💆 You Walk In For a Massage and Leave Feeling Like You Went Somewhere

🌪️ Tornado Rips Through Atlantic Beach, Leaving Dozens of Cabanas in Ruins

🦟 Suffolk Reports Its First Human West Nile Virus Case of the Season

🍎 Free Breakfast and Lunch Land in Nassau Schools This Fall

You walk in expecting a massage and you leave feeling like you went somewhere. That's the difference Rachel Dorfman is chasing at Massage Fitness Works and More, and after five minutes in her chair you understand she means it literally. Nothing here is cookie cutter. Want hot stones worked into your session? Just say so. Want to talk through what's actually going on in your body before she even touches you? She's already listening.

Rachel has been massaging people since she was a kid practicing on her own family, which tells you something about where this was always headed. During the pandemic she was kept on as essential staff at a practice whose owner kept telling her it would eventually be hers. It took a while, but three years ago it finally was. Since then the space has grown from 1,600 square feet to 5,200, and what started as a solo massage practice has become a full wellness hub.

Under one roof now: massage therapy, red light therapy, a pelvic floor machine, and a head spa that's less traditional spa treatment and more of an ASMR experience. Beyond Rachel's own hands, the space houses acupuncture, pain management, aesthetics, reiki, chiropractic care, and a psychologist, independent practitioners she's built a network around so clients can find nearly everything they need in one visit.

Worth knowing if you're pricing it out: half-hour treatments start around $75, hour sessions run $170 to $175, with flexibility built in for anyone on a tighter budget. Rachel's philosophy is that nobody should be priced out of feeling better, and she means it enough to break a session into payments if that's what makes it work for you.

What's coming next is a bigger push into the membership side of the business, along with a dedicated red light therapy room designed around guided meditation rather than just a chair and a timer. She's also floating the idea of pickup massage service for travelers with layovers at the nearby airport, the kind of idea that only comes from someone who genuinely likes solving problems for people.

Follow Rachel at https://www.instagram.com/massagefitnessworksandmore or reach out through https://www.massagefitnessworksandmore.com/ to book, and if you're ever in the area, she means it when she says just stop in and say hi.

Join us in welcoming Massage Fitness Works and More to the neighborhood spotlight, proof that real care and real growth can come from the same person answering her own phone.

Thursday evening's storm cell turned out to be more than a bad squall. Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman confirmed a tornado had touched down in Atlantic Beach, the first to hit the county in nearly five years, and declared a state of emergency while search teams checked for anyone trapped along the shore.

The worst of it landed at the Sun n Surf Beach Club, where about 30 one story cabanas were damaged or destroyed and a staff member was hurt, though they declined medical attention. County fire officials mobilized roughly 200 firefighters from 13 departments, along with technical rescue and hazmat crews, as reports came in of drivers stuck in floodwater along the south shore the same night.

Both Sun n Surf and neighboring Silver Point are closed until an official all clear, and nearby New York Beach Club has offered its amenities to displaced members in the meantime. Club ownership says it's aiming to reopen before Labor Day, but for now the cleanup along that stretch of Atlantic Beach is still very much underway.

👉 Read more: Long Beach, NY Patch

The mosquito news out of Suffolk has gone from a watch list to a real case. County health officials confirmed the season's first human West Nile virus infection, involving a Brookhaven resident over 50, as positive mosquito samples keep climbing across the county.

The latest batch added 31 more positive samples, pushing the season total past 80, with hits recorded from Cold Spring Harbor and Northport out to Rocky Point, Mount Sinai and Aquebogue on the North Fork. Health officials say the virus is now considered widespread in the local mosquito population heading into the last stretch of summer.

Most people who get bitten never develop symptoms, but officials are reminding residents, especially those over 60, to clear standing water, use repellent at dawn and dusk, and cover up during peak mosquito hours. With warm weather sticking around into September, county crews aren't easing off spraying and larvicide treatments just yet.

👉 Read more: RiverheadLOCAL

Two Nassau districts just made the lunch line a little easier on families. Starting September 2, all students at Sewanhaka Central High School District's five high schools, Elmont Memorial, Floral Park Memorial, H. Frank Carey, New Hyde Park Memorial and Sewanhaka High School, will get one free breakfast and one free lunch every school day through the federal Community Eligibility Provision.

Over in the New Hyde Park-Garden City Park School District, the board approved a new food service partnership with Ordo that kicks off in September too, promising fresh, chef-prepared meals with rotating seasonal menus and an online ordering system so families can see what's coming before their kids do.

Neither program requires paperwork or income verification, which is the whole point of community eligibility: it takes the stigma and the application forms out of getting a kid fed at school. For a lot of Nassau households, that's one less thing to budget for as the new year kicks off.

👉 Read more: Long Island Press

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