EAST HAMPTON, N.Y.
Hear ye! Hear ye!
The news rang out from Hugh King, this community’s official town crier, who often dresses up in a vest and a top hat, rings his bell and dispenses — not news, exactly, but a little local history.
This week the headline was: Town Crier Barely Recognizes Ye Olde Village.
East Hampton was once a quaint little place where Mr. King romped as a child, caroused as a young man and bought his first piece of land at Augie’s Barber Shop, where the hair cutter was selling off chunks of a big plot he had bought for peanuts north of the village. Today, it looks more like Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, filled with upscale boutiques, designer shops and jewelry stores, and high-end food outlets.
“Let’s see now, that Coach store used to be a bank,” said Mr. King, 65, while walking along Main Street on Wednesday afternoon. “That Bonne Nuit store, that used to be the 5 & 10. The Tiffany & Company, that used to be the Whitman Gallery, where they would fix watches or jewelry or knickknacks.”
Mr. King looked at White’s Pharmacy, wedged between Cashmere Hampton and the Cynthia Rowley designer store.
“White’s,” he said. “Them and Sam’s Bar and Restaurant around the corner, those are the only stores left from when I was a kid.”
He stopped into the Ralph Lauren children’s clothing store, in a building that once served as a post office, and brushed up against a $425 leather fringe cowboy jacket made for a child. Several doors down is another Ralph Lauren store, formerly a beauty parlor, he said. And the Summerfields store — that was Ben Barnes’s stationery store.
Nowadays, Mr. King said, local residents cannot afford to shop at most of the stores here. “Most of us have to do our shopping at the Wal-Mart in Bridgehampton,” he explained. At the main corner in town, Newtown Lane and Main Street, the snazzy new Elie Tahari shop is in a building that was once a Bohack’s supermarket, with the local telephone company upstairs.
On the opposite corner across the lane was once Rowe’s Pharmacy, now a Cole Haan shoe and accessory store. From there, directly across Main Street, is the grand-looking building that houses London Jewelers.
“That used to be the Masonic Hall, with four bowling lanes and a bar in the basement,” noted Mr. King, who somehow looks (and sounds) like a town crier even when not in costume.
Mr. King, a retired grammar school teacher, oversees the three windmills in town and helps run the Home Sweet Home museum. He tipped his baseball cap and smiled at the summer folk, with their even tans and designer clothes and arms laden with colorful, glossy shopping bags.
“Keep shopping, support the local economy,” he said brightly, then muttered to himself, “even though it’s not really local.”
Many of the stores had their doors open, letting air-conditioned blasts out onto the steamy sidewalk.
“They say it helps attract customers,” Mr. King said. He pointed out some other old buildings and, without missing a beat, added, “and there’s Nathan Lane.”
The town crier was right. There was the award-winning actor walking alone on Main Street past the movie theater, looking casual in jeans, loafers and a polo shirt and checking his cellphone screen. He turned down a narrow road, and declined to chat.
“I’m on my way to something,” he said, clasping his hands and furrowing his brow apologetically, almost as if performing in a harried scene from “The Producers,” not in the middle of this narrow, leafy, empty East Hampton lane.
“I can’t stop,” Mr. Lane said, “to have an impromptu interview in the middle of the road.”
Back to Mr. King, who loves impromptu interviews. He stopped in front of a store named Calypso Home, which sells designer pillows, linens and other furnishings. It was once a firehouse, Mr. King said. The store windows were once garage bays. Now they display hand-embroidered pillows selling for $435 apiece.
He passed Cittanuova, a chic cafe (“This used to be a bar where you could get 15-cent pitchers of beer and Chinese food”) and stopped in front of Steph’s Stuff.
“This was once Augie’s Barber Shop,” he said. “Augie had bought a huge plot in Springs, and he sold me a half-acre for $2,000 in 1965.”
