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By Mike White 🇺🇸 Sept. 28, 2025

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☕ Good morning, Long Island!

🥳 We've got some great stuff for you today.

📽️ My personal favorite: The set from Everybody Loves Raymond is headed to Long Island later next month. So grab your selfie sticks, if that's still a thing.

⛵ We've also got an epic special report about Lake Ronkonkoma that I'm calling a must-read (and a page-turner).

🍿 That, and our friends at Staller Center for the Arts just announced their Spring Season, which runs from January through May 2026.

✍🏼 Feel free to respond to this email with feedback!

Today's weather: Mostly sunny with a high near 57 degrees. There's a 30 percent chance of showers after 2 p.m. ⛅

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SPECIAL REPORT

First, the rise, fall, and uncertain future of Long Island’s largest lake

🚱 Decades of runoff, neglect, and political gridlock have turned this former resort paradise into one of the Island’s most polluted bodies of water. The fight to save it has become as murky as the lake itself.

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Second, step inside the Barone family’s living room, right here on Long Island

🏠 Starting Nov. 28, the “Everybody Loves Raymond: Celebrating 30 Years,” exhibit will debut and honor the smash-hit, Long Island-based CBS sitcom that ran from 1996 through 2005. With the complete set on hand, right here on the Island. The kitchen, the living room, everything.

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Third, hundreds line up as Yemeni coffee chain (finally) lands on the Island

☕ It was brew-mageddon in Melville as hundreds lined up for a first taste of the Yemeni coffee craze that’s sweeping the Tri-State. Long Island finally got its first MOKAFÉ on Sunday.

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More headlines to highlight

💀 Forget the dark woods — the real scares this Halloween are waiting at 93 Sprucewood Drive in Levittown, where this Long Island family has turned its entire, 10-room house into a house of horrors.

🃏 Authorities are calling it one of the most sprawling gambling fraud cases in recent memory, and it has ties to Long Island. Specifically, E. Hampton.

🥍 Farmingdale’s own Matt Danowski is headed to the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame. The Long Island native starred at Duke and went on to an All-Star pro career. He's now coaching at Duke, along with his dad. Legend.

🍐 After nearly two decades of golden mornings, The Golden Pear Café in Bridgehampton closed for good this past weekend. GLI reported on the impending closure last week. The other locations are still open.

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GIVING BACK

Long Island’s Kiwanis clubs are rallying to serve more local families

While volunteerism has dropped over recent decades worldwide, the Kiwanis on Long Island aren’t waving a white flag. They're expanding with new clubs and recruiting new members. Click here to read all about it.

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Greater Long Island coverage is funded in part by The Argyle Theatre, where Broadway comes to Babylon. Click here for tickets to Annie.