The Long Island Blog

Just a quick post with some pictures from the annual Halloween boat burning at the Long Island Maritime Museum.

Live music all night long.

The burning boat is spectacular and keeps everyone warm.

This was a 40' sport fisherman.

Huge clouds of smoke filled the air.

Good food from the truck, and trinkets for sale under the gazebo.

A handsome rowing skiff is the raffle prize.

Kathleen Prokesch, director of special events, announces the lucky raffle winner.

I really did, at the Long Island Maritime Museum’s annual seafood festival.

Blue Island Shellfish Farms was a sponsor and they served up Naked Cowboy Oysters all day long for only 1$ each.

The festival was great fun and I actually got to meet the Naked Cowboy (or one of his clones). Click the link above or image below for the full story and pictures.

I took a book down to the Sayville Beach yesterday afternoon to relax a little before starting the grind on Monday morning. I don’t know what it was about yesterday, but it seemed like everyone had the same idea. Maybe we’re all trying to enjoy the last licks of summer before fall starts on Friday.

Lots of folks on the beach enjoying the late afternoon sun. Behind them is a sailboat and the Robert Moses Bridge.

A look through the zoom lens reveals the Robert Moses Bridge like a giant eye watching over the little boat as it blows around the Great South Bay.

Back in February I went  ice fishing on Lake Bemidji, Minnesota. The weekend included a live performance of A Prairie Home Companion and a walleye dinner.

Don’t ask me why I was inspired to write about it now, I couldn’t tell you, but here’s the story, my adventures ice fishing on Lake Bemidji.

It all starts with a hole in the ice.

What’s good about hurricane Irene? I can’t think of anything good, at least anything good enough to make up for the bad and the ugly side of hurricanes. But there is at least some good and I’ll get to that later, but first the ugly and the bad.

The Ugly… People were killed by this storm. It doesn’t get any uglier than that. When I was a kid I’d look forward to hurricanes, blizzards, hailstorms, all sorts of bad weather. It was exciting and I had no real understanding of the consequences. As an adult I still enjoy a good storm, but now I understand what the word storm really means.

The Bad… The economic damage caused by hurricane Irene is enormous. A lot of people are still without power this morning and have thrown away everything in their refrigerators and freezers. Aside from the cost of physical damage there is an almost immeasurable amount of business lost due to damage, loss of inventory, no electrical power, or lost productivity.

According to an article in Newsday it looks as though the majority of Long Island tourism businesses in wine country, Fire Island, and Montauk Point will be in good shape for Labor Day weekend, but will not recover the losses incurred last weekend. Greenport was one of the first areas to have power restored, so I expect that businesses there will be in very good shape.

The Good… Well aside from neighbor helping neighbor which we see plenty of during disasters like Irene, I discovered one benefit of not having electricity. This is something that very few people would appreciate, but to a geek like me it was pretty cool.

No electricity means no lights and no light pollution. The sky was dark. Dark enough to see the Milky Way.

Unless you live on the east end where the sky is a lot darker than is it here in western Suffolk, this is a rare sight. Maybe it’s hard to appreciate a dark sky when everything in your refrigerator is going bad, but there is an old saying about making lemonade–and it really is a good way to deal with bad things. I wish more folks would look up. Even when we do have electricity and the sky is lit bright by the torches of civilization there is still plenty to see.

Here’s a picture of the Big Dipper hanging low in the north western sky that I took in the dark on Sunday night:

Keep looking up…

Long Beach….the name conjures up images of sun, sand, surf and fun. This resort community located on Long Island’s south shore, doesn’t disappoint as this “city by the sea” offers visitors, city dwellers and residents a laid-back atmosphere with a small-town, welcoming attitude.

That’s what Long Island new comer Brigitte Surette had to say after moving to Long Beach from South Carolina a few months ago.

Read Brigitte’s full review of Long Beach here.

Loving-Long-Island.com contributor Lisa Mancuso spent a week in Montauk Point with her husband and teenage children. They had a great time and Lisa was kind enough to share her experience with us.

Read all about Lisa’s Montauk vacation here.

Looking west from the Montauk Point Lighthouse. Camp Hero in the background.

If you were on Long Island yesterday afternoon you may have heard about the tornado warning and maybe even witnessed a severe summer squall blowing through your neighborhood.

We were sitting on the dock at the Snapper Inn enjoying cocktails and the shade provided by thick black clouds. They seemed to be north of us, so I figured whatever was coming would pound the north shore and leave us alone. How wrong I was.

At first there were only a few drops, then it started to rain hard enough for us to move from the dock to the tent. And then, within a matter of minutes the sky opened up and the wind started blowing. Really blowing… The winds even knocked down a tree on the grounds that had been toppled and saved 25 years ago in a different storm.

According to the National Weather Service the storm came through at 40 to 50 mph and produced wind gusts up to 60 mph. Based on what I saw I don’t doubt those numbers.

Here are some pictures…

Black clouds. Nothing to worry about...

A little rain.

The rain begins in earnest.

Visibility is reduced and the wind picks up.

Driving rain is blowing inside the tent; customers and staff race to close the panels.

Storm damage: Down for the second time in 25 years, this tree's trunk is now broken and cannot be saved.

Not long after the rain started, the skies cleared and the evening sun cast a golden glow on boats in the river.

After a long day slaving away at the computer I went out for some dinner at Kingston’s Clam Bar. It was very windy yesterday and along the way I encountered this dust blowing across a soccer field.

There was so much dust in the air my eyes were burning.

For dinner I had clams and oysters on the half shell followed by a plate of fried calamari, and all washed down with a couple of pints of Paulaner hefe-weizen, a summertime favorite beer.  (Sorry no pictures of dinner.)

After dinner I noticed the planet Venus shining brilliantly in the western sky. The picture just doesn’t do the scene justice, but I hope you get the idea of how beautiful it was.

Venus is the very bright “star” in the picture above. You can see the yellow glow of Kingston’s dining room to the right.

Jones Beach: A American Riviera is a beautiful documentary written by George P. Pozderec and narrated by Eli Wallach.

In 30 way too short minutes George and Eli take us from conception to completion of one of America’s greatest landmarks. Vintage images, music, film footage and in-depth interviews make this film watchable over and over again.

I highly recommend it.

Read the full review here: Jones Beach: A American Riviera