Always Check the Leader Board

After federal regulators at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission made it illegal to keep any striped bass over thirty-five inches long, the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass & Bluefish Derby announced that the fish would be removed from the competition until further notice. “It’s not about that,” a Derby spokesperson told the Vineyard Gazette when asked if the ban on big fish forced their hand. “It’s about being leaders in encouraging a healthy stock for the future.”

Higher Math, Chappy Style

“The prices of the tickets were increased by 25% and 50%, not $0.25 and $0.50.”
  – “Chappy,” commenting on an article in the Gazette about Chappaquiddick residents’ outrage over the first fare increases on the Chappy Ferry in five years.

“To clarify, the year-round car and driver’s rate was increased by 50 cents, from $2 each way, to $2.50 each way, a 25 percent rate hike. The year-round passenger rate was raised 25 cents, from 50 cents to 75 cents each way, a 50 percent increase.”
  – Editor’s note in response.

Higher Math, Steamship Style

“It’s north of $70 million, yes.”
  – Steamship Authority general manager Robert Davis confirming that the estimated cost of the new Woods Hole terminal had risen again. “North of,” it was later revealed, means $93 million, a 32.8571429 percent increase.

Attention, Island Servers

“Waiters and waitresses, they’re such fine people. It really hit me. I don’t know what it was. There was a feeling – this person is amazing. That’s why I did it.”
  – Edgartown summer resident Ernie Boch Jr. explaining why he recently left a $5,000 tip on a $157 restaurant bill.

Don’t Blame Yourselves, Kids, This is Not About Yew

Earlier this year, students were reunited after four months during which half the Tisbury School student body attended classes at the high school while chipping lead paint was removed from the ninety-year-old building. A few weeks later the Martha’s Vineyard Times noticed that the stately tree that long grew by the schoolhouse door might be a highly poisonous yew. It was shortly removed. 

Oh Yay, Oh Yay, the Chilmark Porch is Now in Session

Approximately eighteen months after saying his Island neighbors were “shunning me and trying to ban me from their social life on Martha’s Vineyard,” Chilmark summer resident Alan Dershowitz told senators at the impeachment trial of President Trump that “if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.” Approximately one week later signs of another summer of discontent began to appear in Chilmark and West Tisbury.

Besides, Sears Left the Island Back in the Clinton Era

“I was at Martha’s Vineyard, and I had been getting instructions from the White House....They told me not to wear a bespoke suit. ‘We don’t want it to be about class.’ All of the sudden I was the upper-class black person against the working class. I go, ‘I’m the victim!’ They go, ‘No, don’t wear one of those suits.’ I go: ‘These are the only suits I have. I’m not going out to Sears and Roebuck and buying a suit.’ Then they go, ‘Do not fly down in a private plane.’”
  – West Tisbury summer resident Henry Louis Gates Jr. when asked recently by The New York Times about the famous “beer summit” with President Obama and the Boston police officer who mistakenly arrested Gates in his own home.