If you are looking for things to do on Long Island this weekend, August 8–9 splits neatly into two islands. Huntington village has a rock show, Garden City has a gaming expo inside an airplane hangar, and the East End has the biggest literary night of the Hamptons summer plus a Grammy-winning trumpeter and ballet in the woods. Nothing here requires a trip into the city. Here is what is worth your weekend, and the honest parking picture for each one.

Franz Ferdinand at The Paramount — Huntington

Saturday, August 8, 8 PM | The Paramount, 370 New York Ave, Huntington

Franz Ferdinand brings the Greater Glasgow Cultural Exchange tour to The Paramount Saturday night, with LA indie group Sunday Mourners opening. "Take Me Out" in a room that holds around 1,500 people is a different thing than hearing it at an amphitheater. The Paramount is the rare Long Island venue where a band with that catalog plays close enough that you can read the setlist taped to the stage.

Here is the thing about a Saturday night show in Huntington village in August. The show is not the problem. New York Avenue is. The municipal lots behind Main Street fill by 7 because the restaurants are full before a single ticketholder shows up, and the Elm Street garage backs up onto the street when the show lets out around 10:30. People end up circling, parking eight blocks up a hill, then walking back in the dark. If dinner in the village is part of the plan, and it usually is, a drop at the door and a pickup on a side street you agree on in advance removes the circling entirely. We run Huntington constantly and we know which streets actually clear after a Paramount show.

East Hampton Library's Authors Night — East Hampton

Saturday, August 8, 5 PM reception, 8 PM dinners | Herrick Park, 67 Newtown Lane, East Hampton

The 22nd annual Authors Night is the East Hampton Library's biggest fundraiser and the closest thing the Hamptons summer has to a literary main event. One hundred authors under a tent on the Herrick Park field starting at 5, including Tom Clavin and Karine Jean-Pierre. Cocktails, book signings, and the chance to actually talk to writers whose books are on your nightstand. At 8 the VIP ticketholders scatter to private dinner parties across the village, each hosted for one or more of the authors. Reception tickets are $150 and dinners start at $500, through authorsnight.org or the library on Main Street.

This is the clearest car service case of the weekend and it is not close. Herrick Park is the parking field that everyone shopping East Hampton Village normally uses. Take that field out of circulation for a tented event on a peak August Saturday and the village parking math collapses. Enforcement is real, the time limits are short, and the walk from wherever you find a spot is not what you want in the clothes people wear to this. The bigger issue is the 8 PM dinner. You are going to a private home you have never been to, on an unlit back road, after a cocktail reception. Being driven from the tent to the dinner and home afterward is the whole point. We work the Hamptons all summer and we handle that sequence as one booking.

Chris Botti at Westhampton Beach PAC — Westhampton Beach

Saturday, August 8, 8 PM | Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center, 76 Main St, Westhampton Beach

Chris Botti plays WHBPAC Saturday night. Grammy-winning trumpeter, decades of work with Sting, Streisand, Bocelli and Lady Gaga, and a set built on standards and long stretches of improvisation. The theater is small and the acoustics are why people book it.

WHBPAC has no parking lot. None. The venue itself tells you to arrive early and hunt for free village parking on Main Street and the side streets, which on an August Saturday evening means competing with everybody having dinner on Main. Add the crawl on Montauk Highway through Quogue and Hampton Bays and "arrive early" turns into leaving Nassau at 5:30 for an 8 o'clock curtain. A drop directly in front of the theater is the answer, and we cover all of Suffolk County including the run out 27.

Long Island Retro Gaming Expo — Garden City

Saturday, August 8, 10 AM–8 PM and Sunday, August 9, 10 AM–5 PM | Cradle of Aviation Museum, Charles Lindbergh Blvd, Garden City

The Retro Gaming Expo hits its last two days at the Cradle of Aviation, and 2026 is the year it celebrates 30 years of the Nintendo 64. Playable arcade cabinets and consoles inside the airplane hangar, a vendor marketplace, panels, a cosplay contest, and a retro game museum next to the arcade walk. Weekend and single-day passes both available. If you have a ten-year-old and a forty-year-old in the same house, this is the rare event that works for both.

The Cradle shares its lot with the Nassau Coliseum complex and Nassau Community College, which sounds like plenty of parking until a 10-to-8 Saturday puts everyone in and out at unpredictable times. The real friction is the Charles Lindbergh Boulevard approach off Hempstead Turnpike, and a full day at an expo ends with tired kids and a bag of vendor-hall purchases to carry across a large lot. A drop at the entrance fixes that. We are all over Garden City and central Nassau.

Come From Away at The Gateway — Bellport

Sunday, August 9, 2 PM and 7 PM | The Gateway, 215 South Country Rd, Bellport

Come From Away opened at The Gateway this weekend and runs through September 6, with two performances Sunday. The true story of the 7,000 airline passengers whose planes were diverted into Gander, Newfoundland on September 11, 2001, and the small town that took them in. A hard subject handled with real warmth. The Gateway does full-scale productions in Bellport, still one of the better-kept secrets on the South Shore.

Sunday afternoon on South Country Road in August means beach traffic unwinding at the same time a matinee crowd arrives. The Gateway's lot is workable but tight on a two-show day, when the matinee has not fully cleared before the evening crowd shows up. If you are coming from Nassau or the North Shore, the ride down and back is the part worth handing off, and Bellport village afterward is worth an hour if you are not rushing to a car.

Hamptons Dance Project VIII — East Hampton

Sunday, August 9, 6 PM | Fireplace Lodge, Springs, East Hampton

The eighth year of the Hamptons Dance Project brings American Ballet Theatre dancers to an outdoor stage at Fireplace Lodge in Springs, with guest choreographers and singer-songwriter Rozzi. Outdoor ballet at 6 PM in August, danced by ABT principals and soloists. It is a small program and it does not stay available long.

Springs is the part of East Hampton where the roads narrow and the GPS gets optimistic. Fireplace Lodge sits down residential lanes with limited on-site parking and no shoulder to speak of, and the late arrivals end up parking a genuine walk away in fading light. Being dropped at the entrance and picked up at the same spot is the difference between an evening and an errand.

Also on this weekend

Wölffer Estate in Sagaponack has vineyard yoga both mornings at 9 and 10:15, plus Rum Punch Mafia playing reggae at the Winestand Saturday at 5 through sunset. Fran Lebowitz is at Guild Hall Sunday at 7, Nimesh Patel does stand-up at Westhampton Beach PAC Sunday at 8, and CRESLI runs a whale watch out of Montauk Sunday at 2 with registration required. If the day involves the wine trail, Route 25 and Sound Avenue on an August Sunday afternoon is not where anybody should be testing their judgment. Booking the driver is the most common summer call we get.

One Call Covers the Whole Weekend

A rock show in Huntington, a hundred authors under a tent in East Hampton, jazz on Main Street in Westhampton, an arcade in an airplane hangar in Garden City, a matinee in Bellport, ballet in the woods in Springs. Six corners of the island, same underlying problem in every one. The event is never the hard part. Herrick Park being a tent instead of a parking lot, a Westhampton theater with no lot at all, and the Springs back roads at dusk are where a good weekend gets long.

We have been running these roads for 20 years, from New York Avenue out to Montauk, and we plan the drop and the pickup around how each place actually fills and empties. We cover all of Nassau and Suffolk, the Hamptons and the North Fork, and if the weekend also involves a flight we handle the JFK and LGA runs too. See our Long Island car service details, or request a quote and we will take it from there. The car will be there.

Best Things To Do on Long Island This Weekend — August 8–9, 2026