East End Business Notebook: Jitney Helps Man Pop the Question

Westhampton-Hampton Bays

International Barbecue Restaurant to Open in Westhampton

A new eatery featuring international barbecue, called Buckhead's Grill, is set to to take over the former Finn's restaurant in Westhampton with an opening date scheduled for early August.

The building, which has sat vacant since March 31, was bustling on Monday with work crews gutting the Irish decor to make room for cow-hide chairs, country seating, a new bar, big screen televisions, barn doors and open kitchen with cook-out table.

On Wednesday, the phones atin Southold were ringing off the hook as an FBI dive team worked to raise a boat that hadon July 4 in a tragedy that killed three children. Workers from Sea Tow had responded to the scene the night of the accident, helping rescue workers from other agencies as they always do in the face of across Long Island and around the world.

And at helm of this world-class towing company is Capt. Joseph Frohnhoefer, a lifelong North Fork resident and lover of all things boating and water sports. Armed with only one boat — a 24-foot Privateer — he founded Sea Tow in 1983 after the Coast Guard stopped responding to non-emergency calls due to budget cuts and the business of sea towing became a private enterprise. Nearly 30 years later, Sea Tow is an international operation with 200,000 members, 52 employees in Southold and around 3,000 employees around the world.

When Billy Davis decided to propose to his girlfriend of nearly three years, he didn’t just want the proposal to be special — he wanted it to be extraordinary.

He also wanted it to evoke the chance encounter that brought them together in the first place, on a headed from the Hamptons to New York City.

Just days before the proposal, Davis explained to Patch, “I want to do something that is uniquely ‘us,’ because we met on the Jitney, and I think this will be great surprise for her.”

Once called Central Suffolk Hospital, then Peconic Bay Medical Center, the Riverhead hospital has a new brand name and logo -- PBMC Health.

And with the new moniker, positive growth toward ensuring and improving community health continue, said Andrew Mitchell, President and CEO of PMBC Health and Peconic Bay Medical Center.

The organization will serve as an umbrella, encompassing the many pieces of growth the community has seen at the facility over the past decade, Mitchell said, including the Kanas Center for Advanced Surgery, a skilled nursing and rehabilitation center, a new surgical and orthopedic floor, a home care program, and a burgeoning graduate medical program where the doctors of tomorrow are embarking on residencies.

Like many vacationers on the South Fork, Whole Foods will head back to the city on Labor Day.

Just because the gourmet market's summer FARM Stand is leaving the former Plitt Ford dealership in Wainscott on Sept. 3, it doesn't mean the company is abandoning the possibility of opening up a permanent location in the Hamptons.

Michael Sinatra, a spokesman for the company, said the plan was always to close the pop-up shop on Labor Day, since landlord Gregg Saunders has plans to raze the building and build .