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Daniel Pollera's box art piece.
The mother of all lawn weeds, crabgrass, is easy to control and even eradicate. A healthy and vigorous lawn will choke it out and any rogue plants that are spotted can be hand pulled before they go to seed. This single crabgrass plant, if left to flower and seed, can produce hundreds of new plants that will germinate and establish next year. ANDREW MESSINGER
This weekend, Hampton Bays will play host to the first-ever San Gennaro Feast of the Hamptons, part of an attempt to attract more visitors to the East End in the fall months.
The weekend event, which will take place on Good Ground Road in the Hampton Bays this Saturday and Sunday, October 1 and 2, was planned and organized by Simone Scotto, the owner of Scotto’s Italian Pork Store in Hampton Bays, and is expected to draw crowds from across Long Island and even New York City.
Mr. Scotto, in conjunction with the Hampton Bays Chamber of Commerce and several sponsors from the community, has secured an estimated 50 vendors that will be selling traditional Italian foods, conducting wine tastings and offering rides for children and adults.
“I’m really happy they are letting us do this,” Mr. Scotto said. “I am happy that the whole community can come out and have a good time.”
Mr. Scotto had been contemplating planning a feast like this for the past three or four years, and has been actively planning this weekend’s feast for the past eight months.
“It is something to do in the off-season,” he said. “There is not much to do out here in the fall, so I figured what better way to give people something to do than have a community festival.”
Joyce Gilbert, the assistant to the president of the Hampton Bays Chamber of Commerce, agrees with that assessment, adding that she hopes the two-day feast will attract people from all across the island, including those who normally do not venture to the East End after Labor Day.
“We are trying to promote the fall in the east,” she said. “We don’t just shut down our doors at the end of the summer. This is still a great place to be; it is a little bit quieter, but still an enjoyable place.”
One of the highlights of the festival will be the parade, which kicks off the feast at 11 a.m. on Saturday. A statue of San Gennaro, the patron saint of Naples, that the Scotto family had custom made in Italy and shipped here will be featured at the head of the parade. Currently, the statue sits on display atop a freezer at the family’s Montauk Highway store.
Serving as the inaugural parade grand marshal will be Hampton Bays resident James Papandrea.
“This is the first festival of its kind on the East End,” Ms. Gilbert said. “We are really looking forward to a large contingent of people coming from all over Long Island and the city.”
There is no charge to attend the festival itself.
Erin McKinley on Sep 28, 2011