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10.15.17

Flotsam & Jetsam: Recent News You Can Sort of Use

Botch Park?

Mark Lovewell

First they wanted to pave the place and put up a parking lot. Then it was not quite a pink hotel, but some waterfront condos, and maybe a swinging hot spot. After years of tangling with the town, car magnate Ernie Boch Jr. – aka the Big Yellow Subaru – has a new plan for his long-vacant Beach Road, Vineyard Haven property: a park with pavers, flower gardens, and a compass rose. But don’t you make plans to go. “We don’t want to leave it open, it is private property, it is a private park, it’s not public,” a representative explained to the Tisbury selectmen, noting the gates might be opened for special events. Shoo, Boch Boch Boch Boch...

How Many Docks Must a Man Drive Off...

4: Number of cars driven into the water this past summer

2: Number of times the same driver drove into the water at the same spot (the Reading Room in Edgartown)

Yes, and How Many Boats Must a Man Burn Down...

Mark Lovewell

9: Number of boats that caught fire in or near Vineyard waters this past summer

2: Number of times the same boat caught fire           

1: Number of Oak Bluffs fireboats that caught fire

The Answer, My Friend...

James St. John

Now that Geoff Rose has received permission to set up his medical marijuana cultivation operation on Dr. Fisher Road in West Tisbury, the question is where can we buy the stuff? The answer is blowing in the blue smoke, though Rose has his sights set on a kushy joint: the log cabin in West Tisbury being vacated by Julie Robinson Interiors.

Peony Express

Mark Lovewell

Twenty-two-year-old landscaper Bryan Cimeno Jr. was tired of the Vineyard Haven post office looking like an eyesore and volunteered to upgrade the flowerbeds. With permission from the local postmaster, work began, people gave money, Island nurseries donated plants, and everyone lived happily ever after, the end. Until the U.S. Postal Service slapped a Return to Sender sticker on Cimeno’s efforts, stating that postal workers can’t accept gifts, and ordered the plants removed. Cimeno persisted, selectmen intervened, and the USPS awarded him a contract to continue his work. Score one for the people (and the plants) – that’s not your garden-variety government resolution.

Yeah, That Might Be a Good Idea....

“Now I have to go explain this to my wife.” – William Bryan of Oak Bluffs, in the MV Times after his partially finished modular home was destroyed when a crane became unbalanced and smashed into it.

She Came In Through the Treasurer’s Window

Timothy Johnson

Security was tightened at the Aquinnah Town Hall after a tireless employee was found climbing through a window on a Saturday. Assessor Angela Cywinski was working in her own office over the weekend when she realized she needed to access the locked treasury department to re-set an Internet router. “The fact that Adam has done it doesn’t make it right,” Selectman Jim Newman opined, referring to a previous use of a town window by an employee trying to do his job. A few weeks later the new town administrator, Jeffrey Madison, had the police remove Cywinski from her desk, this time for working five minutes overtime. Stay tuned.