PEOPLE WATCH

There Goes ‘The Neighborhood’: Cartoonist Jerry Van Amerongen has announced that he will stop drawing his single-panel comic strip, “The Neighborhood,” which appears in 125 newspapers nationwide, including The Times. The strip’s final installment will be published July 28. “The Neighborhood” was noted for its off-the-wall humor, featuring odd, frowsy characters and their mangy pets. The 49-year-old Van Amerongen explained that his decision grew out of his frustration with the limits of the single-panel format. He’s developing a multipanel strip named “Ballard Street,” after the street he lived on as a boy in Grand Rapids, Mich., and hopes to “add more depth and maybe more texture by creating recurring characters with personalities.”