This home is situated at the end of a cul de sac , tucked away for seclusion on a full half acre lot, located just moments from your own private beach. The 2/3 bedroom home boasts an updated kitchen, den with fireplace, and a full basement. $559,000
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When did people become so careless?
Being taught how to cross the street has apparently gone out the window. Young adults and even children are riding their bikes into oncoming traffic.
We’re sick of it.
Long Island has some of the most aggressive drivers in the country — why do we have to worry about high schoolers popping a wheelie in front of our cars on a major county road?
And they don’t care. They laugh it off, make faces or — worse — curse at us like it was our fault they chose to almost kill themselves.
The worst part is, though, someone is bound to eventually get hurt — something we truly do not want to see.
But we are grateful to the Suffolk County legislators who are trying their hardest to crack down on people taking advantage of our streets. Whether it’s a child or an adult riding their bike down the hill in a pack, bicyclists have become difficult to deal with.
And that’s sad, because we don’t want to banish or punish them for something so healthy, but there needs to be more communication.
While county Legislator Rudy Sunderman’s (R-Mastic) recent reckless bicycling bill is rather harsh by telling riders that they could face jail time for inappropriate biking, if everyone just listened to their mothers, grandmothers, fathers and teachers to not go near a fast-moving car, then this wouldn’t have been a problem.
And more adults can speak up. In the summer of 2019, officers with the Suffolk County Police Department’s 4th Precinct spoke with TBR News Media about their program to educate reckless bicycle riders. The officers compiled a video with clips of teens creating havoc on Smithtown. The purpose was to use the video to educate parents after officers stop a youth for reckless bicycling.
Even without watching such a video, adults know riding in the middle of a busy street is not safe. Before someone faces jail time, educate your children, speak up to the young people who harass you with their bikes.
Of course, the driver of a 3-ton vehicle will be blamed if someone gets hurt, but that shouldn’t be the case. Bike riders should not be taking advantage of our streets and should not be risking their lives by showing off unnecessary tricks.
We all know what wheelies look like. They’re not original, and we don’t care.
Be safe.
Welcome to this lovely Country Home in beautiful Head of the Harbor Stony Brook. This well maintained 5 bedroom, 3 bath split level ranch also has ample room for entertaining inside and out. Situated on 2 acres of lush property, this home features 2 fireplaces, 5 skylights, 2 family /entertaining rooms, and a master bedroom with a master bath. A stunning 25×50 built-in swimming pool with a large deck offers room to entertain as well.
$929,000
For more information click here
By Andrew Zucker
After over a year off due to COVID-19 —371 days to be exact — the Mount Sinai Mustangs varsity basketball team brushed the dust off their jerseys on Tuesday night, as they easily defeated the East Hampton Bonackers 66-41.
“Kids missed it, we missed it, we love being in the gym. We weren’t able to be in the gym during the offseason,” Mount Sinai head coach Ryan McNeely said postgame. “From the first day after tryouts where we were back in the gym, you could feel the energy and excitement of the kids. This was great for them.”
For the first half, the Bonackers were one step behind the Mustangs, as Mount Sinai led 27-22 at the half.
In the third quarter, the Mustangs unleashed an offensive barrage that East Hampton could not contain as the deficit grew from five to 21 points.
“In the first half, you could see we were a little rusty to start off the game,” McNeely said. “All of the sudden, we started getting things clicking at once.”
Thomas Frycek and Mitchell Cumings led Mount Sinai’s high-powered offense.
Frycek scored 25 points while hitting seven shots from beyond the three-point line, and Cumings chipped in 13.
The Bonackers were led in scoring by Topher Cullen and Luke Reese, who scored 13 points apiece.
The Mustangs have a practice scheduled Wednesday before they head to Sayville for a game on Feb. 11, while East Hampton heads home for a bout with Miller Place the same day.
By Steven Zaitz
It has been almost a full 12 months since Tristan Davis, and the Smithtown East boys varsity basketball team, have taken to the hardwood in a game that actually counted.
Despite the layoff, Davis showed not one bit of rust.
The 6’5” junior forward led all scorers with 16 points in the Red Bulls 49-43 victory over the Huntington High School Blue Devils on Wednesday, Feb. 10 at home. He also dominated on the glass and around the rim with 12 rebounds and 7 blocked shots.
“It feels great to be out here again,” Davis said. “It was great to start the season with a win.”
Two of his points came on a monster slam dunk in the second quarter.
“That dunk was fun,” Davis said. “I hope it’s the first of many.”
Smithtown East Coach Al Chandler was pleased with Davis’ offensive output. But he was even more impressed with how active he was in disrupting Huntington’s attack.
“Tristan has worked really hard to get where he is,” said Coach Chandler, who has been part of the Smithtown East program for close to three decades. “His timing is great when it comes to blocking shots. He took them (Huntington) out of what they wanted to do on offense, and he stayed out of foul trouble. I was really happy with how he played today.”
Senior Forward Tom Berdon chipped in 12 points, shooting 55% from the field and guards Ethan Cain and Jack Melore each sunk a pair of three pointers, both finishing with 6 points. Melore is a freshman. The Bulls opened up a double-digit lead early in the second half and held that lead until the final two minutes. The Blue Devils made a late run by forcing turnovers to cut the lead to six but got no closer.
“We need to protect the ball better there and finish,” Chandler said. “We have some work to do, but we’ll get there.”
Kevin Drake led Huntington with 14 points and was 3 for 5 from three-point range. Point guard Adrian Brooks had 13.
The Bulls go on the road to take on Copiague Friday, Feb 12, then play host to William Floyd Feb 14 and rival Smithtown West Feb 16. Unfortunately, no fans are allowed to attend games at this time.
As per the Section XI website, “Due to safety concerns outlined by the Suffolk County Department of Health and physicians on our safety committee, having no spectators at contests will give us the best chance for schools to complete their upcoming seasons,” said Tom Combs, executive director of Section XI. “The health and safety of our student-athletes, coaches and support staff are paramount in this endeavor of returning to play.”
Another storm in Brookhaven, another botched snow removal. How many times must residents be forced to deal with such incompetence when it comes to snow removal? Potholes and snowdrifts don’t care what political party you belong to. In the Town of Brookhaven, the superintendent of highways is elected in an at-large election, rather than appointed, as is the case in many towns in which a department of public works exists. In both of my bids for Brookhaven Town highway superintendent in 2017 and 2019, I openly criticized why pay-to-play practices are eroding our roads and quality of life and the status of the Highway Superintendent as an elected position is a large part of the systemic plague eroding the department’s accountability.
The fact of the matter is this position should be filled by appointment, rather than election. Many decisions on infrastructure need to be based on 10- and 20-year capital plans, and the sobering reality is that elections force a short-term vision that channels reelection interests over long-term planning. It is why we have cheap “mill and fill” paving jobs, rather than full-depth reclamation projects to address underlying structural integrity in roads. If John Q. Public sees roads getting repaved, many do not know that pricing decisions like asphalt composition and curb milling have a long-term impact as to whether the roads will crumble after three years or last for 10 years.
The reality is that towns on Long Island that have elected highway superintendents have structural deficiencies in projects that develop due to the pressure of electoral races. Towns like mine, Brookhaven, should put up for referendum whether to convert their highway departments to DPW formats. None of Nassau’s towns elect highway superintendents, but with the exception of Babylon and Islip, all of Suffolk’s towns do.
In many jobs, what we want is competence. Voting for a town clerk, a county treasurer or a highway superintendent based on politics and party affiliation makes no more sense than choosing an airplane pilot based on those criteria. The current system creates nests of patronage and homes for unqualified political hacks that harm both our governmental structures and the residents who need their services. For instance, what gives my highway superintendent the capacity to lead a highway department when his résumé includes a short stint at New York State Assembly, a Suffolk legislator and, before that, a claims adjuster for State Farm Insurance.
The position of highway superintendent is a job that requires expertise in equipment purchasing, operation and maintenance, emergency management and personnel. The elected town supervisor should pick a person with an engineering background to oversee the department and suffer the lash of voters if he or she picks an incompetent one. In Brookhaven, we get the finger-pointing roulette, where town Supervisor Ed Romaine (R) points the finger at Dan Losquadro (R), who in turn points the finger at the supervisor.
We need to look at all jobs, at every level of local government, to determine if political philosophy plays any part in how they should be done. Where it doesn’t, voters should pass referendums making them appointive positions — and punish the elected leaders doing the appointing if their choices fail.
Part of my goal in running for this office twice in Brookhaven was to draw attention to the issues that plague my local highway department, problems that have led our roads to look like they belong in Beirut, instead of Brookhaven. Unfortunately, a well-funded incumbent with a campaign war chest in excess of at least $400,000 makes a political upset nearly impossible with the incumbent able to blanket the airwaves with radio ads and your mailboxes with glossy mailers by the dozens. As a result, the status quo becomes calcified. I had never intended to run the department like my predecessors had I won the election. Rather, I had intended to immediately move the town board to propose to eliminate the position in a referendum to the voters. The position of highway superintendent in my town is one plagued by political patronage, and as I said in both of my campaigns, “Politics has no place in pothole repair.”
Anthony Portesy, of Port Jefferson Station, is a private attorney who ran for Brookhaven superintendent of highways in 2017 and 2019.
This week’s shelter pet is 4-year-old Auntie currently up for adoption at the Smithtown Animal Shelter.
This sweet mush of a girl was trapped as part of the shelter’s TNR program. She had a few kittens following her around that were assumed to be hers … until it was found she was already spayed! This earned her the name Auntie because, well … who else would care for someone else’s children like they are her own? She is affectionate and outgoing and would love a home to call her own!
If you are interested in meeting Auntie, please call ahead to schedule an hour to properly interact with her in the shelter’s Meet and Greet Room. She is microchipped and is up to date on her vaccines.
The Smithtown Animal & Adoption Shelter is located at 410 Middle Country Road, Smithtown. Shelter operating hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the week, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on the weekend. For more information, please call 631-360-7575 or visit www.smithtownanimalshelter.com.
Staller Center for the Arts at Stony Brook University and musician Jack Licitra team up once again to offer an uplifting and healing concert, virtually, on Monday, Feb. 15 at 3 p.m.
Titled “Let the Music Heal Your Soul” the concert offers the usual funny songs and crazy antics while touching on some serious issues of loneliness for kids during the pandemic. Jack Licitra believes music is critical to healing and happiness. “Music can heal your soul,” says Licitra, “talking about all of the feelings, and singing about them, using yourself as the instrument, using hand movements and symbols, it can help to heal your soul … it all helps kids get those feelings out in the open, and it shows them that they’re not alone.”
The Staller Center and Jack Licitra have paired up in the past to offer concerts through the Staller Center’s Outreach and Education Program at local nonprofits, libraries, and at the Staller Center itself. “There are a lot of other kids that feel disconnected from their friends … that’s why we wanted to offer this concert as a resource, to try to help them feel more connected to other kids that are feeling more alone than usual,” says Paul Newland, Outreach Director for the Staller Center for the Arts.
“Let the Music Heal Your Soul” by Jack Licitra and Friends uses music in a healing way by taking familiar melodies, rhythms, and chord progressions, to create a shared community consciousness. The concert features performances by Jack Licitra, Katie Monhan, Camryn Quinlan, and Brian Licitra.
Jack Licitra is a Sayville-based piano/hammond organ driven singer/songwriter; music educator; founder of the music-teaching studio South Bay Arts in Bayport. He has performed with some of the best musicians in the world such as Levon Helm, Jimmy Vivino and Bakithi Kumalo as well as opening shows for legends such as Richie Havens, Buckwheat Zydeco, Pinetop Perkins and even playing for then-Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
The concert is free and registration is required by visiting www.stallercenter.com/outreach.
By Daniel Dunaief
Panic, which started in my stomach and had seeped so deep into the sinews of my fingers that I could barely write my own name, was overcoming me.
I was staring at the problem, knowing that I could do it if I calmed down, but also fearing that the answer wouldn’t come in time.
I had studied this type of organic chemistry problem for weeks, had attended every extra help session Randy, my teaching assistant and the head teaching fellow for the class, gave, including several late in the evening on Sunday nights.
If I froze up for too long, I ran the risk of not finishing that problem or the test. I couldn’t come up with a solution, and I couldn’t move on.
Then, it hit me. No, it wasn’t the solution. It was Randy’s overwhelming cologne. My teaching fellow was walking up and down the rows of the testing site, making sure no one was cheating, while responding to requests to go to the bathroom.
Something about his cologne brought me back to one of the many study sessions, helping me break the mental logjam in my head and sending me toward the solution that was right under my nose.
As we enter the 11th month of this pandemic, we can see and hear many of the cues we would get if we were continuing to live the lives we took for granted, but we are much more limited in what we can smell, especially if we are sticking with federal guidelines and staying put.
So, what smells do I miss the most?
While I enjoy visiting Long Island beaches in the summer, when the trio of hazy, hot and humid hovers in the air, I particularly appreciate the cold, salt spray of a winter beach, when the scent of crispy and frozen seaweed blends with air that seems to have brought hints of its cold journey across the ocean.
Then, of course, there is the missing smell of the kinds of foods that aren’t in our own kitchens or right next door. One of my favorite restaurants, the Good Steer sends out the scent of their onion rings in every direction around the building, calling to me and recalling my youth when my late father would watch happily as all three of his sons consumed our double order of onion rings, alongside our burger supremes.
While all ice might seem to smell the same, the scent of Alaska’s glaciers brings a frozen crispness to an inhospitable climate. Marveling at the ice around a cruise my wife and I took over two decades ago, I inhaled the cool fresh scent of frozen water.
Then there’s the food from all over the world. The enticing smells of freshly baked baguettes and fruity macarons in Parisian patisseries, the welcoming scent of fish caught earlier that day on Hawaiian beaches or the symphony of smells from places like Faneuil Hall, where Boston accents form the acoustic backdrop for the smell of flowers, steaks, and baked beans.
With spring just a month away, I turn to thoughts of baseball and Yankee Stadium. Yes, of course, numerous odors throughout the stadium — from other fans who could use some of Randy’s cologne to restrooms that don’t smell like a rose garden — aren’t the first things that come to mind. I’m talking about the smell of the grass and the dirt after the grounds crew waters it. That baseball field scent conjures infinite possibilities, from triple plays to triples off the wall, from immaculate innings to grass-stained catches. The smell of hot dogs and soft buns entice us as vendors march up and down the stairs nearby.
These days, we can see and hear people through FaceTime calls, but we can’t smell them. That person might love orange Tic Tacs, tuna fish sandwiches, fresh roasted coffee or any of a host of other scents — cinnamon rolls, perhaps —that define her the same way the light highlights a crooked-toothed smile. We might find Tic Tacs that remind us of them, but, without the combination of scents, including their laundry detergent, their soap or their conditioner, or their physical presence, we are missing that olfactory connection.
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