60 Summers of Dan's Papers by the Numbers

The Year Dan Rattiner Founded Dan’s Papers, a British quartet changed its name from the Silver Beatles to The Beatles, the 50-star American flag flew for the first time, John F. Kennedy was elected President, Cassius Clay won Olympic gold in boxing, NASA was born, John Steinbeck left Sag Harbor to begin a trip that became Travels with Charley, and the countdown to a diamond 60 Summers celebration began…

0 Dollars charged for an issue of The Montauk Pioneer, making it the first free weekly resort town newspaper in America

1 Commissioner in the history of the Hamptons Subway. Cheers, Commissioner Aspinall

2 Hamptons beaches ranked among Top 10 in the world by Dr. Beach— Coopers Beach in Southampton and Main Beach in East Hampton

3 Pulitzer Prize winners who have spoken at the Dan’s Papers Literary Prize for Nonfiction Awards (Robert Caro, Carl Bernstein, Jules Feiffer)

4 U.S. Open Championships played at Southampton’s Shinnecock Hills Golf Club

5 Date in March, 2012, when the Montauk Lighthouse was awarded National Landmark status—217 years after George Washington commissioned it

6 Million votes cast in Dan’s Best of the Best competition since it began over the last 20 years

7 Minutes and 7 seconds, length of the Rolling Stones’ “Memory Motel,” legendarily inspired by their 1975 stay at Andy Warhol’s Montauk home

8 Pages in the first issue of The Montauk Pioneer

9 Rank, by the British Film Institute’s Sight & Sound magazine, of 1975’s Grey Gardens among all documentaries ever made

10 Runs scored by the Artists in the 1974 Artists & Writers Softball Game, the first Artists win—a 10–1 victory

11 Years between Sagaponack becoming an incorporated village and becoming America’s most expensive ZIP code in 2016 (median home price: $8.5 million)

12 Number of U.S. Presidents since Dan’s Papers’ first summer

13 Advertisers in the first Montauk Pioneer, out of 27, who are still in business 60 summers later

14 Acres purchased to build the new Parrish Art Museum, which opened in Water Mill in 2012

15 Years after Montauk County Park was renamed Theodore Roosevelt County Park in 1997 that Suffolk County Legislature changed the name… back to Montauk County Park

16 Months of fundraising before the groundbreaking to rebuild the Sag Harbor Cinema after it was destroyed in a December 16, 2016 fire

17 Acres first planted by Alex and Louisa Hargrave when they started Long Island’s first vineyard, in 1973

18 Miles off Montauk where Frank Mundus, the inspiration for Quint in Jaws, reeled in a record 3,427-pound great white shark in 1986

19 Songs on Jimmy Buffett’s set list (plus two encores) for his August 1994 concert at Montauk’s Deep Hollow Ranch

20 Cents per mile for up to three passengers to take the Shelter Island Airways Air Taxi Service anywhere in 1960

21 Local and national news outlets calling in 2012 to ask Dan’s Papers about the veracity of the story of South African lions being released in the Hamptons to solve the deer population problem

22 Feet of galvanized steel on the new dome put on Southold’s Custer Institute and Observatory—Long Island’s oldest observatory—in 2006

23 Summers, 1961 to 1983, in the Boston Red Sox career of Bridgehampton’s Carl Yastrzemski

24 Years after Dan’s Papers started that Lee Krasner passed away, leaving her home to become the
Pollock-Krasner House & Study Center in 1988

25 Years and counting that the Bridgehampton Road Rally has been keeping the history of auto racing in the Hamptons alive

26 Million dollars paid by Jay-Z and Beyoncé for their East Hampton home in 2017

27 Hours spent by individuals reading Moby Dick aloud throughout Sag Harbor during the quasi-annual marathon launched by Canio’s Books

28 Different winners of the Hampton Classic Grand Prix

29 Rank of Barry Rosenstein on the Forbes list of Highest-Earning Hedge Fund Managers when he was reported in May 2014 as the buyer of an East Hampton property on Further Lane for $147 million—the most expensive U.S. home sale price in history

30 Feet in length of the Big Duck in Flanders, named to the National Registry of Historic Places in 1997

31 Points scored in winning the 2015 state basketball title and tournament MVP by Bridgehampton High School’s Charles Manning Jr., 17 years after his father took home MVP honors and won the state title with the same school, on the same court.

32 Years the Shinnecock Indian Nation fought to get federal recognition before it was granted in 2010

33 Percent of Shelter Island covered by Mashomack Preserve, acquired by the Nature Conservancy in 1980

34 Rosé wines poured at the inaugural Dan’s Rosé Soirée in 2017

35 Miles off Montauk where the first wind farm in New York State is proposed to be built

36 Jumper horses (and 2 sleighs) aboard the Jess Owen Carousel at Mitchell Park, donated to Greenport in 1995

37(th) President of the United States, Richard Nixon, who wrote his 1968 Republican Party nomination acceptance speech at Montauk’s Gurney’s Inn

38 Miles from the Shinnecock Canal to the Montauk Lighthouse

39 Years Dan’s PotatoHampton, the Hamptons’ first 10K, was run, after the starting gun in 1973

40 Restaurants and chefs serving up fare from the Hamptons and the North Fork at the first Dan’s Taste of Two Forks

41(st) Song in the DansPapers.com 100 Songs of Summer Countdown: “Vacation” by the Go-Go’s

42 Main Street, Emerilla, Alaska. Address of mystery man who “confirmed” Sarah Palin’s moving to Hampton Bays in Dan’s famous 2009 hoax

43 NASCAR legend Richard Petty’s car number when he notched career victory 23 at Bridgehampton in 1963

44 Weeks Jaws—actually set in the Hamptons, where the movie had its 1975 premiere—was on the bestseller list

45 Summer of Dan’s Papers when both Google and Facebook make their debuts

46 Years and counting for the annual Dan’s Papers Kite Fly at Sagg Main Beach

47 Oscar nominations garnered by Hamptons International Film Festival (HIFF) films in its 25th year, 2017

48 Years in the journey from Kathleen King’s selling cookies at her family farm at age 11 to her opening Tate’s Bake Shop in 2000 to its selling for $500 million in 2018

49 Average water temperature during the now-countless Polar Plunges that take place to raise funds for charity each winter in the five East End towns

50 Feet in height of Linda Scott’s Stargazer sculpture in Manorville that welcomes visitors to the Hamptons

51 Different dedications of the weekly issue of Dan’s Papers each year

52 Weeks a year that Dan’s Papers has the largest circulation of any publication on Long Island’s East End

53 Unofficial record for number of BBCs consumed by one guest during a weekend at Cyril’s, set in 2010

54 Page of Time magazine’s August 4, 1975 issue where you’ll find a story on Dan titled “Hoaxer of the Hamptons”

55 Entrants into the Dan’s Papers Flight to Portugal event in 1992

56 Years before Dan’s Papers started that Nikola Tesla built the North Fork’s Stanford White–designed Wardenclyff Tower, which landed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008

57 Billboard Hot 100 rank of “The Downeaster ‘Alexa,” Billy Joel’s 1990 ode to Long Island fishermen

58 Age of Stephen Talkhouse when he died…91 years before The Stephen Talkhouse opened in Amagansett in 1970

5,9(40) Approximate number of years of recorded history before Dan’s Papers was born

60 Summers on the East End that nobody will ever forget!