are pre-rounds with producers and executive producers who decide if you can audition in front of the celebrity judges. I’ve made it to the executives like, twice, before but never made it past them until this season.

I initially auditioned down in Florida, getting a “maybe” from the executive producers who still had me sign all the paperwork and said they’d be in touch. Well, they didn’t lie. They got back to me, I auditioned in front of them again in Manhattan and they liked me enough to put me in front of the celebrity panel the next day!

Out of the judges, do you have a favorite?

I’d definitely say Lionel Richie. He is so genuinely kind and you can tell he really wants to steer those on the right path in their career. Plus, his music career was kind of influential, I guess you can say (totally joking).

This man co-wrote “We Are The World,” was signed by Motown Re-

cords, and he and I had a casual conversation about hanging with friends, except his friend was Smokey Robinson. It was an amazing experience and I can’t wait to bump into him again down the road.

Why did you choose the song ‘Vienna’ by Billy Joel for your audition?

I chose Vienna last second actually.

I was going to be playing a song I cowrote with a friend and accompany myself but then, at the last second, I thought, “This might be a good one, being from Long Island and all, plus, maybe Billy Joel will even see it!”

I wanted to represent where I’m from well, and all the musical talent that has come out of, and that is still, on Long Island. I’m still hoping Billy Joel sees it and reaches out to me.

Now that you’ve been through the experience, is there anything you would have changed or done different?

Not at all! I wouldn’t change anything about my experience on “Idol.” I stayed true to myself from day one, and that’s all I wanted.

I still wish they got to show my Hollywood Week solo performance of “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen and my group round performance of “Attention” by Charlie Puth, but that’s the entertainment business.

I’m lucky I got shown off as much as I did with my initial audition, being that most auditions were never even aired.

Who are some of your musical inspirations?

Frank Sinatra, Billy Joel, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Michael Bublé, Queen, ELO, and the list never ends.

Christiaan Padavan’s audition for “American Idol. Independent/Courtesy Christiaan Padavan

You were the iHeartRadio Cold Brew Jams winner in 2018. Tell us a little about that experience.

At the time, a couple of buds and I were going to Five Towns College in Dix Hills and we decided to sign up for the competition. The competition was basically writing your own Dunkin’ [Donuts] jingle to lyrics that were already provided. So, everyone that competed had the same lyrics but a different tune behind them.

A few weeks later, our jingle made it into the top 10, where the public then voted us to the top three. The top three met up at iHeartMedia in Manhattan at the Dunkin’ Iced Coffee Lounge, where we all performed our jingle in front of an executive from RCA Records, Greg T the Frat Boy from Z100, and the previous 2017 competition winner.

After all the groups went, we ended up winning the grand prize of $10,000 studio time at The Cabin Studio in the Manhattan Center. The Dunkin’ team must’ve liked us, because after that competition, we were invited to play for a Dunkin’ Rooftop Pool Party at Hotel Eventi in Manhattan, a Dunkin’

charity gala at The Edison Ballroom in Times Square, and play for the VIP launch party for their newest [partner], Saquon Barkley of the NY Giants. We now go under the band name Away For The Day when we’re together.

What are some of your favorite things to do or places to go in Hampton Bays?

Favorite things to do in Hampton Bays — drive down Dune Road, go to the ocean, go out to get an egg sandwich at Katrinka’s Deli, and always see someone I know.

And sing my gigs around town at 1 North Steakhouse, Cowfish, and Rumba.

Do you have any local performances planned for the future?

On April 26, Away For The Day, the boys who won the “Cold Brew Jams” competition with me, and I will be making our Stephen Talkhouse debut in Amagansett at 7:30 PM. Tickets are available for $10 on www.stephentalkhouse.com.

Arts & Entertainment

December 25, 2019

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The Independent

Nicole Miller To Be Honored By Waxman Foundation Designer talks fashion, wine, and philanthropy

By Jessica Mackin-Cipro jessica@indyeastend.com This article was published in our July 3 issue Nicole Miller is a globally recognized fashion designer, known for her colorful prints and patterns and designs that are bold, yet classic. The latest additions to the Sag Harbor resident’s resume include rosé creator, and a sunglass line for Optyx in East Hampton.

Miller will also serve as the fashion honoree at this summer’s Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation’s 15th annual Hamptons Happening on Saturday, July 13, starting at 6:30 PM.

“I did a fashion show benefit for Samuel Waxman several years back and I knew about all the good work they do supporting cutting-edge research and technology. I was happy to help such a great organization,” said Miller.

SWCRF is a nonprofit organization dedicated to curing and preventing cancer. The foundation is a pioneer in cancer research and its mission is to eradicate cancer by funding cutting-edge research that identifies and corrects abnormal gene function that causes the disease. The theme of this year’s event is Tour de Cuisine, so that guests can savor the flavors of the world without leaving the East End.

“I have known many people the disease has affected, and we desperately need better solutions to fight it. I like

the work that Samuel Waxman does because they are funding innovation and breakthrough technology,” Miller continued.

Since its inception in 1976, the SWCRF has awarded approximately $100 million to support the work of more than 200 researchers across the globe. The research the foundation conducts is the basis for developing minimally toxic treatments for patients. Through its collaborative group of world-class scientists, the Institute Without Walls, researchers share information and tools to speed the pace of cancer research.

This summer’s event will also include honorees Chef Lidia Bastianich; Ian Duke, local restaurant owner of Southampton Social Club, Union Cantina, and Union Burger Bar; and Antonella Bertello, the owner of the Baker House 1650 in East Hampton. Guests will enjoy food tastings by restaurants like Bastianich’s Becco, Felidia, and Del Posto; bites by Indian chef Palak Patel; along with samplings from Centro Trattoria & Bar, Sydney’s “Taylor” Made Cuisine, Saaz Restaurant, South Fork Bakery, among many others. There will also be live music from Pat Farrell and the Cold Spring Harbor Band — “The Billy Joel Tribute Show.”

As a designer, Miller has always been on the cutting edge of latest trends. What she’s most enjoying this summer? “I am loving all the vintage crepe dresses that are so similar to my dresses from the ’80s which everyone wears with sneakers today!” stated Miller.

Earlier this season, she launched a namesake rosé, a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Cabernet Franc grapes from Bordeaux, created at Château Auguste and vinified by Damien Landouar. “Being half French, I always grew up with wine,” said Miller. “When I entertain, I love to serve wine, and especially rosé during the summer. When the opportunity arose, I jumped at it. I was excited to have a wine from Bordeaux, where I have been many times.”

“What is unique about my rosé is that it’s made in Bordeaux while most are made in Provence,” she continued.

“As a Francophile and wine-lover, I fell in love with the area years ago. I was impressed to learn how the great Châteaux from Bordeaux were able to produce such incredible rosés. I’ve traveled around Provence as well and visited many vineyards and I found this rosé far superior.”

The rosé is available at Cavaniola’s Market in Sag Harbor, as well as restaurants like Dopo La Spiaggia and Baron’s Cove in Sag Harbor. “This rosé is elegant and perfectly balanced with aromas of fresh raspberries and strawberries. It is dry and aromatic, luscious but light,” said Miller.

When asked how being a fashion designer has helped inspire some of the other projects she’s involved in, she described, “The process is always a bit similar. I try to do lots of research so I can understand whatever product I am working on. And then I filter everything until it feels right.”

As for her line of glasses for Optyx in East Hampton that launched this summer: “So many sunglasses look alike that I wanted to do something

Project

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Independent/Courtesy Nicole Miller

special. I started with a vintage movie star idea and went from there. I think they are reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe in ‘How to Marry a Millionaire,’” said the designer.

Miller is a strong businesswoman, who opened her first boutique on Madison Avenue in 1986. She cites her mother as an influence. “She was French and always had very strong opinions and great style,” said the designer. Miller’s brand has grown to include boutiques in major cities across the United States and is sold in a number of high-end department stores.

On the East End, she enjoys spending her time at farm stands and farmers markets. “I always buy far more than I can consume,” said Miller.

“I love making rhubarb pies and I love all the fresh produce, from the corn to the tomatoes.”

As for favorite spots in Sag Harbor, she said, “I love Dopo La Spiaggia, Baron’s Cove, and Le Bilboquet. I love Cavaniola’s Cheese Shop, Jack’s Stir Brew Coffee, and Sag Harbor Bakery. I stay local as much as I can.”

For tickets to the Hamptons Happening event on July 13, visit www. waxmancancer.org.

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December 25, 2019

Arts & Entertainment

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‘Fosse/Verdon’ Airs On FX Nicole Fosse recalls her parents’ time on the East End

By Bridget LeRoy bridget@indyeastend.com This article was published in our April 17 issue

The hat. The slouch. The black clothing. The single spotlight.

A finger snap. A shoulder roll. A sudden high kick.

The word “Fosse” conjures up so many images, it’s become part of the show business lexicon. The smaller the move, the more meaningful. Keep your eye on the dancers, the tight choreography, the grouping. You never know what’s going to come next.

Bob Fosse’s Broadway blockbusters first as a dancer, then choreographer and director, are too numerous to list, from “Pal Joey” to “Sweet Charity” to “Chicago,” and his films run the gamut from the smash hit “Cabaret,” to the gritty and intense “Lenny,” to his semi-autobiographical movie “All That Jazz.” Gwen Verdon’s legendary turns on the Great White Way include Lilo in “Can-Can,” Lola in “Damn Yankees” (when she met and fell in love with Bob Fosse), and the original Roxie Hart in “Chicago.”

And now Fox 21 Television and FX have coproduced an eight-week series, “Fosse/Verdon,” from award-winning producers Thomas Kail, Steven Levenson, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Joel Fields. The series stars Academy Award winner Sam Rockwell as Bob Fosse and Michelle Williams as Gwen Verdon, and aired its first episode on April 9.

According to the studio press release, “He was a visionary filmmaker and one of theater’s most influential choreographers and directors. She was the greatest Broadway dancer of all time. Together, they changed the face of American entertainment — at a perilous cost. Featuring Fosse’s choreography, the series explores the hidden corners of show business, the price of pursuing greatness, and the suffering inflicted in the name of art.”

Bob Fosse is still the only director to win an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Tony in the same year. “Being characteristically a pessimist and cynic,” Fosse said at the Oscars in 1973 when he won for “Cabaret,” “This, and some of the other nice things that have happened

to me over the last couple of days, may turn me into some sort of hopeful optimist and ruin my whole life.” He was awarded the Emmy for “Liza with a Z,” and the Tony for “Pippin” that same year.

Gwen Verdon and Bob Fosse were married in 1960, and although they separated in 1971, they never divorced.

And throughout their long romantic and creative partnership, Fosse always consulted Verdon for advice when the going got tough. Fosse died in 1987, Verdon passed in 2000, and both were longtime residents of the East End.

The Child’s Perspective The limited-run television drama is based on the book “Fosse” by Sam Wasson, and originally the intent was to keep the focus on Fosse. But, explains actress, dancer, and producer Nicole Fosse — the only child of Fosse and Verdon, who serves as co-executive producer and oversees The Verdon Fosse Legacy — once the producing team came to visit her, it became clear that it was impossible to tell Bob’s story without Gwen. “They drove up talking about doing a show about Fosse, and when they left, it was a story about Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon equally,” she said.

They also added “the child’s perspective,” as Nicole Fosse calls it, which was not present in the Wasson book. “A lot of this is from my perspective,” she said, adding that in the series, “there are seven different versions of me,” showing what it was like to live as a child, teenager, and young adult, not only in the outside world of glitterati and opening nights, but to be a child observing a tempestuous relationship which included infidelity and drug abuse.

Fosse and Verdon had several homes on the East End. First a home together in Amagansett. Then on Spring Close Highway, right behind what is now the People’s Bank. At one point, the sign on the house simply said “GVF13,” because the previous signs,

Eva Rubenstein’s 1981 portrait of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon. Independent/Courtesy Guild Hall

which all read “Verdon Fosse,” had been stolen a dozen times. Verdon ended up living there; Fosse bought a place on the water in Quogue. After his death in 1987, Verdon, who also had a place in Water Mill, moved to the Quogue house. His ashes were sprinkled over the water in Quogue by his wife and daughter.

But, as Nicole Fosse recalled, early on Fosse and his kind were not accepted by the “Upper Crust or the Bonackers,” she said with a laugh. “He had choreographed some pieces for the theater at Guild Hall, had brought out dancers, and there was a protest against these city artists who were infiltrating East Hampton.” According to New York Times writer Michiko Kakutani in the June 7, 1981 article “Guild Hall and the Greening of East Hampton:” “By 1960, when Guild Hall’s board decided to produce its own summer theater, members of the community had begun to protest.” According to the late Enez Whipple, Guild Hall’s longtime director, “There were charges that the theater was attracting homosexuals and ‘undesirables,’ and a petition was reportedly circulated along Main Street, seeking to close the hall.”

But it wasn’t long before Fosse and Verdon were East End staples. “They bought a house in Amagansett. It was actually Napeague, but I think it was before Napeague was called Napeague,” said Fosse. The little getaway “was a rickety old beach house. Apparently, it still exists, but has been added onto to the point where it’s unrecognizable.

But they bought this little tiny beach house together. And this is where they learned how to live in the ‘country’ together,” she said, adding that her dad had “never eaten lobster until he met my mom, and mom had never been out in the sun until she met my father. So that’s where they learned about lobsters and sunshine,” she said, laughing

again.

The house was eventually sold during the run of the Broadway hit, “Sweet Charity.” “It was too far to go on the weekends,” Nicole Fosse explained.

East End Memories

Nicole Fosse grew up in that little tiny beach house until she was about three, and doesn’t have lots of memories of that time, but cherishes the memories of the East End that came later. “It was my second home,” she said. “It always felt like the social life was way more developed out there.

The city, to me, felt like school and work, with occasional sleepovers or a dinner party. But out there, it was total freedom and fun.”

One of Bob Fosse’s favorite Hamptons activities with his daughter “was to sneak into all these houses that were being developed. We went to all different areas, and we would go into the stick-framed houses and try to imagine where the kitchen would be, where the bathroom would be — we could see where the rough plumbing was coming in — and we would discuss if we liked the layout or not,” she said. She bemoaned the current build-out, adding that she had recently tried to find Verdon’s house in Water Mill but couldn’t, “because it was on the edge of a field, and the field isn’t there anymore” — now the site of several massive mansions.

She and her dad would take some of the drywall off the construction sites and use it to draw pictures on the newly-asphalted roads that used to be nothing but dirt throughways. “Nothing like brand-new fresh blacktop and a piece of drywall,” she said. “We would draw all over the roads back there.”

Nicole Fosse loved riding her bike up Springs Close Highway as a kid. “It Continued On Page B24.

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The Independent

HAMPTON DAZE

By Jessica Mackin-Cipro

Death By Zipper A look at my carnival ride fears jessica@indyeastend.com @hamptondaze This column was published in our May 15 issue

I didn’t realize what a wimp I’d become until I was at the carnival in Southampton on Saturday night. I found myself paralyzed with fear while staring up at the infamous ride, The Zipper. Just looking at the long, rotating, oval boom made me weak in the knees. Listening

to the screams of small children as they experienced strong vertical G-forces and numerous spins made me want to run for the hills — or at least to the closest cocktail bar.

I may not have been the most adventurous child, but I was still always

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ready to ride the Gravitron or the ferris wheel. Believe it or not there was a time when I wasn’t afraid of rip tides or carnival rides or even riding the subway (don’t judge!). Still, for the most part, I was no daredevil. Now, I’m somehow super aware of my own mortality just riding a bike down a semi-busy Hamptons’ road.

At the carnival my friend Christine we realized that both of our parents wouldn’t allow us go on The Zipper as kids. For a moment there was talk that we should go for the first time. Talk that I quickly ended.

The screams from inside that swinging oval of death were enough to have me break my “Whole30-ish” cleanse and go stress-eat a churro. (FYI, Whole30-ish is a new cleanse I’ve started, it’s Whole30 without giving up wine or lentils, and I feel it will be wildly successful.)

I’m not big on the sense of unpredictability that comes with carnival rides. The words of my father are always in the back of my head: “You’re going to trust a ride that’s taken apart and put back together every week?”

When I told him the next day that I’d gone to the carnival, his stance on the issue had not changed, and now has become my own.

We’ve all heard the horror stories: cages coming lose, doors flying open, helpless riders flying through the air to an untimely death. I’m just not into the idea of willingly being upside-down in a piece of machinery that is disassembled onto a truck and transported from site to site each week. Even if the odds of something bad happening are extremely low.

A quick Google search of “death

12/22/17 12:24 PM

by zipper carnival,” and all of my fears were confirmed. The internet is littered with videos with titles like “Inside the Death Trap Fair Ride, The Zipper” and headlines like “Life And Mortality At The Carnival.”

It turns out in 1977 the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission urged carnival-goers not to ride The Zipper after four deaths occurred due to compartment doors opening midride. While this happened long before my carnival days, I now understand my parents’ hesitation for us kids to ride it.

My sister Jenna eventually wore them down and would ride The Zipper nonstop, but I was always alright with the initial rule to stay away.

Today, as an adult, you literally couldn’t pay me to ride it. I’m more about the “let’s try to win a goldfish and eat a funnel cake” type of carnival vibe.

So on Saturday night we settled for The Sizzler and a dinosaur-themed version of the Tea Cups — basically the only two kiddie rides that didn’t have height restrictions. My first choice was The Caterpillar but I sized out being taller than five feet. Even though it was mostly small children I have to say that The Sizzler was the most frightening thing I’ve done since walking across the Brooklyn Bridge (seriously, those rickety wooden planks they call a bridge do not feel safe!).

At the end of the evening I was satisfied with the dose of classic Americana the carnival provided and proud of myself for riding The Sizzler, even if my screams could be heard in Montauk. I’ll probably live my life never riding The Zipper, and I think I’m OK with that.

Arts & Entertainment

December 25, 2019

Designing Man Isaac Mizrahi Fashions New Show

covers a lot of biological ground but always seems to default to my weight issues.

No topic is off-limits at Bay Street Theater

By Jessica Mackin-Cipro jessica@indyeastend.com This article was published in our August 21 issue

Isaac Mizrahi — the accomplished actor, host, writer, designer, and producer — returns to Bay Street Theater on Monday, August 26, with his all-new show, “Isaac Mizrahi: Queen Size.” The evening is part of Bay Street’s Music Mondays concert series.

Joined by his band of jazz musicians, led by Ben Waltzer, Mizrahi will perform classics by Leonard Bernstein, Cat Stevens, Jimmy Webb, John Kander, Cole Porter, James Taylor, and Jerome Kern. And no topic will be offlimits. Get ready for politics, sex, prescription drugs, millennials.

Indy caught up with Mizrahi to discuss.

Tell us a little about “Isaac Mizrahi: Queen Size” and what the audience can expect during the show.

The show “Queen Size” is very autobiographical. I was very overweight as a kid and I never got over that body image, no matter how thin I’ve ever been, and it’s a dominant part of my identity.

If there’s one issue that defines my life, it’s the struggle to be thin. The show

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How long have you been performing?

I started performing at a very young age. At eight, I built a puppet theatre in the family garage and created shows until I started high school. When I was 10 or 11, I started doing female impersonations for friends and family and would draw crowds at the beach club or the lobby of temple with my impersonations of Barbra Streisand or Liza Minnelli.

I went to Performing Arts High School in NYC and then started doing cabaret shows in my early 20s and never stopped. I’ve worked at all kinds of little clubs in the city, from a now defunct place called Eighty Eights to Joe’s Pub to, most recently, Café Carlyle.

How do you go about selecting the songs in your show?

The song selection for a show begins very early. Certain songs resonate and become obsessions and relate to stories I want to tell. The ultimate way they get selected is by their suitability

Independent/Gregg Richards

to my singing voice and the band’s ability to kill the tune. But really, the ideas for songs come from the ideas about the story telling in the show.

How did you become involved with Bay Street?

Bay Street contacted me last year and we immediately were able to schedule a show there. It was such a great pleasure for me to perform there, because it’s my hometown. I feel like I’m from the Hamptons. I’ve been living here split with NYC since the 1990s.

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The Independent

RICK’S SPACE

By Rick Murphy

The Worst Of Rick’s Space: Volume II I have a safety deposit box that costs $99 a year. I’ve had it for 23 years. Inside, there are five baseball cards worth about 80 bucks each.

I had a savings account with $100 in it. My plan was to put $20 out of every paycheck into it. I forgot that once I pay all my bills, there isn’t $20 left.

The next month I had $92. I didn’t pay much attention until I received a notice that my savings account was closing.

It turns out there was a monthly fee of $8, so the money I put in it — you know, you put your money in the bank for safe keeping, the money for your kids’ college education, the money in case you need a lifesaving operation you know, that money?

— had completely vanished inside of one year. Only in America.

I have insurance. As a gambling man, that goes against my grain, because I am betting that I’m going to die. Think

about it: I have a million-dollar policy, which means when I die, my heirs will be rich. But I won’t be around to see it, because I’ll be dead.

Here’s my plan. Give me half the money now. I’ll spend it, kill myself, and heirs can have the rest. Just don’t put it in a savings account.

When Davy Crockett was the big thing, we wore these god-awful coonskin caps, which looked like dead vermin on our head. Duh. That’s the way Davy liked it.

Crockett’s girlfriend: “Do you have to wear that thing to the movies?”

Davy: “I wear it every day.”

Girlfriend: “It’s a dead raccoon.”

Davy: “Want some melted butter on yours?”

Few of us will ever be One Percenters in this country, but we may already be

among the richest one percent in the world without even knowing it. It only takes an annual income of $32,400 to make the list, according to Global Rich List. It would take workers in poor nations like Zimbabwe 31 years to earn the same amount. Something to think about next time you’re envious of those who have more money than you.

The One earn about 19.7 percent of all income in the U.S. each year. But they pay 37.2 percent of all the nation’s taxes, according to 2016 data from the Internal Revenue Service. Many argue they should pay even more taxes, but few realize they already carry twice the load the rest of us do.

We lived in Sag Harbor during the summer. The last time I wrote about our beloved movie theater here I got in hot water because I mentioned it was full of rats. Now that it has undergone a multimillion-dollar renovation, I will (under pressure) categorically state those must have been cats we saw all the time, but they sure as hell looked like freaking rats, and I’m from Brooklyn.

In those days, there were smoking sections. If you sat in the middle, you couldn’t smoke. Instead, people from the left and right aisle blew their smoke directly at the middle of the theater. Most of the non-smokers probably died from secondhand smoke inhalation and most of the

smokers probably teach yoga nowadays.

Then they banned smoking altogether (I called it “The Day the Music Died”). The movie theater didn’t hold the same allure for me, being they didn’t sell alcohol there. I mean, you could go, and spend three hours watching a boring movie, or go the Black Buoy, drink, smoke, play pool, and maybe meet a movie star to boot.

I met Paul Newman in the Buoy. I played pool with him. The funny thing is, I’m not making this up. Beers were 15 cents.

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“I’m already in the process of buying Marvin’s Gardens and Ventnor Avenue.

This will be a beautiful thing.” Trump said if he can swing deals for all three properties, “I will put up hotels. Gorgeous, red hotels. I will call it ‘America’s Island.’” When asked why people would make Greenland, I mean, America’s Island, a resort destination, Trump said it was a no-brainer. “People will come for the beaches.”

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December 25, 2019

Arts & Entertainment

KISS & TELL

By Heather Buchanan

The Fantasy Female Retirement Commune Baby goats and Eames walkers kissandtellhb@gmail.com This column was published in our April 3 issue

I recently saw a story on PBS about Sailor’s Snug Harbor, one of the original retirement homes set up in 1833 by Robert Richard Randall to take care of “aged, decrepit, and worn-out” seamen. They had activities and good meals and called each other “Captain.”

I thought of this as today women who don’t have children or much family are wondering what they are going to do when they are aged and worn-out, if not decrepit. Could they find a safe haven and walk around calling each other “Tennille?” (If you don’t get the joke, you are probably not thinking about retirement.)

Muskrat love aside, I have heard many conversations from women who wouldn’t be caught dead in a nursing home (pun not unintended) but instead imagine creating a commune of aging female friends. Think “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” but with tummy control.

What would this senior ladies’ utopia look like?

It would be kind of like an inn, with a central gathering place for meals

or martinis, and individual cabins for privacy and I-need-to-be-alone time.

Of course, it should be in a place of natural beauty but not too far from a civilized pedicure. All of the pillowcases must be made of silk.

The food will be healthy but with a constant supply of coconut cupcakes because who wants celery juice to be your last meal?

Relatives can only visit, but senior dogs can stay. There must not be anything stronger than a 45-watt bulb in any light fixture, except for reading, and flattering candlelight is always acceptable with proper smoke detectors installed.

Selfies will be prohibited. There can be great camaraderie but what if a member has a senior “Mean Girls” moment? Should we set up something like “Survivor” and vote someone off the commune? You went through that sh** in high school, you shouldn’t have to deal with it when your bladder control is questionable. If hair is going to be blue, it should be neon to match your pool noodle.

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Tarot card readers can come who do not predict the future but instead explain the past. Bedtime stories can be piped in which never include Prince Charming, read with a British accent.

There should be a Rules Committee and a Breaking the Rules Committee.

The property will have an anger management room where everyone brings their underused crystal to satisfyingly smash it on a cement floor.

There should never, ever, be Bingo. Cards Against Humanity, however, is fine. Baby goats will visit every other Tuesday. All walking assistance must be stylish, whether it is a leopard print cane or Eames walker. Each full moon, a ritual will honor all the aspects of the female — maiden, mother, and crone, with an emphasis that crones have gotten a bad rap.

There will be copious amounts of non-addictive drugs to manage pain.

Each day will begin with a perfect cup of coffee and a Mary Oliver poem delivered to your door step. Non-denominational sunrise and sunset services will be offered every day.

Wednesdays will be Songs That Make You Cry night to allow women

to grieve losses real or perceived. Requests will be taken by the DJ. The commune must have a large garden for kitchen herbs, healing plants, and scented flowers, so when you raise a bouquet to your nose, you are not disappointed for the first time in decades. Since residents may be concerned about sunbathing, both for skin care and bikini shock horror, lounge chairs should be set out for moon bathing.

If a member is being harassed in any way from the outside world, a field trip will be organized to take the whole group, senior dogs, and baby goats (if it is a Tuesday) included, to the offender’s place of work to make clear that old ladies cannot be pushed around. They have each other’s slightly hunched backs.

Two tricky questions: driving and men. Maybe allow the first only during the day, the second only at night.

And when you simply have had enough, there will be a special room where angels do not fear to tread. Like the sailors, you know that being landlocked can be stifling when you are ready to return to the cosmic sea.

Relatives can only visit, but senior dogs can stay. There must not be anything stronger than a 45-watt bulb in any light fixture, except for reading, and flattering candlelight is always acceptable with proper smoke detectors installed.

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The Independent

Lisa Lampanelli At Bay Street The former Queen of Mean takes the stage in ‘Fat Chance’

By Jessica Mackin-Cipro jessica@indyeastend.com This article was published in our October 16 issue

Comedian, writer, and actor Lisa Lampanelli will take the stage at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor. The one-nightonly special event, “Fat Chance: An Evening of Conversation and Story” will be held on Saturday, October 19, at 8 PM. The evening will showcase the former insult comic — “You’ve ruined more models’ lives than bulimia,” she once told Donald Trump during a Comedy Central Roast — at her new best.

“About a year ago I retired from standup and decided to do storytelling shows,” Lampanelli told The Independent. Eight-and-a-half years ago she also underwent weight loss surgery, losing and keeping off more than 100

pounds. She has since become a life coach, helping others with specialized workshops. But the former “Queen of Mean” is still here to make you laugh.

“I have something to say on this issue.

What we go through with body image, liking ourselves at any size and any age, it never ends . . . We can still make them laugh at the same time.”

The show addresses issues about weight “without making the audience want to kill themselves because it’s all too serious,” said the Grammy-nominated comic, who has been a regular on the “The Howard Stern Show,” and also appeared on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” “Late Show with David Letterman,” “Chelsea Lately,” and

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Independent/Courtesy Bay Street

“Jimmy Kimmel Live.” From her food obsession to her physical transformation, Lampanelli — with the help of comedian Frank Liotti — will tell all in a way her audience has never heard.

The no-holds-barred entertainer is truthful, vulnerable, and as hilarious as ever. The show not only includes humorous storytelling, but a lively Q&A with audience members.

“The Q&A goes pretty deep,” she said. She described it as a “a life coaching class with humor.” She wants attendees to think, “If Lisa’s still working on her s**t, we can work on our s**t,” she said.

After the Bay Street performance, she will take the show on the road across the country, performing in major theaters. “We all have the worst self-esteem on the planet,” she said, mentioning that she was surprised by the caliber of venues booked. “It’s really great to be accepted at a second thing in my life, instead of just the first,” she noted.

“Bay Street is the first of the classy places,” she said. “I love Bay Street. I love the vibe there. It’s Hamptons but

not pretentious Hamptons. We’re kicking it off with a nice style.”

She previously performed her offBroadway play “Stuffed” at the venue in 2016. “There’s a fondness I have for the area,” she said. “I only have that one experience, but it really hit me well.”

And what would she like audience members to take away from the show?

“The biggest goal is for people to not feel like they’re alone,” she said. “They’re not the only one struggling with this stuff. If I’m out there telling the truth about what I work on — weight and food-wise and body image-wise — along with some of the other storytellers, people will say, ‘Oh my God, they’re doing this and they’re looking at it with a sense of humor and not letting it beat them.’ I feel like that’s what I want people to come away with.

But also, I’m a comic. And I definitely want them to laugh and I definitely want them to have a good time.”

“It’s my calling at this point,” said Lampanelli.

Tickets are $40 to $75 and are on sale now at www.baystreet.org or by calling the box office at 631-725-9500.

December 25, 2019

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Dining Have You Met Lidia?

Bastianich’s memoir chronicles a life of love, family, and food

By Jessica Mackin-Cipro jessica@indyeastend.com This article was published in our June 19 issue

“Food is the way I communicate,” said Lidia Bastianich during an interview with The Independent. Today Bastianich is a celebrity chef, an Emmy-award winning television host, best-selling author, and restaurateur. It’s a far cry from her formative years as a child living in a refugee camp before coming to the U.S. and living out the American dream. Now, after decades of introducing Americans to Italian food, Bastianich tells her story.

She specializes in Italian cuisine and owns several restaurants in the U.S., including New York’s Del Posto, Becco, and Felidia. In 2014, she launched her fifth television series, “Lidia’s Kitchen.” She’s also a partner in a culinary mecca, the specialty food shop Eataly. Not to mention her line of artisanal pastas and all-natural sauces.

On Saturday, July 13, she will be the honored chef at this summer’s Hamptons Happening event, a benefit for the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation.

“It’s such a good cause, such a good place to have it,” said Bastianich of the upcoming event, which will be held at the home of Maria and Kenneth Fishel in Bridgehampton. There will be chef tastings from restaurants with a “Tour De Cuisine” theme featuring dishes from around the world.

“I do a lot of fundraisers, but cancer research we need to be working on it as much as we can . . . so that these doctors can really get to the bottom of it and hopefully find a cure,” she stated.

She noted the Waxman foundation has worked to develop the first successful targeted differentiation therapy for acute promyelocytic leukemia and called it “a great step.”

“We need to support these individ-

uals,” she said of the scientists working to find the cures for cancer. The mission of the SWCRF is to eradicate cancer by funding collaborative crossinstitutional research to identify and correct abnormal gene function that cause the disease. This research is the basis for developing minimally toxic treatments for all cancer patients.

Bastianich is no stranger to the East End, and she resides on the North Shore. “I do come out there periodically for visits,” she said. In the past, Bastianich has been involved in East Hampton Library’s Authors’ Night and the James Beard Foundation’s Chefs & Champagne culinary event.

With a dozen cookbooks under her belt, her latest tome is her 2018 memoir, “My American Dream: A Life of Love, Family, and Food.”

“People wanted to know more about Lidia,” she said. And her story is one that many of us could never imagine. “I’m no stranger to adversity,” she described.

She was born in Pula, located on the Istrian peninsula. She learned to cook as a young child by watching her grandmother.

When Bastianich was a young girl, Istria was annexed from Italy by the communist regime. Her family fled to Trieste where they spent two years in a refugee camp before coming to New York. “I come from a part of Italy that is no longer Italy,” she said.

“As a child, I got caught behind communism. Changed my name. I couldn’t speak Italian; we couldn’t go to church. A lot of my freedoms were taken away,” she recalled. “We had to escape.”

While at the refugee camp, she spent time “wondering what the future

Independent/Meredith Nierman

of our lives were going to be.” In 1958, her family made it to the United States.

“I was 12 years old. At 12, you take on the country and I did with all my heart. I could be who I am. We could speak Italian,” she recalled about arriving in America.

Food opened up the doors to opportunity for her and she stated, “There’s no place in the world that could happen . . . There’s no place like America.”

Bastianich started working parttime when she was 14. She briefly worked at the Astoria bakery owned

by Christopher Walken’s father. After graduating from high school, she worked at a pizzeria on the Upper West Side.

Family is most important to Bastianich. Her two passions are family and food. And many of her businesses are shared with her children, Tanya and Joe.

“For us Italians, family is first and foremost. Food is the second,” she said.

“We have four generations at the table.

There’s nothing better than that for me.”

“When you know that you have the security of the family, when you know that the table is always there and there’s always a chair for you, you can go out and face the world with more strength,” she continued.

To join Bastianich at the Hamptons Happening, visit www.waxmancancer.org for tickets, which start at $425 or $200 for young professionals. Felidia’s Executive Chef Fortunato Nicotra will be preparing dishes at the event.

“It gives me a big sense of accomplishment,” Bastianich said about being honored. “It makes me feel so good that I can finally give back.”

To learn more about Bastianich, visit www.lidiasitaly.com.

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The Independent

Feasting By Firelight Local food and libations with Cobram Estate

By Hannah Selinger Photos by Wil Weiss This article and photos were published in our August 28 issue

When the fog rolls into East Hampton’s Northwest Woods, it cloaks everything.

By 6 PM, when we gathered at Terra Glamping, the Cedar Point project that opened this season, a thick mist had already settled on the campground. Shot backwards in time, I was, for just a moment, a kid again in Maine, where, for five summers, I was a sleepaway camper just outside of Augusta. Back then, gray, foggy evenings were my milieu.

Of course, this wasn’t sleepaway camp, regardless of the similarities.

The air felt August-dense, just like it used to back on Lake Cobbosseecontee, and there was a willful smell of smoke and citronella in the air, the former the consequence of the Chef at Large for Cobram Estate olive oil, Chef Kevin O’Connor’s cooking, all executed on Panoram Import traditional Argen-

tinian asado-style cookware. Hosted by The Independent and Zachary Weiss, our “dining room” was a long table in a cleared grove of trees, where twinkling bulbs provided light as dark set in. A corner bar served refreshments from Simple Vodka, Bears Fruit Kombucha, Out East rosé, Ardbeg scotch, and Whitley Neill Handcrafted Gin. Before dark, Chef O’Connor passed around grilled Peeko oysters on wooden planks. Still warm, the briny, plump bivalves came doused with a roast tomato harissa that practically tingled on the tongue. Peeko oysters hail from Little Peconic Bay, the sole oyster from New Suffolk, on the North Fork. Normally, I prefer my oysters raw, and virtually unadorned, but I’d take regular exception for these, which were more of a composed dish. They

were smoky and savory — and I could have devoured each one. But, looking at the ducks, pinned between grates, I knew better than to waste too much space.

Eventually, the light disappeared, and we relied on tree-strung bulbs and candlelight and the reflection from our glassware. Once seated, the food, all cooked with ample helpings of Woodland, CA’s Cobram Estate’s artisanal olive oil — the most awarded in the world — arrived to our long table family-style.

Chef O’Connor came to introduce the dishes and then went back to tend to the fire, as we turned our attention to the task at hand.

Two-inch-thick flatbreads, slick with olive oil and dusted with a seaweed dukkha, tasted of the fire over which it was cooked. Next came grilled bitter greens with a pepper conserva; a whole-roasted striped bass with a creamy green bean slaw; fatty Long Island duck, skin bursting; creamed corn from Balsam Farms with mushrooms from Open Minded Organics, all topped with local popcorn; and, to close, grilled Amber Waves peaches atop hulking, melting slabs of Mecox

Bay Dairy’s Atlantic Mist cheese. That final dish felt decadent in a way that summer is: inexplicably simple, inexplicably delicious.

Each guest received a gift bag to take home, including a bottle of Cobram Estate olive oil, which is an incredible finishing oil: fruity, decadent, elegant. Now perched on my counter, it’s a reminder of an August evening, smoke rising from a campsite, or embers fading as we retreated to our cars, stomachs at capacity. I would have liked nothing more, in fact, than to dance lazily back to a campsite of my own, to relive my own camper days, where a deck of cards and a flashlight was enough indeed. In fact, it was more than enough. But it was time to go.

Into the fog I headed, down the winding road that connects Cedar Point with the rest of Northwest Woods. By the time we left, the campgrounds were quiet. I had forgotten, my camp days so far in the past, how dark changed the landscape of a campground. One thing I’m not likely to forget: that molten Atlantic Mist, salty next to those toothsome, sweet peaches. After all, why would I want to?

Dining

December 25, 2019

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Cobram Estate Brunch Photos by Wil Weiss The festivities with Cobram Estate and Chef Kevin O’Connor continued on Saturday, August 24, in Water Mill, where a brunch was hosted by The Independent and Zachary Weiss, along with Simple Vodka and Christine Prydatko.

As guests arrived, they were served Peeko Oysters with a Simple Vodka Bloody Mary Shooter, and

decorated with marigold and nasturtium. Signature cocktails included a Simple Vodka Bloody Mary and a vodka lemonade made with Swoon. There was wine

by Out East RosĂŠ, Bears Fruit Kombucha, Ardbeg scotch, and Whitley Neill Handcrafted Gin also on hand.

When brunch was ready to be served, guests

headed out to a field to dine on dishes that included a watermelon and heirloom tomato salad with chili and shiso; polenta cake with grilled corn and roasted piperade with agave; a shaksuka verde with herbed goat cheese and arugula; and a local stone fruit with poppy seed sabayon and lemon verbena granola, all made with Cobram Estate olive oil.

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The Independent

Raising Spirits For 50 Years Park Place Wines & Liquors celebrates milestone anniversary

By Nicole Teitler nicole@indyeastend.com This article was published in our July 31 issue

(Left) Donna and Donald McDonald.

(Above) Original construction at Park Place Wines & Liquors. Independent/ Courtesy Park Place Wines & Liquors

Donald McDonald purchased an empty lot in East Hampton in 1969 on Newtown Lane, long before the days of luxury retail stores. A high school teacher at the time, McDonald built a discount liquor store, a party store, and the offices above it, all after the dismissal bell rang, and throughout the summer months, to open up his family business that very same year. Today, that discount liquor store has become better recognized as Park Place Wines & Liquors.

“For us growing up, the family business was there and the whole community came in. Especially around Christmas time. Everybody knew everybody else,” said Donald’s daughter, Donna McDonald. Her brother, Tom McDonald, chimed in, “It was almost better than the local barber shop.”

The McDonalds are a family rooted into East Hampton from the ground up. Donald was born in East Hampton, in a house, not a hospital. He later met

his wife, Alice, while he was lifeguarding at Main Beach, a marriage that would last 54 years. Although Donald had begun to delegate responsibilities to their children around 2008, it was in 2011, after Alice passed away, that both Donna and Tom took over management of Park Place. Donna handles the staff and Tom handles accounting. Together, they’ve refreshed an old family business into a thriving business model for the future.

At 89 years old, Donald still comes into the store on a daily basis. “He’s an old fixture in the community. He has a mindset where he cares about people and East Hampton,” said Donna about her father. It’s become a synchronized routine, both endearing and lighthearted, as the staff pulls all the bottles to the front of the store and leaves them out so Donald can see them upon arrival. While Donald has stepped back, he certainly hasn’t tired out, she said.

“It’s been such a wonderful expe-

rience to work with my brother,” said Donna. She moved to San Francisco in 1996, but still spends her summers in East Hampton and during the holiday months, where she always sees Tom, who has remained a local. She said she relishes “the joy of having people come in, and the cultural experience of not just meeting people, but helping them with the history of a wine, how it pairs.”

Park Place has evolved from a discount liquor store into more of a wine shop, with sommeliers and industry experts that bring knowledge and value into the area. There’s even a tasting table in the store where patrons can partake in sampling different products before buying, from wine to tequila, whiskey, and more.

As the McDonalds, and the entire East Hampton community, commemorate 50 years of Park Place Wines & Liquors, it’s also a celebration of life and the family that has brought moments of happiness to those around

them. A bottle of wine, or liquor, is more than the alcohol by volume listed on the label. It symbolizes a gathering of friends, family, and perfect strangers. It’s date night at home, toasting to a new promotion, sipping while watching beach sunsets, a barbecue, a Tuesday night, a memory.

“When my dad was courting my mother, who was in New Jersey at the time, he would drive to her from East Hampton. This is before the Long Island Expressway was built. He would take Sunrise Highway all the way to the G.W. Bridge, just to have lunch with her family on Sundays,” Donna said of her maternal side of the family, who were all from Italy. “Italians had lunch on Sundays after church, and they’d all drink Manhattans, or Negronis. So, we drink those two things to remember my mother.”

Park Place Wines is located at 84 Park Place in East Hampton. See all they are up to at www.parkplacewines.com.

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The Independent

Hands-On At Quail Hill Farm Down in the dirt for farm-to-table experience

By Nicole Teitler nicole@indyeastend.com This article was published in our July 3 issue

The rain cloud hovering above the East End finally dissipated and the skies opened to a brilliant blue hue.

It was roughly 80 degrees outside as I strapped up my work boots and put my ponytail through a ball cap, my idea of farming attire. I was on my way to Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett to get down in the dirt for some hands-on experience with local crops.

Quail Hill is one of the first 10 original Community Supported Agriculture farms in the United States, established in 1990. Scott Chaskey got into farming accidentally. Chaskey went to study literature and writing while he lived in Oxford, England some years ago. To make extra money, he answered an ad for a gardener and quickly developed a love for the work.

Since his in-laws were one of those 10 families, he moved back to the East End and was curious to learn more. He went to a meeting and was hooked.

I arrived to a muddy pathway in front of a metal gate and inside, rows of crops. A crew of five waved me in and Al gave me my instructions — dig up the carrots that are too close together and remove the weeds (anything that

Independent/Courtesy Quail Hill Farm

isn’t a carrot). With absolutely no experience whatsoever, I plopped myself on the ground and let my bare hands do the work. My new job title was Carrot Thinner, a process that is done once per planting to help crops grow larger without intertwining. In keeping each carrot one to two inches apart, and removing other roots nearby, it allows the vegetable to grow to full maturity, a more desirable produce. The carrots that were separated were then placed into a bin to be sold as fancy “small carrots” to restaurants.

Small insects climbed over my hands, the sun beating down on my back, as the group of us got to know each other, no two backgrounds the same. Al’s dog proudly walked over with a baby bunny in its mouth, the prize for a job well done, that’d later be used to make rabbit soup. My shocked face prompted Al to shrug her shoulders. “That’s what dogs do, they hunt.

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But we use all of it,” she said. I took one of the fancy carrots plucked from the dirt, brushed it against my tank top, and took a bite. How often do I praise a restaurant for its kitchen without ever truly acknowledging those who harvested the food on my plate?

Once we were finished, we hopped into the truck and made our way to the main house to hose off the crops and place them in the walk-in cooler, then we headed to the next patch of land.

Quail Hill is a project of the Peconic Land Trust, which preserves 12,000 acres on the East End, making it a conservation organization. Of that 12,000 acres, the farm grows a total of 35 acres, split between four different fields, as part of 220-acre agricultural reserve, that they also rent to Amber Waves, Balsam, and incubator farmers.

Farmer Frank, of Bhumi Farms/Rosie’s Amagansett, started farming by renting from Quail Hill as well.

We arrived at the second field to pick garlic scapes, a spiral stem that forms above the garlic stalk in June. If left alone, the stalk forms a flower but in picking the scape the plant will focus its energy into the ground and allow the garlic bulb to mature in size.

Each snap of the stalk released a garlic scent into the air, and onto my hands.

Though smelly, these scapes are edible and taste the same as traditional garlic, as the bulb matures for another two weeks. I walked through the field picking one by one, searching for the curl, and simultaneously collected white, yellow, and purple wildflowers. The overpowering scent was just a reminder of my other title, Scape Picker.

Once everything was complete, the group and I returned to the main house for a farm-to-table community meal outdoors. That’s where I met Layton Guenther, director of Quail Hill Farm, who has been with the team for seven seasons. Guenther got involved with farming in college in western Massachusetts during the resurgence of organic vegetable farming in New England.

In season right now are all the greens — lettuce, kale, parsley, cilantro, dill, collard greens. With all the rain, even the potatoes have grown unusually quick. “We have about 200 families who purchase a community supported agriculture share from the farm and twice a week, from beginning of June through Halloween, they come and harvest their own from the fields here. That’s probably 75 to 80 percent of our outlet.

Then we also sell to restaurants like Gurney’s Star Island in Montauk and Almond in Bridgehampton, The Mill House in East Hampton, Highway, among others. And at the Sag Harbor farmers market on Saturdays,” Guenther said.

Quail Hill takes pride in its apprenticeship program that is especially helpful for the education of new farmers and farm members. It additionally hosts public programs for the community and welcomes volunteers.

“Small farms, which have always been the backbone of the country, are attracting a lot of young people. The future of farming is those young people being educated to learn the skills,” Chaskey said.

Dining

December 25, 2019

B21

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B22

The Independent

‘The Power Of Sprinkles’

By Jessica Mackin-Cipro jessica@indyeastend.com This article was published in our July 3 issue

Amirah Kassem, the founder of Flour Shop in Soho — home of the famous explosion cake, a cake filled with candy that pours out when you cut a slice — has launched the book “The Power of Sprinkles,” and is taking the show on the road. This weekend, the tour includes a stop at Williams-Sonoma in Bridgehampton. The event will begin with a rainbow explosion cake class at noon on Friday, July 5, followed by a book signing at 1 PM. Kassem, dubbed “the modern-day Willy Wonka,” talked to Indy all about sprinkles.

What inspired you to create Flour Shop?

I started baking for family and friends and realized how happy my creations

made them, so I wanted to spread more joy, one sprinkle at a time.

Tell us a little about your book “The Power of Sprinkles.”

I wrote “The Power of Sprinkles” out of a need to help others recreate my sprinkles explosion cake. I was getting so many requests from people on social media asking how to execute the cake at home, so I decided to create a stepby-step flipbook-inspired explanation.

I really believe that if you master one cake, you can add your own twist to switch it up for different holidays, celebrations, and more.

The best part? If you find your cake doesn’t turn out perfectly, it’s ok

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— just cover it in sprinkles and everyone will love it anyway. That’s the power of sprinkles.

What can guests expect at your book signing and rainbow explosion cake class at Williams-Sonoma Bridgehampton?

Lots of sprinkles and smiles! I love teaching all of my tips and tricks so everyone can go home feeling confident about using the cake kit to create their

own rainbow explosion cakes.

Do you visit the East End often? If so, any favorite spots?

Yes. I love it there! Mostly to hang out with family, but we often visit BuddhaBerry, Levain Bakery, Surf Lodge, SoulCycle BARN, and Topping Rose for their incredible French toast.

For tickets and more info, visit www. flourshop.com.

Dining

December 25, 2019

B23

North Fork Table & Inn: Formal Yet Cozy Southold bastion serves impeccable food and wine

By Hannah Selinger This article was published in our May 22 issue

Few restaurants are as imbedded in the culture of Long Island as the North Fork Table & Inn. The restaurant, which opened in 2006, was the project of acclaimed pastry chef Claudia Fleming and her chef-husband Gerry Hayden. Fleming, who rose to fame as the pastry chef of Danny Meyer’s Gramercy Tavern, and won the coveted James Beard Award in 2000 for Pastry Chef of the Year.

Fleming and Hayden ran a successful business together, creating a formal-yet-cozy occasion restaurant in Southold. I can think of no other dessert on Long Island that resonates like Fleming’s coconut tapioca, now a dish for which the restaurant has become known in its own right.

The story of the North Fork Table & Inn is one of a phoenix rising from the ashes. In 2012, I walked into the restaurant for the first time. I was a wine rep with an appointment with a buyer, Mike Mraz, also a co-owner.

My time with him was the product of a cold-call. We had never met. While I waited in the bar for Mraz, sorting through my samples and spec sheets, I overheard a conversation in the dining room about a fundraiser for Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

It was autumn. My father had died just over a year before, at 57, of Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and I felt a certain

kinship with the vernacular of illness.

Lou Gehrig’s — or ALS — is a very specific withering. Motor skills vanish while the mind remains intact. By the end of his life, my father could not walk, eat, or speak — but he could communicate his still-articulate thoughts through a computer that connected his eyes to a keyboard.

I mention this because it was my relationship to disease that connected me with the North Fork Table & Inn, when another person — Chef Gerry Hayden — was himself suffering from it. During the course of my relationship with the restaurant, and the people in it, I would watch Hayden’s disease progress. It claimed him in September 2015.

It is sometimes impossible to divorce personal experience from objective thought. I love the North Fork Table & Inn because of its impeccable food, thoughtful wine list, and warm ambience (the building dates back to the late 1700s), but I also love it because it is intrinsically connected to my life. On that first day, when I finally met Mike Mraz, we talked for an hour, but not about wine. We spoke, instead, about ALS, a common thread that bound us, however unfairly.

From there, our friendship grew.

We tasted wine together. Eventually, I persuaded him to buy my wines. But all

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of that is somehow beside the point.

I have written plenty of articles about restaurants that I love, like, and loathe. Most of my assessments of a place are determined by a set of rules.

Does a restaurant perform its duties as promised? Does the food deliver?

Would I want to spend an afternoon or evening there? In the case of the North Fork Table & Inn, the answer to these questions is yes.

But restaurants are not solely about the singular experiences they offer us as diners. Diners are also human beings, brought to tears or laughter, influenced by the world we leave behind when we step through the doors

and by whatever kind of day we had before dinner. When it comes to the North Fork Table & Inn, where I spend my birthday each year, I am far from an objective diner.

But that’s ok. I can tell you, dear readers, that you will not want to miss chef Brian Wilson’s Crescent Farms duck breast, served with buckwheat polenta, glazed carrots, and rhubarb chutney. I can tell you, too, that to leave without Claudia Fleming’s cookies in hand is to tempt fate.

I can also say that this restaurant — like any restaurant — is more than the sum of its parts. I encourage you to find your own story there.

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The Independent

Sean Lennon

professional recording I learned from my mom.

Continued From Page B1. surrealist expectations that accompany being a psych or prog band (whatever that means), by using the real world for narrative inspiration. [Jack Parsons was a rocket engineer, founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, an occultist in the style of Alistair Crowley, and, by all accounts, a super weird dude.]

What do you want your music to reflect? What’s the message, if there is one?

Honestly, I’m not together enough to have such a grand plan. I’m just happy if it doesn’t suck.

What makes you want to tour? What makes you want to keep creating? What pushes you forward?

Hmmm. I’m literally sitting at the airport after finishing a month tour, so it’s hard for me to imagine at this moment why I’d ever want to do this. But the truth is, as a musician, you’re either recording in a studio or playing live — those are the two main modes. When you’re in the studio too long, you miss playing live, and at a moment like this after a grueling tour, you miss the studio.

Nothing compares to the response of a real live audience. There is something electric about the interaction you just can’t get by yourself.

Do you have patience for nostalgic questions? Is there an insensitivity, albeit unintentional, that comes with questions about your childhood?

I don’t have any rules about what kinds of questions I like or dislike. The context and the framing, regarding who is asking and why, have more impact than the content of the question.

Yoko is still known as one of the fringe players of the ’60s, a real harbinger for the punk movement. How does she influence your music, being such an avant-garde?

She has influenced me more than anyone, even more than my father. As much as I grew up immersed in Beatles music, my dad was mostly absent, whereas I personally witnessed the recording of dozens of Yoko albums. She taught me about eq, reverb, compression. Almost all the practical things I know about

What do you like to do when you’re not making music to keep you sane?

Well, I never really stop making music.

There are moments when I feel stuck so that’s when I make sure to “fill the well.” Go for walks, read great books, watch movies, eventually you’ll be inspired again.

To keep sane, I recommend meditation, exercise, and eating healthily — nothing you haven’t heard of.

Music, and marketing it, has changed so much. What does touring mean in 2019?

What’s your favorite method of distribution and getting your music heard?

Well, the majority of working musicians used to make most of their earnings from record sales. Those days are over, so the result is many musicians who had retired are now out there on the road again trying to get their kids through college. The upside is you can now see Crimson and Yes and Rush on the road again. It’s likely they wouldn’t have toured without that industry sea change.

The downside is corporations are now keeping 99.99 percent of the revenue generated by songwriters. It used to be like 80 percent, and we thought that was unfair. If only we had known then what we know now, we might have adapted more reasonably to the streaming model.

I’m worried that people are losing the ability to listen to each other carefully. Could be the fault of social media, but it’s a big problem.

How has your songwriting evolved?

I think I’m getting better at songwriting. Like anything, it takes practice.

The people who tend to get worse are people who become jaded by too much success. I’m lucky to have never had the kind of success that could derail my progress.

“Friendly Fire” was an album that was almost like a diary. It’s strange, but I never really look back musically, so in a sense, those songs are like photographs: they sit in a drawer somewhere but I rarely look at them.

I miss Max every single day though. No song could ever capture the love we had for each other.

What’s a question no one has ever asked you but that

you want to be asked?

Honestly, I think I’ve been asked pretty much anything you could think of.

Perhaps, “Hey, how about we skip the interview and go the Star Trek convention?”

What’s a fond memory of the Hamptons?

I grew up sharing summers between my parents’ house in Cold Spring Harbor, and the LeRoys’ house in the Hamptons. I was visiting some friends recently (I won’t say who), but I hadn’t realized I’d be driving through Amagansett.

It was a real shock, passing the windmill, and then the railroad tracks where Max and I used to place pennies to be squashed. I was flooded with memories, so many there isn’t the time or space to recall them here. Do you know when Proust eats the madeleine, and it summons a lifetime of memories? I’d say driving by the windmill was like that for me.

It’s strange that when you really lose things, lose them forever, is the only time you truly understand them, truly appreciate them. It’s one of life’s most painful paradoxes.

For more information about upcoming tour dates (the band is consistently playing to sell-out crowds) and to have a listen of some of the more recent stuff, visit www.theclaypoollennondelirium.com.

Pat Benatar

Continued From Page B5. crazy about each other but didn’t want to blow the career. It was a hard to decision to make. We took it really slowly, and the first song we actually wrote about the relationship was “Promises In The Dark.” It’s our signature thing.

How does this rock ‘n’ roll journey differ from others?

We’ve had a really amazing life. It hasn’t been perfect, there have been lots of struggles, but we came out on the other side. We have two daughters, two grandchildren. We’re so grateful. To be able to circle all the way around, go back to my Long Island roots, and be able to start this whole other adventure, where music that has been so critical and important to your life is now being put into another format. It’s amazing. I’ve never heard the songs sung by anyone but me. To hear them all singing these words that we wrote, we played, that have never been sung by another person, is spectacular.

Fosse

Continued From Page B9. was on the north side of the highway,” she said. “The ‘wrong’ side. But when anyone would say that, my mom would say, ‘Yes, but it’s on the right side of the railroad tracks.’” She and her mother would go into the fields by her home and gather the potatoes after the farmers had completed their harvesting, and she recalled the clothesline sales that artists would hold in their front yards.

It’s not just the places, but the people that make Nicole Fosse wax nostalgic. “I’m throwing names out here,” she said. “George Plimpton.

Angier Biddle Duke. Evan Frankel.

Ann Stanwell and Emily Cobb. Bob Costello.” There were also numerous get-togethers with Sidney Lumet, Adolph Green and Phyllis Newman, Herbie Gardner, Tony and Gen Walton, Warner LeRoy, and others from the Hamptons old show-biz guard.

“It’s like almost everyone from that time is gone,” she said wistfully. “I guess we’re the old, wise ones now.”

How has this series affected Fosse — a fearlessly honest portrayal of her parents that bears all warts and pulls no punches? “I have two brains at work here,” she said. “I have my brain that has been trained since I was a child to normalize and dismiss a lot of behavior that I have rediscovered while watching Sam play Bob, and he is so charming. And I have my new brain, and that brain has to talk to my other brain and say, ‘Wait a second. They’re popping pills in front of a child. That’s not okay.’ I don’t ever want to sound like I’m pointing fingers or incriminating anybody; that was the ’70s, that was the life we grew up in, but that doesn’t make it good,” she said bluntly.

“It’s only when I started to talk about it and developing the ability to see that the black and the white coexist simultaneously at times, then I was able to realize the full picture and know that I wasn’t crazy to feel like something was wrong.”

Aside from the “dark stuff,” the series recreates many of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon’s most light and brilliant moments on Broadway and film.

There’s plenty of sizzle and jazz hands to go around, it’s entertaining, Nicole Fosse said, and contains lots of funny and intimate moments.

“I’m hoping that this series creates conversation,” Fosse said, “It’s gorgeous, the acting is stupendous, and it’s funny and smart and the color palette is amazing, but beyond all of that, and underneath that, it’s incredibly human.”

Real Realty

December 25, 2019

23

Corcoran Superstar Susan Breitenbach

By Ty Wenzel ty@indyeastend.com This article was published in our July 3 issue

With the Hamptons real estate market in a rut, luxury home sellers naturally gravitate to the titans of Hamptons real estate to sell their compounds. A litany of names comes to mind that confirms the industry to be male-dominated, save one that leaves the boys club in the dust: Susan Breitenbach. Literally Corcoran’s top producer, she has amassed more than $4.5 billion in real estate transactions.

She was named numerous times as the number one Hamptons agent by the Wall Street Journal. And that’s not the best part. It also recognized her as the only agent on the East End on its nationwide top five. That alone is a testament to Breitenbach’s superiority and her name is something she will fight for.

“I have many high-end clients, from celebrities to the heads of industry, because I live and breathe real estate,” Breitenbach explained. “My reputation speaks for itself and I make myself available 24/7. Clients want someone experienced and knowledgeable. I talk straight-up with them and am always honest. Our relationship and my reputation mean more to me than any commission. I really love what I do.”

Last spring, Breitenbach closed on Christie Brinkley’s 4.5-acre waterfront home in Sag Harbor. She also sold Richard Gere’s waterfront compound to Matt Lauer. Other well-known clients include Jeff Blau, Lloyd Blankfein, Billy Joel, and Russell Simmons to name a few.

Because of her youthful joie de vivre, 35 years of luxury real estate leadership should mean that she started out straight out of college, but it was six years on Wall Street and marrying her luxury builder husband, Stephen Breitenbach, that led her to the mansion-dotted beaches of the East End.

“I was always interested in real estate. When my husband mentioned moving to the Hamptons, it seemed like a good opportunity and right progression,” Breitenbach said. “I tried commuting briefly but that didn’t last long! I did my first oceanfront sale the

first year, and when the owner said he would pay my full commission and if I got him a certain price, he would send me and my family to the Caribbean on vacation. Of course, I thought he was kidding. But I sold it and he did! The rest is history.”

Her business sprouted under Allan Schneider Associates, the legendary brokerage that was bought out by Corcoran in 2006. It is with Corcoran that her work and name blossomed. “I run my business like a boutique firm within a large company which offers the best of both worlds to my customers,” she elaborated. “I have my own team of people that make it all work seamlessly. For example, I have brokers, assistants, social media experts, a public relations team, my own website, but the drone, our networking and support, company website, and referrals that comes from Corcoran offer my clients the full spectrum of services to get their homes sold.”

Advice for home sellers, home buyers, and Hamptons real estate enthusiasts When Breitenbach is asked about the biggest mistake home sellers make it’s that they chase the market and overprice their property. For example, a 15-acre compound in Water Mill was listed in 2008 for $100 million. It sold in March of 2018 for $49 million to two separate buyers. It sat for a decade.

Homes in the luxury real estate market priced incorrectly will see markdowns in the double-digit-millions in order to sell.

Her ideas about home trends exemplifies how sellers are upgrading their homes and adding value while design/build construction companies are adding these features to custom builds for the fast sell. Breitenbach explained that buyers are especially keen on integrated interior/outdoor living spaces with loggias, which is a room with open sides, especially with one side open to the garden. She adds, “Outdoor TVs are big, fire pits, loggias with screens that can automatically come down and pergolas with built-in shades and heat-

Breitenbach showcasing her exclusive listing at 209 Hedges Lane in Sagaponack which is currently offered at $18,995,000. Independent/Ty Wenzel

ers!”

When it comes to up-and-coming neighborhoods, Breitenbach says there are many and each offers different things. “Waterfront on the bay, I think, was underrated and now people are really understanding and getting it!”

What the Hamptons means to Breitenbach “I have had a summer house here my whole life. It has been a wonderful place to raise my family. Actually, all of my children, except one, have moved back after living in the city for quite a while!”

She travels extensively but declares the beaches on the East End the most beautiful. In fact, Coopers Beach in Southampton is again on the list of the “Top 10” beaches in the country by coastal expert Stephen Leatherman.

He is known as “Dr. Beach,” and in 2019, no other New York beaches made the list. Leatherman, who has compiled the list for 29 years had ranked Coopers Beach number one in 2010.

In addition to beaching it, Breitenbach explained that it’s the vast variety of activities that appeal to the wide swath of year-round and summer denizens. “I love the Hamptons because it has literally everything – there is something for everyone. You can go to all of the events or just spend quiet time with friends and family in one of the most beautiful places. There’s golf, horseback riding, boating, yoga and spin, apple picking, nature walks, or visit a great restaurant or vineyard.”

Breitenbach is an inspiration for

women who work and play hard in the quest to having it all. With a large family, she has managed to balance work and family life which she admits is hard but worth it. For fun, she plays tennis and has two boats that she keeps in Sag Harbor. She wishes there were more hours in the day, because she loves to play golf but has trouble finding the time. One can even catch her biking around town on beautiful summer days.

But her conversation always goes back to family. “The most important thing to me is spending time with my husband, children, and grandchildren, which I adore, my close friends and my two dogs, too! We love to have barbecues and boat together,” Breitenbach said.

“We sometimes end up talking a little business since my husband, Steve, is in construction along with Stephen Jr. They naturally develop a lot for my clients. My son-in-law, Cutter, is a broker who works with me. My son, Matt, is also a broker at Compass while my daughter, Samantha, is in graphic design with a degree in interior architecture. My other son, Michael, is a senior vice president at Bank Of America and also deals with a lot of my clients! I do have three lovely daughters-in-law as well as another daughter who balance out the rest. They are also very interesting and successful but just not in real estate!”

To reach Breitenbach or inquire about her properties, call 631-8756000 or visit www.susanbreitenbach. com.

24

The Independent

Talking Horse Sense With Douglas Elliman President Scott Durkin

By Ty Wenzel ty@indyeastend.com This article was published in our September 4 issue

Sitting with Scott Durkin at the Hampton Classic is a bit like sitting with the mayor in a small village. The president and COO of Douglas Elliman, which has been a major sponsor of the horse show in Bridgehampton since 1998, greets everyone from his PR and events team to agents to clients to the florist who is decorating their nine tables in the VIP tent.

The table is an apt metaphor as Durkin describes the culture of the real estate leader. “There’s a big dinner table at Douglas Elliman that a lot of companies don’t have, and that’s important. We emphasize a culture of inclusion. We don’t have a strict hierarchy, and our agents are very collaborative,” Durkin told The Independent. It is clear Durkin embodies these qualities with his own accessibility and his genuinely warm encounters.

Durkin also has a deep connection to horses, having just purchased a 27acre horse farm called Skyfall in Saugerties, NY, which will be home to his six dressage horses. He proudly shows photos of his newest mare, Lady, who has just arrived from the Netherlands.

His love of horses got off on the wrong foot, or hoof, you could say.

“When I was young, I rode through the cornfields of a dairy farm in Salem, NY,” said Durkin. “I was barefoot with no helmet and was thrown off and broke my arm.” Durkin didn’t return to riding until his 45th birthday. He recalls, “I was at the Hampton Classic, and there were five Friesian horses, and they were stunning. I said to my husband, Dave, ‘Hey, Martha Stewart has five of them, I think I need one.’”

Dressage as a riding discipline seemed a natural fit for Durkin, who majored in modern dance in college. In dressage, an Olympic sport, the horse is shown on the flat with beautiful movements, ranging from pirouettes to piaffes to flying changes. “I missed dance,” Durkin recalled, “and when I got my horse, I was hiring a trainer, and she was a dressage trainer. Dressage to me is like ballet meets figure skating, with the geometrical patterns and pre-

cision. The horses’ movements are so stunningly beautiful.”

For Durkin — who navigates a high-powered job and frequent travel — the horse barn is the place to recharge the batteries and enjoy a personal passion. Durkin does compete as an amateur, but his trainer Meagan Davis also competes at the top level on his highly skilled horses. “She is a great rider and competitor,” said Durkin.

“And I love the way she teaches.”

Horse lessons are also useful business lessons. “If you can make a 1300-pound animal move in a precise way and without any vocals, that’s a bridge to communication,” said Durkin with a laugh. “You work to make it be smooth, calm, graceful, and beautiful.”

Equestrian sport is also an important bridge to Douglas Elliman’s clients and customers. Durkin explained, “We have this expression at Elliman that we follow our customers. We’ve opened up in the luxury space in California as well as Boston, Connecticut, Westchester, Florida, and Aspen, and coupled with those destinations is the equestrian world. It’s very expensive to have horses, and that client requires a fine-tuned agent that knows the way they live.

Many of them have a horse farm in every place they travel, so it made sense for us to sponsor the sport.”

Elliman’s equestrian sponsorship began with the Hampton Classic in 1998. “It’s supporting the equestrian client and also the audience the sport attracts that might not necessarily ride.

It’s a wonderful family event, and educational, and everyone loves to be with these amazing animals. It’s a great opportunity to give our properties exposure and also our agents, 40 of whom are riders themselves,” he added.

Strolling around the grounds of the Hampton Classic with its highend boutiques and exhibits, you would think Durkin might be drawn to a luxury boat or car, but it is actually the John Deere tractor which attracts his attention. “I definitely need one for the new farm.” He also pops in to speak with Joseph Moran, who owns Top Jock

Douglas Elliman president and COO Scott Durkin at the Hampton Classic Independent/Ty Wenzel

Tack Boxes, to discuss custom designs for the new Skyfall Farm.

In terms of the Hamptons real estate market Durkin commented, “The Hamptons are majorly a second and third home market and it doesn’t fluctuate as much as the first home market.

The biggest change I have seen is the mind of the buyer — they are more prepared than ever. The transparency of our industry on the digital stage is incredible.” To that end, Elliman has a valuable relationship with Miller Samuel Inc. to share its market research in the exclusive Elliman Reports, of which 84 are published every quarter.

Durkin also understands the value of cutting-edge technology balanced with personal interactions. He com-

mented, “Having face time is rare and valuable. I always say we will get the best technology for the agents in the company to help be the back-end of their business and keep them moving at a fast clip. But the most important thing is to be in front of your clients and customers as much as you can without being intrusive. You are much more of an advisor today than a transactional agent.” And building lasting relationships, especially in a company which is over 100 years old, is a key to success.

“Anywhere you hang your shingle, you need to be part of the community,” Durkin said. And in this case, it is a place where he knows not only everyone’s names but even their horses’ names. It’s a beautiful bond to share.

Real Realty

December 25, 2019

25

Fred Mengoni And The East Hampton White House East Hampton Village fought his million-dollar renovation

By Rick Murphy rmurphy@indyeastend.com This article was published in our August 7 issue

The “White House” is one of the most recognizable houses in the Hamptons, known for, among other things, the red geraniums planted throughout the property. It is on the market and apparently attracting Hollywood types like Charlie Sheen.

Fred Mengoni, who died last year, was an international developer with extensive real estate holdings. Many of his associates did not even know he was a central figure in the cycling boom that turned America into an international powerhouse on the competitive racing circuit.

His love for cycling extended across decades, and was instrumental in kick-starting the careers of several top-level pros — most notably Greg LeMond — as well as providing early funding for what eventually became USA Cycling. He was admitted to the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame in 1994.

Mengoni left his mark on East Hampton as well. He renovated and refurbished the Georgian mansion on the corner of Woods Lane and Main Street that had become known as the gateway to East Hampton, dubbed simply “The White House.”

This reporter, one of only a lucky handful given full access to the house and extensive time with Mengoni, the visit culminated with a wide-ranging interview published in The New York Times on July 7, 1997.

The house wasn’t always revered as a suitable guardian for the village gate. When Mengoni purchased it in 1989, he realized he was taking on a mammoth restoration task, and ran into roadblocks from the village government and neighbors, one in particular. “They didn’t want me to paint it white,” he recalled.

The project provided rare insight into how he operated: he went all in. “I brought my own craftsmen out from New York. They would work all night.” He was hands on, working right alongside them.

Literally every inch of the interior was addressed, from basement to

attic. There are marble floor and gold doorknobs everywhere.

Despite his love for the place, though, Mengoni seldom slept there: He had 22 residences all over the world. Whe he died last year, the landmark went back on the market, and is now available at a comfortable $9.5 million, in the hands of Douglas Brown and Paul Brennan of Douglas Elliman.

It is quite the buy. It sits on nearly three acres; the 7600-squarefoot home has four levels, seven bedrooms, six bathrooms, two half-bathrooms, a marble-covered main floor, a rosewood-paneled library, a dining room with a fireplace, an indoor Jacuzzi, and a wine cellar. The expansive grounds, including almost two acres hidden from the roadways, also hold a pool, pool house, three-car garage, and a barn.

The house dates back to the early 18th Century. In 1907, the house was moved back from the road, expanded and remodeled in the Colonial Revival tradition. An entrance portico was added, as well as a porch, and dormers on the third floor. Several outbuildings were also put up.

The house was left to Texas A & M in 1981 and fell into some decay before Mengoni bought it in 1989. “I gutted it,” he said. “It was a piece of junk.” He rebuilt it from the ground up, an effort that took almost four years.

Today the house bears his signatures — red geraniums in flower boxes at every window, and along the ample grounds in the summer, and white Christmas lights that frame the house and the windows and decorate the numerous specimen trees in the winter.

Along the way, Mengoni spent millions and battled review boards.

“It was stupid,” he said of the reviews. “They wanted me to paint the barn red and the shutters green.

I wanted to put a sun room on the barn, and they wouldn’t let me put it in the sun. They told me to put it in the shade.”

Neighbors complained as well.

“They didn’t want all the landscaping,” Mengoni said back then. “Maybe they were jealous. But 99 percent of the people I talk to love it.”

Mengoni, by his account, made four fortunes and went broke three times. Mengoni was born on July 21, 1923. He came to America from his native Italy in 1957 after having lost major sums on horse racing. “I only had a one-way ticket,’” he recalled.

“So I couldn’t go back.”

His motive in seeing America was Marilyn Monroe, whom he had seen in a movie. “I like blondes,” said Mengoni.

About 40 years ago, he took a train ride to the Hamptons on the advice of a friend. “I fell in love,” he said. “This is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I told myself I would come back here and buy a beautiful house.”

After he bought the White House, steel beams were brought in to stabilize the foundation. The basement, which was unfinished, now houses a great room with a rosewood bar, a marble fireplace, marble floors, a Jacuzzi, and a sauna.

“This kind of work you can’t give to a contractor,” Mengoni had said.

“You need an artist.’”

He sent the original windows to Italy to be restored. The bathroom fixtures are gold plated, as are most

of the doorknobs and closet handles.

Most of the furniture came from his collection. He was partial to Louis XVI pieces, Italian antiques, and wood tables from China, rich with inlay and design. Rosewood and mahogany were his woods of choice.

The circular cobblestone driveway is heated from below ground to melt ice. Gold-rimmed crystal and china fill the vitrine in the formal dining room, and a sound system pipes music through all four floors.

He donated significantly to the United States Professional Circuit and sponsored two teams, one in the United States and the other in Italy.

LeMond was his protégé.

“I don’t care about the money,” he said at the time. “It means nothing to me.

It’s the challenge. I have so much now. I am lucky. But even when I was broke, I don’t give up. I keep coming back.”

Mengoni had said that he was busy with his 300 apartments in Manhattan and properties in Nevada, California, and in Italy and that he added to his holdings in the Hamptons.

Mengoni was married once, for a year.

“I risk everything, all of the time,” he had said. “When you have a family, you are compromised. This way no one can tell me what to do.” Though retirement never came to mind, Mengoni said, the White House had a special place in his heart. “Someday,” he had said, “I would like to live here all the time. Someday.’”

As it is, he had only slept in East Hampton a handful of nights, which isn’t bad considering his Swiss chalet: “I haven’t been there in 15 years,” he said.

Another great American icon is rumored to be eying the East Hampton Village place: Charlie Sheen.

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The Independent

Taps

resident, retired New York City fireman, and a musician, told the board.

Annie Morgan Rosch, another musician, whose husband, Richard Rosch, is the drummer for the Nancy Atlas Project, told the board that “I don’t know why it has to be continuously reiterated — music is a gift.” She asked why music is always under attack.

Several of the speakers equated the proposed amendment with something akin to George Orwell’s “1984,” or, perhaps, Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451.”

Linda Fuller told the board she taught school in East Hampton for 40 years. Fuller referenced another dystopian novel, “The Giver,” by Lois Lowry.

“The Giver,” Fuller said, is about a society that has banned music, “because the goal for that society was to eliminate emotional depth from the lives of its citizens.” She said, “When we would finish the novel, I would ask the students, ‘What would East Hampton be like without music?’”

Politicians running for town board were on hand, as well. David Gruber, an attorney running for Town Supervisor, accused the town board of overreach.

“You are using a sledge hammer to drive in a nail,” he said. He added that out of the 70 or so music venues in the town, only three were creating prob-

Continued From Page 16.

Authority that is directly responsible for the possible loss of her “Surf Lodge Wednesdays.” SLA chairman Vincent Bradley had a scathing exchange with Surf Lodge impresario Jayma Cardoso on March 6, during which he stated that his board would not issue a liquor license allowing live music at the iconic Montauk destination for the summer party crowd until the town issues a permit.

This comes after years of litigation between the town and Cardoso and her partners. The town, according to Cardoso, who spoke with The Independent Monday. The SLA hearing regarding the Surf Lodge’s liquor license, and its aftermath, are covered elsewhere in this issue.

Cardoso did attend last Thursday night’s meeting, standing at the rear of the crowd.

Orwellian Amendment?

Atlas told the board Thursday night that the language of the amendment is too vague.

Many of the speakers saw the amended language as a Machiavellian move to eliminate live music from the town. “To lose music, it’s the beginning of the end,” Ralph Perricelli, a Montauk

lems. He also said that simply holding a single public hearing was “the worst possible way to get public input.” Bonnie Brady, a town board candidate, asked why she has to “beg” the current board to slow down on such major changes. Yet another candidate, Betsy Bambrick, a former head of the town’s code enforcement division, questioned the creation a review board consisting entirely of code and law enforcement officials.

Job Potter, a former town board member, and also a musician, suggested forming a committee of musicians, restaurant and bar owners, and other interested parties to take a fresh look at the law.

Besides Gruber, at least two other attorneys spoke, as well. Diane LeVerrier questioned the legality of the law, particularly the way the appeals board was being constituted, saying that it violates state law governing townships.

“They will be explaining this in court,” Deborah Choron warned. She said the amendment will hurt Montauk, as well as small business owners.

“Who will be able to afford this?” she asked. “Maybe Marc Rowan,” was her rhetorical reply, which drew laughter and cheering. Rowan is the billionaire owner of Duryea’s, which has been in the eye of a political storm in East

Hampton in recent weeks.

Even the fishing industry was represented. Anthony Sosinski of Montauk called for a music festival to raise money for Montauk beach restoration, saying that music is always a positive, never a negative.

“I just want to assure everybody that we all value live music in East Hampton,” Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc, who is himself a musician, said towards the end of the meeting. “Everyone on this board does. We are not going to shut down live music.”

“I would ask the students, ‘What would East Hampton be like without music?’” — Linda Fuller

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News & Opinion

December 25, 2019

27

SAND IN MY SHOES

By Denis Hamill

A Conversation With Gay Talese The birth of ‘new Journalism’ denishamill@gmail.com This column was published in our July 10 issue Independent/Natan Dvir, Courtesy Gay Talese

Gay Talese doesn’t have a cold.

Gay Talese has pneumonia.

Well, the celebrated author of the timeless April, 1966 Esquire profile “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” is actually recovering from the pulmonary disease that has not slowed him down one sniffle — even at age 87.

Unlike Sinatra — who would not speak with the author for that now JSchool required reading essay — Talese was happy to chat about how he got started in the old journalism, before pioneering the New Journalism. And what he thinks of the current journalism, of the 24-hour news cycle in the internet age.

“I grew up in Ocean City, New Jersey, and I was lucky that my father was a tailor,” said Talese, who said he learned life lessons in his dad’s shop.

“To start with, nice clothes and good manners, because if you work in a store, you have to look good, be polite and patient, and learn how to speak to the public.”

That would come to be a solid foundation for this sartorial man of letters. “But the other big break I had was that, in 1944, the World Champion Yankees did not fly south to St. Petersburg for spring training,” he said. “There was gas rationing and so the depleted Yankees team — many of the best players were in the armed services — decided to hold spring training in Bader Field and indoors in the Atlantic City Armory. I guess I was 11 and I’d go and watch the Yankees train,” he recalled.

“But better than that, I got to watch up front and in person the great sport writers from the Daily News, Daily Mirror, New York Times, Herald Tribune, the Sun, and more, all taking notes, doing interviews, typing up their stories in the Senator Hotel. In the morning, I’d buy the papers and read those stories, and I decided that spring that I was going to be a sports writer when I grew up,” Talese said.

His Father Was A Tailor Talese would later play second base for Ocean City High. “I wasn’t a very good player,” he said. “But I volunteered to send basic stories about the team’s games to the Ocean City Sentinel-Ledger.” His stories were so well-received that he was soon given his own sports column at the Sentinel-Ledger and by the time he graduated high school, he’d stacked up over 300 bylines.

“But after applying to all the Ivy League schools, I was turned down because my grades were poor,” he said.

“But if your father is an excellent tailor in a small town, prominent men will be fitted for his suits. One of them was the newspaper publisher and another was a top surgeon who’s graduated from the University of Alabama. When my father told him that I’d been turned down at all the top schools, the doctor said he could get me into the University of Alabama.”

It wasn’t long before Talese was the editor of the UA’s Crimson Tide school newspaper where he wrote a column called “Sports Gay-zing.”

“I laugh now reading stories about people facing prison time for paying bribes to get their kids into top schools,” said Talese. “I got into a top school because my father made a suit for a doctor.”

After graduating in 1953, he donned his best suit, tailor-made by his immigrant dad, polished shoes, a starched shirt, and new tie, and travelled by bus to midtown Manhattan from home. “I marched unannounced to the New York Times, then located at 229 W. 43 Street, and rode up to the third floor. I told a receptionist wearing a bowtie that I was here to see Turner Catledge about a job.”

The Audacity “The receptionist asked if I had an appointment; I said no, but I was recommended by Mr. Catledge’s cousin from

their native Mississippi,” he said. A college friend, Jimmy Pigston, had told Talese that he was related to Catledge and to mention his name. “The receptionist said Mr. Catledge wouldn’t be free until about five minutes to four that afternoon. I said I’d be back.”

Talese left the Times, wandering the great city he’d never explored before for several hours, mesmerized by the noise, big crowds, gigantic stores, tireless energy.

“When I got back to the Times at 3:45, I waited a few minutes before I was led by Catledge’s assistant, Herb Andre, through the enormous city room that was a city block long, with over 500 reporters and editors, all smoking, a great roar coming from ringing phones, manual typewriters, and teletype machines. Finally, I was led into Turner Catledge’s office. I told him I wanted to bring good writing to the Times. He looked me over, kind of astonished, and asked who’d sent me here. I said his first cousin, Jimmy Pigston.”

Catledge, a former Pulitzer Prizewinning reporter, squinted at Talese and said, “Who the hell is Jimmy Pigston? I don’t have any first cousin named Jimmy Pigston.”

Talese was crushed.

“I apologized,” said Talese. “Catledge could see I wasn’t a bum or a nut, that I had a fine appearance, and good manners, and the audacity to show up in person to get what I was after.

He might have secretly admired that I dared to ask for a job writing for the New York Times at age 21. But, in the end, he said reporters write big awardwinning stories for years for other daily newspapers before they are even considered by the Times. He told his assistant to take my name and phone number and if an office job ever opened up, maybe they’d give me a call.”

Embarrassed and disheartened, Gay Talese left the Grey Lady and trav-

elled home to Ocean City to work in the family store.

Two weeks later, the phone rang.

It was Herb Andre, saying, “Mr. Talese, we have an office job for you. When can you start?” And thus began one of the most remarkable careers in American journalism.

Knack For Details Talese soon had his first Times byline, and then piled up a series of small stories written with facts and detail and an irrepressible flair that soon led to a sports writing beat, and then an Albany state government beat, and then banishment to obituaries. “My favorite was obits,” said Talese. “They sent me there as punishment for always arguing about my mangled copy out of Albany.

But they didn’t know that for writers, obituaries are life stories, amazing tales about famous people and the even more-interesting common man.”

Talese would soon branch out to the Sunday Times Magazine, where he was able to write much longer pieces with his peculiar knack for telling details.

“If someone told me they only had time to speak to me at three o’clock because they had to go to the barber at noon, the auto mechanic at one, and the dentist at two, I’d ask if I could just tag along and observe them in those scenes from real life, in dramatic situations that you’d find in the short stories of Irwin Shaw, John O’Hara, or John Cheever, where the mundane events of life are often the most dramatic. Places where I could set the scene, listen to conversation with my subject and others, observing how others regarded them and spoke to them,” he said.

This was the birth of what my brother Pete Hamill would call “The New Journalism,” coining a phrase for shoe-leather reporting intersecting Continued On Page 36.

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The Independent

Lucian Truscott IV Continues His Mission Thomas Jefferson descendent fights for the recognition of his black cousins

By Bridget LeRoy bridget@indyeastend.com This article was published in our February 20 issue

Lucian K. Truscott IV — best-selling author and journalist — is sitting in the living room of his Sag Harbor home, which was built in the early 1700s, more than 30 years before the birth of his great-great-great-great-grandfather, Thomas Jefferson. Truscott is admittedly exhausted; he’s just spent the week at Jefferson’s Virginia residence, Monticello, where a new exhibit focused on Sally Hemings, Jefferson’s slave and mother to six of his children, has opened to the public.

Truscott attended the event with his cousin, Shannon Lanier, also a direct descendant of Jefferson. The difference, at least on the surface, is that Truscott is white, and Lanier is black.

Truscott has spent the last 20some years as a tireless crusader on behalf of the Jefferson-Hemings offspring, first to have them recognized by Monticello as even existing, and then to get them the same rights afforded to the white descendants recognized by the Monticello Association, of which Truscott is a member.

He appeared with Lanier on “CBS This Morning” on Valentine’s Day in a six-minute segment which followed the cousins around Monticello and into the graveyard, which is run by the Monticello Association, and where — as of now — the descendants of Jefferson and Hemings cannot be buried.

“My fifth great-grandmother is Martha Jefferson,” Truscott wrote on Salon.com. “Shannon’s fifth greatgrandmother is Sally Hemings. We talk all the time about the ‘founding fathers’ of this nation, the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, who attended the Constitutional Convention.

This nation had founding mothers, as well. One of our founding mothers was a slave, Sally Hemings.”

Jefferson, over the course of his lifetime, owned over 600 people.

“Slaves got Thomas Jefferson up in the morning,” said Truscott. “They fixed his breakfast and laid out his clothes for him to get dressed. They arranged

his pens and paper on his writing desk.

In fact, if Thomas Jefferson had not owned slaves, he probably wouldn’t have had the time to write the Declaration of Independence, in which he famously declared that ‘all men are created equal.’”

It wasn’t until DNA testing became readily available in the late ’90s that the oral history that had been passed down

by Sally Hemings’s children and grandchildren became generally accepted.

“But a lot of people still don’t know about it,” Truscott mused. “Even while we were there, at Monticello, there was a man visiting from Iowa, I think, who still didn’t know about it.”

Truscott appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 1998, where he had the opportunity to meet and embrace his African-American cousins. “I was raised to believe that everyone was created equal,” he said. “My parents weren’t racist. I’m not a racist.” He showed up at Monticello that year, at the annual event for Jefferson’s descendants, with about 50 new cousins in tow, all people of color. The reception he received, except from his own siblings, was chilly. “Once the evidence appeared that, yes, Thomas Jefferson had fathered these children with Sally, there were no apologies forthcoming.

There was no acceptance,” he said. “It just wasn’t talked about.” Truscott was even referred to as a “race traitor” by some of his own white relatives.

And still, according to Truscott, the Monticello Association won’t talk about it. But Monticello itself, which is run by a different non-profit organization, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, has taken up the banner of accepting and disseminating the facts.

“Every inch of Monticello was built by slaves,” Truscott said. “Until 20 years ago, if you took the tour, you would have thought Jefferson built the place with his own two hands. The fact that Jefferson owned slaves at all was just not discussed. Now the guides will tell you, ‘That archway was built by John

Truscott and Lanier, in the cemetery at Monticello, stand at Thomas Jefferson’s grave. Independent/Courtesy Lucian Truscott

Hemings.’ They talk about the slaves almost as much as they talk about Jefferson. They’ve opened the shack where Sally lived, and are looking for more evidence of the slaves who lived and worked there. I wish the other seats of this country, like the Capitol and the White House, would start doing the same — admitting and owning the fact that these places were all built by slaves.”

“That is the difference between saying that all people are created equal, and believing it and living it,” he added.

Truscott said that he had to fight to take the picture of him and his cousin standing by the obelisk that marks

their ancestor’s grave. “That’s our national tragedy, isn’t it?” he said. “That so many years have gone by, and still Thomas Jefferson’s dream has not been realized.”

Truscott vows he will continue to fight for the rights of Hemings’s lineage to be recognized and supported by the Monticello Association. Even as he spoke, he received a comment from a woman on his Facebook page, The Rabbit Hole, condemning him for supporting the family tree that came “from the wrong side of the sheets.”

Truscott sighed, used to remarks like that one. “One day, we will win,” he said.

News & Opinion

Apollo In The Hamptons Photos by Joe Schildhorn/BFA.com Published in our August 7 issue On Saturday, August 3, the 10th annual (and final) “Apollo in the Hamptons” was held at the East Hampton home of Apollo Vice Chairman, Ronald O. Perelman, to benefit the non-profit Apollo Theater. This year’s event raised millions of dollars to support the Apollo’s artistic, educational, and outreach programs, while building on the theater’s rich history as a cultural and economic anchor to Harlem, and as a nurturer of emerging talent.

Since its inception, “Apollo in the Hamptons” has raised nearly $30 million for the Apollo’s artistic, education, and community programs. Thanks to the support from this event, the institution has expanded its education initiatives, both in schools and at the historic Apollo Theater, engaging more than 20,000 students, teachers, families, and scholars annually. The theater has been able to double its impact, now welcoming more than 200,000 patrons each year.

The 10th annual fundraiser featured a blowout concert produced by Mark Ronson with performances by the Black Eyed Peas, Dave Matthews Band, The Isley Brothers, Maggie Rogers, Patti LaBelle, Pharrell Williams, Jamie Foxx, Jon Bon Jovi, and Joseph Simmons from Run-DMC, along with special appearances by Gary U.S. Bonds and Vusi Mahlasela, and The Roots as the live house band.

December 25, 2019

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The Independent

Sports

Micah Terry, Hank Scherer, Matt Lambert, Ryan Barnett, Luke Farnan, and Blake Busking celebrate Westhampton’s fifth-set win for Westhampton’s first Long Island Division II title. Independent/Gordon M. Grant

Westhampton Wins First LIC Title Barnett, Farnan, Haber seal historic run with inaugural trip to states

By Desirée Keegan desiree@indyeastend.com This article was published in our November 27 issue Westhampton Beach’s boys volleyball team was at a loss for words on November 19.

“I’m speechless,” Ryan Barnett

said. “There’s nothing better than this,” said Matt Lambert. “Indescribable,” Daniel Haber added.

It was the Hurricanes’ (12-6)

closest match of the season, and the boys came out on top to continue a string of historic firsts. With a 3-2 win over Long Beach that Tuesday night — 25-21, 25-27, 25-20, 17-25, 15-12 — Westhampton won its first Long Island Division II title in the program’s inaugural appearance in the championship game, and earns the school’s first state tournament berth.

“Six years of hard work has finally paid off, but we’ve still got work to do on Saturday,” senior Luke Farnan said. “What we’ve done for this program is amazing and I can’t thank our alumni enough — our fans, our coaches, [Athletic Director Kathy] Masterson. This is awesome.”

His three kills and a block in the decisive fifth set were crucial down

the stretch. Farnan (nine kills, five blocks) scored back-to-back kills bookending a botched block for a 1412 advantage before Barnett (19 kills) slammed down the match point.

“I knew I had a pretty good matchup with them, so I told Blake [Busking] (51 assists, 15 digs) to set me a couple times,” Farnan said. “I was just trying to help my team.”

Barnett started off strong with five kills in the first-set win, and five in the second, but Long Beach (175) put together a series of blocks on his spikes. It didn’t stop the junior though, who began tipping over the blockers for easy points behind them.

“From my perspective it’s all mental,” he said. “We had to stay positive and keep pushing through.”

Head coach Jackie Reed said over the course of the playoffs her team has pulled out a situational play six or seven times where her team is down 3-8, strategizing how to bounce back. In the fifth set though, the Hurricanes didn’t need it.

“This time we were up,” she said, smiling. “We knew that if we kept on pushing like we were down it’d pan out in our favor. We planned very well. They were as prepared as they could be.”

Barnett’s kill put Westhampton out front 8-5 in the fifth, and the teams switched sides. But after dropping a long second set, and falling behind 18-8 on a Marines 10-point tare, the Hurricanes knew securing the final few points was going to be anything but easy. Seeing how the rest of the sets had gone, Haber knew there was only one way to win it.

“It was all momentum,” the sophomore said. “Whoever had the momentum was going to win that game.”

Haber (18 kills, two blocks, one Continued On Page 35.

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31

Kyle McGowin Takes The Mound Former Pierson pitcher called up

by Washington Nationals

By Desirée Keegan desiree@indyeastend.com This article was published in our May 29 issue

Kyle McGowin will make his third career MLB start with the Washington Nationals May 29 against the Atlanta Braves at 7:20 PM. Independent/Courtesy Kyle McGowin

Chills were running down Kyle McGowin's spine as he stepped on the mound for his second career start as a Washington Nationals pitcher.

The reality of the situation — defying the odds to transition from one of the smallest towns on Long Island to the majors — still hasn’t sunk in for the 2010 Pierson graduate.

“Maybe it will one day, but not anytime soon I hope,” McGowin said.

“This has been awesome. And it’s fun to have strong support from home.”

In his no-decision against the Florida Marlins Friday, May 24, Mc-

Gowin gave up five runs on six hits with two strikeouts and one walk across four innings. He’s allowed a run per inning across his two starts, and opposing hitters have batted .310. He also has a 1.57 WHIP and five strikeouts in seven innings.

“Not much was working,” the 27-year-old Sag Harbor product said.

“I had to battle.”

He knows he still has some work to do, and with Anibal Sanchez needing a minor league rehab start following a 10-day stint on the injured list with left hamstring tightness, the six-

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three runs — two earned — throwing 44 pitches to the 14 batters he faced.

“It’s a great feeling,” McGowin said of being called up just three days prior, adding he picked relievers’ brains for tips on the transition.

“It’s awesome to be back and be able to help the big-league club.”

It worked well for him, because his head coach liked what he saw.

“McGowin pitched really well,” Nationals coach Dave Martinez said following the 6-5 loss to the Cubs.

“Apparently his slider’s been pretty Continued On Page 34.

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McGowin was called upon early to relieve a struggling Jeremy Hellickson against the Chicago Cubs May 19, and lasted three innings over which he gave up three hits, a walk, and

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The Independent

Smith Makes USA Lacrosse Roster Westhampton standout one of few high school players to make the cut

By Desirée Keegan desiree@indyeastend.com This article was published in our June 26 issue

Belle Smith has envisioned tossing the USA women’s lacrosse jersey over her shoulder for years.

In fact, it’s written on the Westhampton Beach girls lacrosse player’s bedroom wall, inside a room decked out in trophies, awards, medals, and those who’ve inspired her along the way.

“It’s an absolute dream come true,” the junior said of making the USA U19 team. “It’s such a different feeling from anything I’ve ever had before. I’m just so grateful. Ever since a young age my parents taught me to be goal-oriented — that if you want something you have to envision it — and that’s what I did.

If I want something or believe I can achieve something I write it down, and by putting it on my wall, it reinforces it every day, and reminded me that that’s what I want. And if I want it, I have to go after it.”

Smith started out having catches in the backyard with her father and two older sisters before she even knew how. She picked it up quickly, making the third-grade team as a first grader, and fifth-grade team by the time she reached third. In seventh grade, she was called up to the varsity team, and verbally committed to Boston College as an eighth grader.

The junior’s played club lacrosse for the Long Island Yellow Jackets travel team since fifth, winning a national championship with the team; represented Long Island during a school girls tournament; and competed in several Under Armour All-America games, being named most valuable player in 2017.

“Her room is basically a vision board,” her mother Jen Smith said.

“Without a goal, you’re like a ship that leaves port going nowhere. It’s so inspiring as a mother to see your child take a vision and a dream and bring it into reality. It’s so much more than just ‘I’m proud of her.’ This kid has got it.”

The road to the USA U19 team started with a pool of 500 applicants from across the country, 110 of which were asked to play in front of a coaching staff and evaluators. Smith took part in

a 10-month process that included continuous cuts at each of the practices until the final roster of 18 was released June 17. Only six of those girls are high school players, three juniors.

“I set this goal a few years ago — seeing a few other girls from Long Island make it inspired me,” Smith said.

“There’s no better feeling playing the game I love with the most amazing teammates and coaches, and at the same time playing for my country. Even just playing on Long Island, I compete against some of the best players in the country. It’s kind of the same with U.S.”

She added, “A bunch are older than me, girls I’ve looked up to, so to play with those girls is just so exciting.”

What’s making the opportunity to play for the USA team even more special for Smith is Eastport-South Manor senior Kasey Choma, a fellow Yellow Jackets travel team competitor and good friend, also made the team.

“People call us twins. They say we look so much alike, play alike, act alike — we even went on vacation together a few months ago,” Smith said. “We just instantly connected. Kasey is such an amazing player. She’s someone I’ve always looked up to and to have her by my side through the process is great. I learn from her every day as a player and a person.”

A Deep Talent Pool The girls were chosen by Northwestern University head women’s coach Kelly Amonte Hiller, who’s won seven NCAA championships and will be leading the U19 team.

“They’re all unbelievable with great attitudes and are just a joy to work with,” she said. “This was truly a very hard decision to make. We had a lot of considerations, including our style of play and how we could be successful with our choices. The depth of talent in the United States is unbelievable.

It’s been really fun to work with all of them.”

Smith said through the process she’s started to appreciate everyone

Belle Smith is one of six high school lacrosse players, three juniors, to make the USA U19 women’s lacrosse team.

Independent/Desirée Keegan

around her more, knowing it wouldn’t be possible without them, including her family, teammates, coaches she’s played for, and coaches and girls she’s competed against.

“My coaches are all so different, and I think each and every one of them had an impact on me,” the junior midfielder said. “None of this would’ve ever been possible without the people that have gotten me here. They’ve all supported me.”

This includes current high school varsity coach Mary Bergmann, who called her up to the varsity team. Bergmann said she’d known Smith since sixth grade, but as the girl who kept the stats and attended a summer camp that year, where she saw her play for the first time.

“Every year her game evolves and every year when we see her play we always are like, ‘Wow, she just keeps getting better and better.’ She is a human highlight reel, and she’s fun to watch,” the coach said. “Most people wouldn’t notice, but she’ll come back with a better feed, a better shot, a better fake. She gets better at the little things by doing all the behind-the-scenes work, and that is what makes her great. She works so hard, and on top of it, she’s naturally gifted. Ever since I met Belle, she has been the best at everything she does.”

As a Hurricane, Smith’s been a two-time U.S. Lacrosse All-American, four-time All-County selection, three-

time Player of the Year for Westhampton, and was named top midfielder in her class by Inside Lacrosse and the organization’s No. 2 overall 2020 recruit.

Since seventh grade, she’s posted 345 points on 231 goals and 114 assists, and has a career 319 draw controls. Smith also has a career 110 ground balls and 110 caused turnovers. She tied a season record 33 assists with Haley Daleo, and tied for most goals in a game with nine with her older sister Alexa Smith. The junior also holds the record for most points in a game with 12.

She is also a back-to-back Under Armour Underclass Tournament champion, helping lift Long Island to national bragging rights in the Command and Highlight divisions in 2017 and 2018.

Respected By Teammates What Bergmann said also sets Smith apart is how she acts with class, and is humble despite her numerous accolades.

“Her teammates respect her — they respect her work ethic, they respect her talent, and they respect her kindness. They also respect that she comes out and plays lacrosse and never acts as if she is better than anyone because she is on the USA team or is an All-American,” Bergmann said. “She doesn’t expect to win games, score goals, or assist teammates because of her accolades, she expects it because she is prepared and she has spent years Continued On Page 36.

Sports

December 25, 2019

33

Jaden and Jesse AlfanoStJohn. Independent/Timothy Butler

AlfanoStJohns Up For Giants Award Twin brothers nominated for their character and commitment

By Desirée Keegan This article was published in our October 9 issue Jaden and Jesse AlfanoStJohn are said to have the Heart of a Giant.

The Westhampton Beach seniors were nominated for the USA Football award with that name for their teamwork, will, and dedication to their Hurricanes team following the loss of their mother, Rose, last month.

On January 30, Rose went in for a routine exam and the doctor perforated her esophagus. For the next eight months, the twin brothers would go to school, come home, and try to help their parents around the house, with their dogs, and other day-to-day activities, Jesse said.

“One of the things that helped us stay focused was lifting weights, running, training, and getting prepared for the upcoming football season,” Jaden said. “We would train early in the morning and then after school.

We would lift almost every day with the goal of getting bigger in our minds, so when our mom finally came home from the hospital, both of our parents would be there cheering us on

and seeing our improvements.”

But that didn’t happen. Rose died on September 6, and following the wake and funeral, the boys quickly returned to their team for the first game of the season, not only to be there for the Hurricanes like their teammates were there for them, but because football has always been “the sport” in the AlfanoStJohn family. Their parents never missed a game.

“The damage that was done to her was too significant, and eventually it got to the point where there was nothing that the doctors could do,” Jaden said. “Unfortunately, our mom couldn’t fight anymore, but we knew we couldn’t let her down, and we went to practice right after her funeral. The main thing is keeping focused, being with our teammates and our coaches, and looking forward to this senior season.”

“The twins returned to practice and school eager to play the game they love and the sport their mother Rose enjoyed watching them play,”

said Westhampton head football coach Bryan Schaumloffel, who nominated them for the USA Football recognition in partnership with the New York Giants and Hospital for Special Surgery.

“I think they’re both working through the situation in their own particular way, trying to power through the tough moments, and I think this award would be great for them. It’s pretty prestigious, about overcoming adversity. I’m sure it would mean a lot to their mother as well,” the coach added.

The brothers said another reason they returned was knowing how much of an influence they have on incoming players.

“We try to help the younger kids on the team feel more connected and engaged. It is intimidating be-

ing the young ones, so we try to help the other guys feel comfortable,” the brothers said. “We look to our past mishaps and things we could’ve done better, and try to steer the younger guys in the right direction.”

In the first game of the season, a 55-0 shutout of Harborfields September 13, Jaden, a running back, moved the ball 212 yards on 14 carries and scored four touchdowns. Jesse, a linebacker and tight end who caught a 19-yard pass for a touchdown, also made five tackles and a sack.

Jesse said his football team is his second family, and thinks the award, which comes with a $1000 equipment grant for the six finalists’ high school football programs, and an additional $9000, trophy, and on-field award ceremony during a Giants home game in December for the grand prize winner, would mean a lot not just to him and his brother, but the entire community.

“It’s to get our story out and do better for the program,” he said.

“Knowing the team has my back has been comforting, it has also helped in and outside the classroom. But the entire community has been so supportive, and this could help us give back.”

The AlfanoStJohn brothers, Giants fans from birth who had the opportunity to play with quarterback Eli Manning the past two summers, were named one of 60 top nominees from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut who demonstrated unparalleled work ethic and a passion for the game, entering them into an online voting competition. Athletes are announced 10 per week over a six-week span. Voting for the twins is now open as part of Week 3 — done at www.usafootball.com/hoagvote/ — and ends October 14.

“Every single accomplishment that we achieve this season is fully dedicated to our mother,” Jaden said, “and what she aspired for us to be.”

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34

The Independent

Kyle McGowin

good. He’s got a feel for making the ball move, manipulating the baseball.

He’s a good competitor and works hard and does all the things that go into being good at your craft.”

McGowin received his first call up last season when teams expand their rosters at the end of the season.

At the time, he headed MiLB with a 0.90 WHIP, and was leading the Nationals’ minor league system with 152 strikeouts. He went 0-0 with a 5.87 ERA in five September big league games, making his debut September 5 against the Cardinals. He pitched four scoreless innings in his only start September 26 against the Marlins. His ERA dropped to 2.70 after that game but shot up to 5.87 when the Rockies scored three runs in one inning in the last game of the Nationals’ season.

“It was amazing, and definitely helped for this time,” McGowin said.

“Having some experience and getting the nerves out of the way.”

What McGowin learned in his time back with the Grizzlies is to be himself, attacking hitters but not doing too much.

“I’m not switching things up too much and doing more than I’d need to,” he said. “I’m just being myself and doing what got me here.”

Holman said it’s been a constant maturation process, and getting a

Continued From Page 31.

good, he’s been sinking his fastballs, getting ahead, throwing a lot of strikes, so it’s kind of nice having him.”

In eight starts with the Triple-A Fresno Grizzlies before joining the MLB rotation, he compiled a 4.32 ERA and 1.31 WHIP. In 41 2⁄3 innings, he allowed 42 hits, including six homers and 12 walks, with 50 strikeouts.

His last outing for Fresno came on May 12, when he gave up no runs in 5 2⁄3 innings, and allowed one hit and one walk with 11 punchouts.

What’s helped McGowin get noticed is his strong slider, which he learned while attending Savannah State University in Georgia. He said it didn’t take him long to get a good feel for it. It led the right-hander to a 12-1 record and 1.49 ERA over 96.1 innings pitched. He also led the league in strikeouts with 111. He was a fifthround draft pick by the Los Angeles Angels in 2013, and was traded to Washington for Danny Espinoza prior to the 2017 season.

“My first impression was he knows how to pitch,” said Fresno pitching coach Brad Holman. “He can spin a breaking ball, slider’s very

At Your Service On The Holidays

taste of The Show helped McGowin get acclimated, which the pitching coach noted is the hardest thing for a new pitcher to do. Although the major league balls were finally brought down to the Triple-A level to minimize the trauma, there’s still that extra third deck that’s impossible to look past.

The Fresno coach said it won’t be long until McGowin gets the hang of things, especially with his mental game being night and day different from last year.

“With Kyle, he’s pretty easy. You give him a direction, he goes in it,” Holman said. “He doesn’t have a lot of panic in him, so you know if he lost his changeup on a given day, he’ll resort to his fastball and slider and we’ll get back to working on his changeup.

He’s pretty good about self-evaluation, recognizing what he needs to do based off what happened the previous outing and where he’s at in his career.”

And when McGowin is hot, look for the slider Holman never gets tired of seeing.

“He’s got one of the better sliders in the game — he can really spin it, and that gives him an option in any count. He never has to give into a hitter,” Holman said. “He’s got the proverbial put-away pitch, which is un-

characteristic of pitchers, even in the major league. He’s got a pitch that he can throw and get a swing and a miss with, and that’s a big deal.”

“It’s a great feeling . . . It’s awesome to be back and be able to help the big-league club.” — Kyle McGowin

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Westhampton

Continued From Page 30. ace), who racked up a team-high six kills in the fourth-set loss, slammed down three for Westhampton in the fifth, his second putting Westhampton out front 11-8, but a Long Beach kill and soft hit that just fell over the net put the Marines right back in it.

Junior Hank Scherer (8 kills, 14 digs) dumped the ball into the hole at midcourt before Farnan’s back-to-back kills.

“They’re a really consistent team and play a lot of players, so we just had to keep up with their pace and set the tone for each set,” senior Matt Lambert (18 digs) said.

His older brother Tom had played for the team, and Lambert thought back to the 7-8, 5-11, and 2-16 seasons that followed this one as motivation for him to dive all over the court to dig out some big saves to keep the Hurricanes in volleys.

“I just didn’t want my season to end,” he said. “My brother played here for four years and nothing much happened, but they set the stage for us. It’s nuts. This is spectacular.”

Reed said the team’s goal was to win counties, but thought Westhampton had a chance up in Albany in the

December 25, 2019

state semifinals at the Capital Center November 23.

“I potentially see us coming out as state champs, which is 100 percent unbelievable,” Reed said, excitedly chuckling through an ear-to-ear grin following the Long Island win. “From little old Westhampton.”

Unfortunately, Westhampton lost all four of its pool play sets Saturday — two to Grand Island, 25-21, 25-20, and two to Jamesville-DeWitt, 32-30 and 25-17. Grand Island went on to defeat Jamesville-DeWitt (2512, 25-16, 25-11) for the state title.

“We’ve come so far,” Haber said.

“This whole season we’ve been working so hard trying to get to this point, and it’s finally paid off.”

Barnett said regardless of the outcome he knew one thing for certain: “We’ve had fun, enjoyed the ride.”

“Six years of hard work has finally paid off.” – Luke Farnan

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The Independent

Talese

journalism is the sheer stress it places on young writers rushing to post one half-formed story after another onto the web and updating stories all day in the insatiable 24-hour news cycle “where being first is more important than being best.�

“It makes for lazy, shallow reporting and leaves no time for good writing, for probing profiles, to follow people deep into their fascinating lives where human drama happens,� said Talese. “I also think the students from the elite journalism schools lack a crucial knack for connecting with ordinary people. Most will never do what Breslin or Hamill or Kempton did in a daily newspaper because they grew up with privilege.�

“That said, there is some great reporting to be read,� he added. “If you want to dig into an amazing profile of a celebrity, read Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Times piece on Bradley Cooper. Wonderful. She did another outstanding piece on Gwyneth Paltrow. Not surprisingly, Brodesser-Akner has a new novel out, which I will read.� [Editor’s note: Brodesser-Anker will be appearing as part of the IndyLit series at the Southampton Inn on Saturday, July 27, at 5:30 PM.]

Looking back, would he have done anything differently?

Continued From Page 27. with the literary writing skills of the best fiction writers.

Talese kept pushing the envelope at the Times until he had to leave to follow his muse into magazine pieces and books like “The Bridge: The Building the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge,� “The Kingdom and the Power,� about the New York Times, “Honor Thy Father,� about the Bonanno crime family, “Thy Neighbor’s Wife,� a first person journey into the sexuality in America, and most recently, “Voyeur,� about a motel infested with secret spying cameras. His latest was made into a Netflix series.

Back in the late-1960s, other writers followed Talese into the liberation of the New Journalism, and soon Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin, Gloria Steinem, Tom Wolfe, Nora Ephron, David Habersham, Norman Mailer, Talese’s first cousin Nick Pileggi, and other young journalists were writing compelling essays and literary journalistic narratives that riled a generation from the pages of Esquire, The Sunday Times Magazine, New York Magazine, and the New Yorker.

24-Hour News Cycle What bothers him most about today’s

during high school games. The lacrosse player said while she plays for the excitement of the game, it’s the relationships that mean most to her.

“I play for that love,� Smith said. “Seeing them up in the stands and loving the game, it brings me back to that age when I would do the same thing. Little do they know they have just as much of an impact on me as I do on them.�

The USA team is scheduled to play its first game of the championship tournament August 2 against Australia. The team is looking to reclaim gold after a string of four straight world championships ended with a loss to Canada in the gold medal game in 2015, the last U19 world championship held in Scotland. The U.S. has won four of the six previous World Lacrosse Women’s U19 championships (1999, 2003, 2007, 2011) while Australia (1995) and Canada (2015) have each won once.

“We’ve always stressed ‘if you can be anything, be kind,’ and ‘with great things comes great responsibility,’� Jen Smith said. “As a mom, it’s big to know your kid is going to go places in life because she has all the tools. She’s immersed herself in these goals and these dreams. She’s able to see her dreams in order to bring them into reality, and I think more’s in store for her. It’s to be something more to people.�

“All I know is that if my father wasn’t a tailor for an Ocean City surgeon, I’d never have gone to University of Alabama, where I met Jimmy Pigston, who sent me dressed in a fine suit to his make-believe cousin Turner Catledge at the New York Times, who actually gave me a job and a chance to become a writer.�

And so this is how Gay Talese, who became famous writing about Frank Sinatra having a cold, recovers from pneumonia.

Smith

Continued From Page 32. working toward this level of play.�

The coach said she had no doubt Smith could make the final cut.

“If you know her and know how she plays and have seen her highlights, she is a stud, and they would have been crazy to not take her,� Bergmann said. “Even the PAL kids look up to her. She’s the first player to ever have this status and the young kids eat it up. She is a celebrity to them. People even request to be in her group when we do clinics and camps. It is so fun to watch, because that is going to make a huge difference in our program.�

Young girls could be seen running up to Smith and her USA teammates during practice asking for autographs; others have cheered from up the stands

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Articles For Sale SEASONED FIREWOOD $380.00 Cord (Delivered and stacked) $320.00 Cord (dumped) $200.00 1/2 Cord (Delivered and stacked) $170.00 1/2 Cord (dumped) Call Jim 631-921-9957.

3-26-28

FIREWOOD FOR SALE Seasoned Cord $345 stacked, $320 dumped, Unseasoned Cord $275 stacked, $250 dumped, 1/2 Cord $180. Free bucket of kindling. 631284-9326. 14-2-15

Autos For Sale

Help Wanted SOUTH FORK Construction company seeking experienced dock builders. Also seeking laborers willing to learn the trade, year round must have DMV license.

516-458-7328. 14-4-17 HVAC SERVICE/INSTALL TECHS, Year-Round, P/T or Seasonal, Health Benefits, Housing Allowance, 401K with Matching Contributions, Training & Tools provided. $5,000+ Sign on bonus available for qualified applicants.

Grant Heating & Cooling 6 31 -324- 0 679. donna@ granthvac.com. Inquiries kept confidential.

14-2-15

1998 RED JEEP WRANGLER SPORT - High miles, Overhead valve 6 (fully rebuilt less than 10,000 miles) Comes with Full Metal Top and Full Soft Top, excellent tires, CD Radio, extra lighting, a must see. $6,000 or best reasonable offer. Call 631-749-0258 and leave message. UFN www.indyeastend.com www.indyeastend.com www.indyeastend.com www.indyeastend.com www.indyeastend.com www.indyeastend.com www.indyeastend.com www.indyeastend.com www.indyeastend.com www.indyeastend.com www.indyeastend.com www.indyeastend.com

Help Wanted

HOUSEKEEPING Laundry.

The Mill House Inn. Housekeeping/laundry staff, fulltime, year-round position.

We have a great work environment with advancement opportunities for experienced and essential individuals. Weekends, holidays, flexible schedule, passion and dedication are required.

Please send resume or contact information to hookmill@gmail.comom 14-4-17

cient in Microsoft Office and have excellent communication skills. This position will support the Executive Assistant to the Chairman of the company. Responsibilities will include answering calls, preparing memo’s, filing, travel and event booking.

The ideal candidate will be able to work under pressure in a fast paced environment.

Please forward your resume with salary requirements to: accounsthr@sabinmetal.com 14-1-14

Pets

could live comfortably for years to come. They have been waiting sooo long and are such loving cats! Mongo is like a dog with his comical personality and Felix is super laid back. Both fully vetted and chipped. They love other cats and would be fine with a non-aggressive dog. Please consider offering them a home and your companionship. Call RSVP for more info 631-533-2738 or visit rsvpinc.org..

“Sponsored by Ellen Hopkins” R.S.V.P. (516) 695-0425 (516) 695-0425

Real Estate For Sale/Rent

Ad Sales Representative Be a part of the largest circulated weekly newspaper on the East End of Long Island. The Independent is the go-to weekly read for both year-round and summer residents alike who want to stay on top of Everything East End. And we’re hiring!

We are looking for Advertising and Special Events Sales Representatives who enjoy meeting with local businesses and helping their businesses grow. If you have Sales Experience, energy and are looking to be a part of an exciting and fun team – we’re looking for you. You will handle all aspects of advertising for local businesses: print, digital, sponsorships and events. Previous media sales is a plus.

If you’re interested in learning more please send your information to Dan Schock, Head of Sales at dan@indyeastend.com.

CHIMNEY SERVICE

Cleaning, Chimney Caps, Chimney Repairs, Waterproofing, Relining, Animal Removal, Dryer Vent Service. Island Wide Maintenance is your highly qualified, friendly family chimney company. Take advantage of our Fall Specials on chimney cleanings with a full 12 point fire and safety inspection for only $79.99 and dryer vent cleaning starting as low as $110.

Call 1-844-676-2468 or the cell # text compatible

631-445-2073.

14-4-17

PRIMELINE MODULAR HOMES, INC. Builders of Customized Modular Floor Plans that Fit Within Your Budget. Licensed & Insured.

Locally Owned Since 1993.

Steve Graboski, Builder Amagansett, N.Y. 11930

WE ARE LOOKING FOR AN ADMINISTRATION ASSISTANT to join our team! The GAVIN Tel: 631-267-2150 ideal candidate will be profi- 3 year meat trade survivor Fax: 631-267-8923 from China. Great with kids & email: other dogs. Loves to be with primemod@aol.com www.primelinemodpeople but also likes his larhomes.com space. Looking for his for23-26-45 ever home!

JAKES RESCUE RANCH HAMPTON BAYS Luxury check the website jakesrescueranch.org 9-10-18 house share rooms. Apply at www.LocalHouseShare.com.

The largest circulation weekly newspaper on the East End of Long Island.

Services

11-4-14

INDUSTRIAL RENTAL WAREHOUSE approx 1,260 sq. feet and beautiful office 620 sq. feet w/bath, shower, Mongo was found near a kitchenette ready to move dumpster in Nov, 2016. He in. References, security, utilwas an orange & white male, ities not included. Long term approx. 3 years young. When lease available. $2,200 per Mongo was rescued and in month. 631-287-1618.

RSVP's care, he bonded with 14-1-14 Felix, another male cat, approx. 6 years. They became Tree Service inseparable buddies while being fostered together. Unfortunately, they tested pos- TREE SPECIALIST-Topping itive for FIV, the feline aids for view and sunlight. Tree virus. But FIV is not neces- removal, pruning, etc. 631sarily fatal and they do not 747-5797. UFN have any symptoms. Both are in excellent health and www.indyeastend.com

JOIN THE UNITED STATES COAST GUARD AUXILLARY

1-973-650-0052 UFN

LOST DOG DO NOT CHASE!!

Sag Harbor 914-325-4321

38

The Independent

East End Business & Service Air Cond & Heating

Bottled Water

To Advertise In This Directory, Call The Independent at 631 324 2500 www.indyeastend.com

Construction

ALL TYPES OF CONSTRUCTION/ HOME IMPROVEMENT Residential & Commercial

Auto Body

Business Services

V.A.V. CLASSICS Fine Paint and Body

The Ultimate in BMW and Mercedes Bodywork Foreign and Domestic

Spray Booth and Unibody Repair Detailing and Waxing

283-9409 www.vavclassics.com

PAYCHEX Payroll • HR • Retirement Insurance

Canvas Awnings Marine Boat Covers

CE King & Sons Inc. www.kingsawnings.com

10 St. Francis Place, Springs East Hampton, NY 11937 631-324-4944 • FAX 631-329-3669

Custom Crafted Awnings, Pergola Covers, Sun Shades, Screens and Hurricane Shutters

• Fast Installation • Over 150 Fabric Patterns & Colors • Superior Quality & Construction sunesta.com 631-287-6080

Call CAROL or DUFFY for a FREE ESTIMATE

www.eastendawning.com

BBQ Cleaning

$2ith5CoOuFpoFn W

Grill Cleaning, Service & Maintenance

“Because you don’t want to do it”

631-209-5688

www.sparklegrill.com

Free Estimates

631-772-2221 www.universalroofingny.com

Lic #52276-H • Southampton Lic #L004369 • East Hampton Lic #8629-2015 CLASSIFIED • SERVICE • PRINT • DISPLAY • WEB • CLASSIFIED • SERVICE • PRINT • DISPLAY • WEB

Zackary Will

Awning

Chimney Service & Repairs • Masonry Bricks • Roofing • All types of Roofing • Gutters Siding • Skylights, Soffits Fascia & Wood Trim Removal & Repair

Small Business Consultant 631-258-3491 zwill@paychex.com

WE KNOW THE HAMPTONS!

Call The Independent to find out how our experienced Sales and Design Teams can create an advertising campaign tailored to suit your business.

www.indyeastend.com 631-324-2500

Dan W. Leach Custom Builder

• CUSTOM RENOVATIONS & CONSTRUCTION SPECIALIST • ALL CEDAR • MAHOGANY • CUMARU + IPE DECKS DESIGNED + BUILT W/WIRE RAILING • FINISHED BASEMENTS + BATHROOMS • SIDING • PAINTING • TILE • MASONRY • DRAFTING & FULL PERMITS PROMPT • RELIABLE • PROFESSIONAL QUALITY DANWLEACH@AOL.COM

631-345-9393

EAST END SINCE 1982 SH & EH LICENSED & INSURED

CLASSIFIED • SERVICE • PRINT • DISPLAY • WEB • CLASSIFIED • SERVICE • PRINT • DISPLAY • WEB

Chimneys

CHIMNEY

Roofing • Chimney Gutters • Siding • Decks Skylights • Masonry *Cleaned *Repaired *Installed Family Owned & Operated 8553396009 6314881088 SunriseRoofingOutlook.com www.SunriseRoofingAndChimney.com Licensed & Insured

Car Wash

Decks

December 25, 2019

39

East End Business & Service Estate Management

Fencing

To Advertise In This Directory, Call The Independent at 631 324 2500 www.indyeastend.com

Glass & Mirrors

Flooring

Help-When You Need It!

Robert E. Otto,Inc. Glass & Mirror

Errands, Small Jobs, Pick-Ups to NYC Extensive Knowledge of East End Westhampton to Montauk

Ser ving The East End Since 1960

Dan Mc Grory Honest, Reliable, Retired 516-220-6529

350 Montauk Highway • Wainscott

631-537-1515

“Let me make your job easier

Glass, Mirrors, Shower Doors, Combination Storm/Screen Windows & Doors

Handyman

www.indyeastend.com

CR Wood Floors Residential • Commercial-Industrial Custom Wood Fence (All Styles) • Electrically Operated Gates Arbors • Pergolas • Deer Fence • Bid Estimates for Contractors Ornamental Estate Rail • Fencing for Tennis Courts Chain Link • Pool Enclosures • Baby Loc PVC Fence • Railings

631-682-8004 • www.fenceworksli.com Design-Build-Install • Serving the North & South Forks Family Owned and Operated 39162 CLASSIFIED • SERVICE • PRINT • DISPLAY • WEB • CLASSIFIED • SERVICE • PRINT • DISPLAY • WEB

WE KNOW THE HAMPTONS!

Call The Independent to find out how our experienced Sales and Design Teams can create an advertising campaign tailored to suit your business.

www.indyeastend.com 631-324-2500

CLASSIFIED • SERVICE • PRINT • DISPLAY • WEB • CLASSIFIED • SERVICE • PRINT • DISPLAY • WEB

Installations Sanding Refinishing Free Estimates

30 Years Experience-Owner Operated

Lic’d

Cell: 631-599-2454 631-849-1973

Ins’d

Generators

GENERATORS SALES-SERVICE-INSTALLATIONS

EAST HAMPTON FENCE & GATE

Driveway Gate Specialists Cedar Fence • Aluminum Deer • PVC • Pool Picket • Gate Service Complete Design Installation and Service

631-324-5941

www.easthamptonfenceny.com

BUILDERS OF CUSTOM DRIVEWAY GATE SYSTEMS PROFESSIONAL FENCE INSTALLATION SCREENING TREES - POOL DEER CONTROL SPECIALISTS

631-EAST-END 327-8363

www.eastendfenceandgate.com

Home Improvement

CALL TODAY 631-567-2700

www.indyeastend.com www.indyeastend.com

Landscaping Construction Painting Cleaning Service Pool Service Fernando Perez "! !

!

CLASSIFIED • SERVICE • PRINT • DISPLAY • WEB • CLASSIFIED • SERVICE • PRINT • DISPLAY • WEB

WE KNOW THE HAMPTONS!

Call The Independent to find out how our experienced Sales and Design Teams can create an advertising campaign tailored to suit your business.

www.indyeastend.com 631-324-2500

CLASSIFIED • SERVICE • PRINT • DISPLAY • WEB • CLASSIFIED • SERVICE • PRINT • DISPLAY • WEB

40

The Independent

East End Business & Service House Cleaning

Landscaping

To Advertise In This Directory, Call The Independent at 631 324 2500 www.indyeastend.com

Landscape Design

Pest Control

Tick Control Your Local Horticultural Problem Solver

Masonry

Specialist in Moving, Providing Large Trees Saving Trees since 1986 Board Certified Master Arborist

631-283-0906 631-277-5171

STERLINGTREE.COM

Property Management Planting & Transplanting Irrigation & Maintenance Spring & Fall Clean Ups Landscaping & Masonary Design Weed Control Turf Fertilization Program Edging & Mulching Fully Licensed & Insured

516-885-2605

www.indyeastend.com www.indyeastend.com

www.indyeastend.com www.indyeastend.com Painting

Landscaping

M.W. LAVELLE PAINTING, INC.

Tick Control Your Local Horticultural Problem Solver Specialist in Moving, Providing Large Trees Saving Trees since 1986 Board Certified Master Arborist

8FFE $POUSPM t &EHJOH .VMDIJOH -BXO .PXJOH 1MBOUJOH 5SBOTQMBOUJOH *SSJHBUJPO .BJOUFOBODF 5VSG 'FSUJMJ[BUJPO 1SPHSBN -BOETDBQF .BTPOSZ %FTJHO 4QSJOH 'BMM $MFBO 6QT 1SPQFSUZ .BOBHFNFOU Fully Licensed & Insured

631-283-0906 631-277-5171

STERLINGTREE.COM

www.indyeastend.com www.indyeastend.com

路Interior and Exterior Painting路 路Power Washing路 In Business for Over 20 Years

Licensed & Ins. License # 60011-H

LIKE US ON FACEBOOK

631.546.8048 MARTIN LAVELLE

MWLAVELLEPAINTING@YAHOO.COM

Personal Trainer

PERSONAL TRAINER Let me help you get toned up for summer CERTIFIED-IN-HOME Call Joe

631-804-7300

Southampton

287-9700 East Hampton 631324-9700 Southold 631765-9700 tickcontrol.com 631

December 25, 2019

East End Business & Service Pest Control

Plumbing & Heating

Pool Service

PLUMBING • HEATING • A/C

✓ ✓ ✓

A FULL SERVICE POOL COMPANY

TRUSTED QUALITY OUTSTANDING 24-HOUR SERVICE FREE IN-HOME EVALUATIONS

CALL 631.871.6769

WHATEVER IT TAKES

Plumbing & Heating

• WEEKLY MAINTENANCE $84 • OPENINGS/CLOSINGS $369 • CERTIFIED SERVICE TECHNICIANS • NEW CONSTRUCTION • GUNITE AND VINYL POOLS • RENOVATIONS • LINER CHANGES AND REPAIRS PLOVERPOOLSERVICE.COM OWNER OPERATED / LICENSED & INSURED

Heating & Air Conditioning www.HardyPlumbing.com

631-283-9333 631-287-1674

41

To Advertise In This Directory, Call The Independent at 631 324 2500 www.indyeastend.com

Pool Service

—Our Services—

✹ Pools & Spa Openings, Closings ✹ Salt Water Systems ✹ Heaters, Filters, Pool Pumps ✹ Installation & Repair ✹ Loop Lock Covers ✹ Pool Renovations ✹ New Construction

Licensed & Insured

631-833-9673

info@vitaliypools.com

info@HardyPlumbing.com Licensed, insured.

Property Management

Old School quality backed

by New Age Technology Serving the North and South Forks and beyond

www.indyeastend.com www.indyeastend.com

Residential Commercial Gas Service & Installation Heating & Boiler Installation Water Main and RPZ Installation

Full Service Pool Care Liner & Gunite Installation Openings/Closings Weekly Maintenance All-inclusive, season long service packages starting at $2,850

telemarkinc.com | 631.537.1600

855.ELITEPOOL / 855.354.8376

Pets

info@elitepoolsny.com

Let The Independent get all up in your business for as little as

$

11

a WEEK!

Call Today to Advertise!

631-324-2500

Puppies

Big Blue POOLS & SPAS openings & closings weekly maintenance heater installation liner replacement loop-loc covers hot tub sales & care (631) 721 - POOL WWW.BIGBLUEPOOLSANDSPAS.COM

HAVANESE PUPPIES Hypo Allergenic/Non-Shedding

$1550 Call/Text 631-513-8257 HAVANESENEWYORK.COM

42

The Independent

East End Business & Service Pest Control

Plumbing & Heating

To Advertise In This Directory, Call The Independent at 631 324 2500 www.indyeastend.com

Pool Service

Pool Service

A FULL SERVICE POOL COMPANY Weather Protection

Window ✚ Pools & Washing Spa Openings, Closings ✚ Salt Water Systems ✚ Heaters, Filters, Pool Pumps ✚ Installation & Repair ✚ Loop Lock Covers ✚ Pool Renovations ✚ New Construction

PLUMBING • HEATING • A/C

Roofing

RoofingTRUSTED

✓ ✓ ROOFING ✓ RooďŹ ng • Chimney QUALITY

OUTSTANDING 24-HOUR SERVICE FREE IN-HOME EVALUATIONS

Gutters • Siding Skylights • Masonry WHATEVER IT TAKES

ASPHALT, CEDAR, FLAT

â?– Siding â?– â?– Trim â?– Windows â?– â?– Doors â?– Decks â?– Local Owner/Operator on site everyday Licensed and Insured

516-380-2138 www.FrankTheilingCarpentry.com

PLOVERPOOLSERVICE.COM OWNER OPERATED / LICENSED & INSURED

CLEARLY P RO TECTED

SunriseRooďŹ ngď˜łOutlook.com www.SunriseRooďŹ ngAndChimney.com Old School quality&backed Licensed Insured

! !

Heating & Air Conditioning www.HardyPlumbing.com

by New Age Technology Serving the North and

Remodeling / Repairs South Forks and beyond Residential Commercial Gas Service & Installation Heating & Boiler Installation Water Main and RPZ Installation

HURRICANE RATED INSURANCE APPROVED

Call 800.522.1599 TO ORDER NOW!

Full Service Pool Care

WE KNOW THE Liner & Gunite Installation HAMPTONS! Openings/Closings Weekly Maintenance

Call The Independent to find out how our experienced Sales and Design Teams can create an advertising campaign tailored to suit your business.

All-inclusive, season long www.indyeastend.com 631-324-2500 service packages starting at $2,850

CLASSIFIED • SERVICE • PRINT • DISPLAY • WEB • CLASSIFIED • SERVICE • PRINT • DISPLAY • WEB

info@elitepoolsny.com

www.indyeastend.com www.indyeastend.com Tree Service

Let The Independent get all up in your business for as little as

$

11

a WEEK!

www.indyeastend.com www.indyeastend.com Call Today to Advertise!

631-324-2500 www.indyeastend.com

Licensed & Insured

631-833-9673

info@vitaliypools.com

TIMELY ESTIMATES BECAUSE YOUR TIME IS VALUABLE

Property Management

CALL TODAY

631-283-2956 WWW.CCWINDOWS.NET 31654

CLASSIFIED • SERVICE • PRINT • DISPLAY • WEB • CLASSIFIED • SERVICE • PRINT • DISPLAY • WEB

Web Design/ 855.354.8376 855.ELITEPOOL

Pets

â?–ALL TYPES OF ROOFINGâ?–

CALL 631.871.6769

*Cleaned info@HardyPlumbing.com 631-287-1674 Licensed, insured.

631-283-9333 *Repaired *Installed Family Owned & Operated 855ďšş339ďšş6009 631ďšş488ďšş1088 Plumbing & Heating

Frank www.indyeastend.com Theiling www.indyeastend.com Carpentry

• WEEKLY MAINTENANCE $84 TM • OPENINGS/CLOSINGS $369 VuSafe Storm Panels • CERTIFIED SERVICE Prepare Your Home forTECHNICIANS Storms Ahead • NEW CONSTRUCTION • GUNITE AND VINYL POOLS • RENOVATIONS • LINER CHANGES AND REPAIRS

—Our Services—

twm

Big Blue advertising website design social media POOLS & SPAS strategy

openings & closings weekly maintenance heater installation liner replacement loop-loc covers hot tub sales & care

Celebrating 20 years of award-winning East End design excellence

(631) 721 - POOL

631 553 7788 • hi@tywenzel.com WWW.BIGBLUEPOOLSANDSPAS.COM www.tywenzel.com

Water Damage (•) WATER & FLOOD (•) SEWAGE CLEANUP (•) MOLD REMEDIATION (telemarkinc.com •) CARPET CLEANING | 631.537.1600 (•) TILE & GROUT CLEANING (Puppies •) FIRE & SMOKE P: 631-324-7883 C: 631-445-2265 1800waterdamage.com richard.f.gherardi@1800waterdamage.com

Wine Storage HAVANESE PUPPIES Hypo Allergenic/Non-Shedding

$1550 Call/Text 631-513-8257 HAVANESENEWYORK.COM

O. 516-807-5011 Fax. 631-734-7999 Private and Bulk Wine Storage Temperature Controlled Warehouse 1800 Sound Avenue Mattituck, NY 11952 www.LongIslandWineTransportingAndStorage.com

December 25, 2019

43

W/COUPON. EXP 1/7/20 W/COUPON. EXP 1/7/20

W/COUPON. EXP 1/7/20

W/COUPON. EXP 1/7/20

W/COUPON. EXP 1/7/20

W/COUPON. EXP 1/7/20

Lic. #52276-H • Southampton Lic. #L004369 • East Hampton Lic. #8629-2015

44

The Independent