11th Annual San Gennaro Feast of the Hamptons Rescheduled for Weekend of Oct. 14-15

With high winds and heavy rains in the forecast for this weekend, the 11th annual San Gennaro Feast of the Hamptons has been pushed off to the weekend of October 14-15, said organizers.

In the meantime, Southampton Press caught up with John Tortorella, this year’s grand marshal, while he was traveling in Italy this week.

Tortorella, who founded J. Tortorella Swimming Pools, was tracked down on a vacation stop in Sorrento and said that while he was “proud to be honored as the grand marshal,” the honor should go to the people who organize the annual festival, which has grown to become the second-largest San Gennaro festival in the state, after the one that takes place in Manhattan’s Little Italy each year.

Some 30,000 people attended last year’s festival.

“Everyone puts it on their calendar,” said Tortorella, and this year’s feast will offer San Gennaro staples like cannoli, biscotti and sausage-and-peppers heroes, along with Italian American performers, carnival rides, a Grucci fireworks show, beer, craft vendors and exhibitors, and food-eating contests that have grown in popularity in the decade since the first East End San Gennaro Feast kicked off. This year’s contestants will consume meatballs and zeppoles for a chance at prize money.

“It just grew and grew and grew and grew,” Tortorella said of the local San Gennaro Feast, which has served as a celebratory vehicle for highlighting the numerous and ongoing contributions of Italian-American immigrants to American civic life, while also being a sort of featured festival in popular movies such as “The Godfather Part II,” where the San Gennaro Feast in Lower Manhattan provides a set-piece backdrop as a young Vito Corleone dispatches the unpopular Don Fanucci.

Back in 1995, the Italian American former mayor of New York City, Rudolph Giuliani, shut down the San Gennaro Feast in the city, he said, owing to its associations with organized crime.

With a hearty laugh, Southampton Town Councilman Rick Martel said, “There is no criminal element in our feast.” He ticked off the civic-oriented features of the Hampton Bays event, which is organized under a nonprofit that provides scholarships and other donations to the community.

“The great thing for me and the reason I’m involved is almost everything we make goes to the charities,” which include St. Rosalie’s Food Pantry, the San Gennaro Scholarship Fund, Maureen’s Haven Homeless Outreach and the Coalition for Women’s Cancer, he said.

“We don’t have a war chest,” Martel said. “We probably give away 80 to 90 percent of the net each year, and if you take that even further, some of the entertainment is stuff people might not be able to afford — they can’t spend 60 bucks but can see a performer for free.”

This year’s musical lineup is expected to include the Nikki Torres Experience, Teo “The Romantic Tenor,” and Mean Gene and the Flamethrowers. The schedule was posted prior to the postponement of the festival on Wednesday.

Martel was one of the organizers singled out by Tortorella, and the councilman returned the accolades. “John has been a powerhouse as a businessman,” he said, “and he’s been good to many charities.”