Vol. 7: Aug. 2025

20 August 2025

Dear Neighbors,

This month’s featured neighbor is Jeremy Kaplan, one of your newly elected board members. Funk interviewed Jeremy last Monday; it was good for them to get to know each other considering they’re both currently serving our community.

The main goal of this newsletter is for neighbors to become acquainted with each other better, as I believe that will go a long way towards us being more neighborly neighbors.

ON A MORE PERSONAL NOTE

Funk and I just arrived home from a short trip to DC. Like Jeremy, I also wish the LIRR was still in Rocky Point, and that it was quicker to get to Penn Station. When we first moved back to the east coast in 2011, Funk’s job landed us in DC. Back then, the streets were beyond overcrowded. It took 90 minutes to get my daily 4-mile walk in, and a good 45 minutes to drive less than two miles from Union Station to our flat in DuPont Circle.

Last week Funk had a meeting in DC and I tagged along to visit friends. You cannot imagine the changes there. When I went out for my walk, I basically had the sidewalk and the parks to myself, and it only took us 15 minutes to get from the station to DuPont. I think the reason for this enormous change is because the current administration does most of its business in Florida, and also because of the massive government layoffs.

If you’re looking to explore DC, I bet the museums are also much less crowded now, so it’s likely the perfect time to visit.

OTHER NEWS

Last June, the Culross community elected five new board members, who will serve for three years. Those members are:

Mark Funkhouser, President

Ryan Young, Vice President

Allison Grief, Secretary

Michael McCarthy, Treasurer

Jeremy Kaplan, Member at Large

When you see them out on the street, please give them a big thank you for stepping up to serve our community.

And please give another big thank you to the past board members who recently stepped down for taking the time to enhance our neighborhood.

FEATURED NEIGHBOR

Jeremy Kaplan

Where do I come from?

My dad along and his family grew up in Brooklyn. As for me, I grew up in Massachusetts but I’ve been living in New York City for 30 years. As a longtime fan of the Red Sox, I’m now in the land of the Yankees and the Mets. The horror!

The suburb that I grew up in in Massachusetts was nice. It was a nice enough suburb, but quiet compared to the city, with a working farm right behind our house. In college I met guys who had grown up in New York City who had a completely different experience growing up; it’s amazing how different people can be and still find similarities.

As soon as I got out of college I moved to Brooklyn. I had barely a dime to my name so I spent a full year couch surfing. I had gone to college with people who spent their lives in Manhattan and had never been to Brooklyn. In 1996, I had to do a little arm twisting to get my friends to move to Brooklyn with me … together, we scraped together enough for a deposit and monthly rent. NYC is a wonderful place to live but it’s very expensive. Still, I couldn’t leave the New York area; it’s like the center of the world here, you know.

I was Editor in Chief of a major technology site for a long time, called digitaltrends.com. Now, I’m Content Director for a worldwide media publisher called Future. We do magazines and websites and events, including Marie Claire, Homes & Gardens, CinemaBlend, Wallpaper and more. I’m on the technology team, working on our tech websites. It’s the best job in the world: People give me cutting edge gizmos and ask me what I think. How could you beat that?

Why did I choose Culross?

A friend of mine has a house on Shelter Island -- just a log cabin on the beach, really -- and Jessica and I were looking for something similar. I was amazed to find exactly what we wanted! When we moved to Culross our neighbors asked if we were going to tear the house down or renovate it, and we said absolutely not. It’s exactly what we need. There’s just the two of us and we have a spare bedroom and that’s plenty.

What do I love about Culross?

Having spent 30 years in NYC where people don’t get many chances to be close to nature, it’s nice to be able to walk outside into a backyard. I love the views we all share, particularly the sunset. The open air and open skies and the proximity to nature are what’s are best about this place.

What would I like to see changed?

When we bought the place I was looking for a retreat. I was looking for something like Shelter Island. Now that I commute here on a regular basis, I confess it’s a little farther than I thought it would be. I wish the LIRR was a little better and a little faster. Still, the two or three hours of travel time are actually good. It creates space, separation and a time to reset. Other than that, not much. How can you improve on paradise?

The Photo: Jeremy Kaplan