FROM THE ARCHIVES · BABYLON VILLAGE

It started in a basement.

Charlie Bunger began shaping surfboards in his parents’ basement for neighborhood kids. That project became Bunger Surf Shop, which has stood in the heart of Babylon Village for more than 60 years.

Along the way he founded the Bunger Surf Team and started the East Coast Surfing Championship, first held at Gilgo Beach in 1962 — which is a large part of why Gilgo became the center of Long Island surfing in the 1960s.

Surfer Magazine summed it up in 1994: “Charlie Bunger has been synonymous with New York surfing.”

That history got its own exhibition this month. Beyond the Break, a group show at the Christensen Gallery in Babylon Village, gathered 28 artists in paintings, photographs and sculpture built around the shop and its founder. It ran through September 5.

“Babylon has such a rich surf culture,” gallery owner and curator Theresa Christensen said. “I want people to feel a sense of nostalgia and tradition.”

The work ranged from Bradford Warren Schneider’s The Wave, a sculpture of roiling water made from recycled surfboards, to Shauna Carroll’s The Saltwater Bloom, painted directly onto a Bunger board. Chris Mason contributed a surfing sea monster called Gillman of Gilgo.

The subjects were local and specific: the waves at Gilgo, the lake at Argyle Park, the shoreline this town grew up on.

“In addition to the art, I want people to look at the photos and posters on the wall and learn about the history,” Christensen said.

The show is down now. The shop is still up the road.

Sources: Fire Island News · Christensen Gallery

MEET YOUR NEIGHBOR · LINDENHURST

Before Jenn Calvi and Joe Caivano opened a business together, they gutted a house together.

“We did the whole house ourselves,” Calvi said. “On the weekends, we were painting ceilings, laying down floors. We knew we had the ability to work together.”

The Lindenhurst couple now own Woof Gang Bakery & Grooming West Islip, a bright-pink shop at 425 Union Blvd. They opened it on April 17, nearly two years after they started looking.

Their story starts with the dogs, in January 2021. Calvi had two. Caivano, a Lindenhurst native and Lindenhurst High School graduate, had one. The dogs got along, so that was that.

“It was like, ‘I guess we live together now,’” Calvi said. “We were like a little blended family.”

Neither quit a day job. She works remotely for Blood Cancer United; he works for Con Edison in Flushing. The shop is the long game — something that could become a retirement plan.

They looked at doggy day cares first. Calvi ruled that out on the grounds that she knows herself.

“I’d probably just want to keep all the dogs,” she said.

Despite the bakery case full of frosted skulls and pumpkins, grooming is the business: full and mini grooms, baths, nails, and spa upgrades with names like the blueberry pie facial and the “Happy Barkday” package.

They also open early or stay late, at no extra charge, for private shopping sessions with reactive dogs — so a dog that cannot handle a crowded shop still gets to pick out its own toy.

Eight people work there. Calvi credits them for the start the couple has had, and says one groomer sings to the dogs.

Theirs is still the only Woof Gang in Suffolk County.

“We’re still kind of the little engine that could,” Calvi said.

Sources: Greater Long Island · Woof Gang Bakery

ARTS · BABYLON VILLAGE

The Argyle Theatre opened its new season on September 17 with “On Your Feet!”, the jukebox musical built from the music and the marriage of Gloria and Emilio Estefan.

It is a bigger story than the hits suggest. The show runs through Gloria Estefan’s rise, the tour bus crash that nearly ended her career, and her return to the stage at the 1991 American Music Awards — with “Conga,” “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You” and “Turn the Beat Around” along the way.

Director Vincent Ortega has staged this musical five times, including at the John W. Engeman Theater in Northport. Before he directed it, he was in the national tour.

He has also had the Estefans themselves in his audience, at Riverside Theatre.

“Everyone knew Gloria because she was the first Latina singer to make the cross-over into English,” Ortega said. “We had known her for years but this was the first time hearing her in English.”

Meeting them, he said, was like getting together with family.

There is a second parallel he did not plan. Ortega was recovering from reconstructive knee surgery for a torn ACL while preparing this production.

“When it happened I thought my year was going to be bed-ridden,” he said. “Her story isn’t of fame and stardom, it’s a story of strength and courage.”

He points to a scene where the trainers call it a day and Gloria refuses: “I wanna do more reps, I’m going to get better, I’m going to get stronger.”

“Vince is one of the most resilient people I know, so this parallel is pretty amazing to me,” said Evan Pappas, the Argyle’s creative director.

The rest of the season leans the same way — Cher, Jimmy Buffett, Mary Poppins. “All iconic legends,” Pappas said, “all positive influences from strong, talented people.”

Sources: Greater Long Island · The Argyle Theatre

BUSINESS · LONG ISLAND

In 1998, two brothers running a produce distribution business took over a failing little market in East Meadow.

Carl and Phillip DelPrete, with partner Tom Barresi, turned it into the first Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace in 2001. There are now 13 stores across New York and New Jersey, and a 14th on the way.

“We were really just having fun and just wanted to provide the best customer experience the industry had to offer,” said Carl DelPrete, now the chain’s chief executive.

The idea was to take an Italian neighborhood — bakery, butcher, cheesemonger, deli — and put the whole thing under one roof.

“We made a conscious decision to create an Italian-centric market, reminiscent of the experience we had as kids,” he said. “The Little Italys of the world, Brooklyn and the Bronx.”

The Smithtown store in 2005 is where the format became what shoppers recognize now: painted ceilings, Roman columns, mozzarella pulled behind glass, samples handed out like a Sunday dinner host.

“Rather than write a business plan, we said, let’s just keep having fun, but just do it in a bigger way,” DelPrete said.

Bigger keeps getting bigger. A 40,000-square-foot store opened in Bohemia in November 2025 and a 56,000-square-foot store in Greenvale in August 2026, with Levittown later this year. In late 2027 the company plans its first Pennsylvania store, in King of Prussia, and a South Jersey location in Moorestown.

DelPrete’s argument is one every Main Street in the Town of Babylon has a stake in.

“I believe that mom-and-pop retailers, brick and mortar, are not dying — they just need to become experiential,” he said.

Sources: Greater Long Island · Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace

AROUND BABYLON · TOWN OF BABYLON

The Town of Babylon would like a word about your lawn.

Its Green Homes program has been running native-plant workshops with Spadefoot Ecosystem Solutions, an ecological restoration landscaping company based in Woodbury, including sessions at Phelps Lane Park.

The pitch started with compost. Jassi Anand, the Town’s sustainability director, said residents who took part in a discounted composting program turned out to be interested in gardening too.

“We’re trying to have residents look at their homes as a whole to encourage them to be more self-sustainable,” she said.

The environmental argument is blunter than it sounds. Brittany Champey, Spadefoot’s vice president, said the suburbs traded away functions nature used to perform — chief among them, handling water.

“Living in the suburbs of Long Island, our environments are so overly developed, and because of that you lose some of the functions that nature provides,” she said.

A manicured lawn, in her words, is “functionally the same as pavement.” It does not absorb stormwater well, which matters in a town where so much former forest is now paved.

“I think people use those practices because it’s what’s been done traditionally,” Champey said. “One of the main reasons we do workshops like this is to teach people there is another way.”

The workshops cover native vegetation and invasive species, and how to start a native garden. The Long Island Native Plant Initiative — a nonprofit that collects seeds from heritage sites where plants have grown for centuries — runs plant sales alongside them.

Co-president Colleen Doyle is not selling sacrifice. She is selling status.

“I want them to be the talk of the town so that there’s a wave of people feeling like, ‘Oh, having this postage-stamp, bright green lawn is no longer the coolest way to be,’” Doyle said.

For Frank Greco, 70, of Lindenhurst, who grows much of his native garden from seed in a backyard greenhouse and attended the first two workshops, the draw was simpler.

“Events like that are a good way to network and connect,” he said.

Green Homes also runs free home energy audits, with work up to $19,000 assessed onto the property at 3% over ten years. The program has served thousands of Babylon households.

Sources: Newsday · Long Island Native Plant Initiative · Town of Babylon