Choose Granite Countertops in Oak Bluffs, MA for Elegance and Durability

Black August in Martha’s Vineyard is always a vibe. Each year, thousands of beautiful melanated people make their way to the upscale Massachusetts island town of Oak Bluffs to live their best lives in one of the country’s most exclusive zip codes.

From industry parties and soaking up sun on Inkwell Beach to the annual Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Fest, the entire month of August is literally one massive homecoming for all who visit.

As you map out your future Oak Bluffs and Martha’s Vineyard plans, here are 20+ Black-owned businesses for you to support during your trip.

For some of the best chicken and waffles in the area, make your way to Biscuits. Located in the heart of Oak Bluffs, this breakfast and brunch spot is the go-to place for your morning meals.

Open for breakfast and lunch, Edgartown Diner serves up everything from breakfast platters to juicy burgers and fries. Oh, and you can’t forget a milkshake, too. The eatery is located in the same building as Edgartown Cinemas. Also owned by the same owner—Chef Ralston Francis—Flavors MVis a sit-down Caribbean restaurant that pays homage to Francis’ Jamaican roots. On the dinner menu you’ll find: jerk chicken, stuffed snapper, as well as raw shrimp and oysters sold by the half or full dozen.

Chef Deon aka ‘The Three Island Chef’ splits his time and talents between Martha’s Vineyard, Anguilla, and Jamaica. Currently located within the VFW Kitchen, you can order Chef Deon’s famous island-style cooking for lunch and dinner. Or you can book him for any catering needs, too. Open Monday through Saturday, Vineyard Caribbean cooks up some of the island’s most authentic Caribbean dishes including: ackee and saltfish, oxtail, as well as stew peas. Like many others in the area, they also offer catering options, too.

Owned by Winston and Lisa Christie, Winston’s Kitchen is open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the Oak Bluffs harbor. The waterside eatery features specials that change each day as well as regular staples such as breakfast sandwiches on local Cape Cod bagels as well as fresh soups and subs.

If you’ve seen photos of the iconic Victorian home known as the Narragansett House in Martha’s Vineyard, then you know it’s part of a trio of homes now owned by Inkwell Haven. All properties are Victorian style homes located in Oak Bluffs and are all within walking distance to the area’s most popular restaurants and attractions.

Another iconic home, the historic Oak Bluffs Inn is situated in downtown Oak Bluffs. Only five-minutes away from the beach, you can spend your day on the sand before heading back for an evening of relaxation.

The historic Inn at Shearer Cottage was opened over a century ago by Charles Shearer, the son of an enslaved woman. It became the go-to summer haven for upper and middle class families during times when Black travelers didn’t have many options for safe accommodation. It underwent renovations during the 2022 season and will reopen in 2023.

If you’re looking for a little more space for your group, consider booking one of the Black-owned rental homes in the area. The Larrier House and Sea U on the Vineyard are all available for full rental. Just be sure to reserve as soon as possible because these homes book fast, especially during Black August.

Get in a little retail therapy between activities while on-island. For unique clothing items, check out Sideline, Superar Strike, Legendary MV andIsland Life Studio. They all have you covered with last-minute needs or even comfortable athleisure for your trip back home. Lennox & Harvey is your go-to for beach, body, and home goods.

For the men, if you need a fresh line-up before your Black August events, stop byBlair’s Barber Shop in Vineyard Haven across from Woodland Center. A regular cut is $25 and a lineup is only $15. Ladies, if you need to fit in a bit of self-care during your MV visit, head to Caleen’s Day Spa. The full-service spa specializes in facials, make-up, nail services and more.

Art lovers, you’re in luck as well. There are several galleries in the area including: long time Cousen Rose Gallery, Knowhere Art Gallery and Harry Seymore Gallery—which is only open by private appointment.

This summer Nancy’s Restaurant in Oak Bluffs will mark its 60th year in business.

The iconic Island eatery on the harbor has fed generations of Islanders and visitors and is a favorite of the Obama family.

Co-owner Doug Abdelnour, also co-owner of Nomans and 20x9 (which is headed to a new location), started busing tables at Nancy’s when he was 10 years old. Now 43, his 33 years in the business make him a grizzled veteran of the Vineyard restaurant community.

Despite a worldwide pandemic and an economy in freefall, he’s moving ahead with plans to open Nancy’s and Nomans.

“I’m in a lucky spot because I already do a lot of takeout,” Mr. Abdelnour said in a phone interview this week. “At Nomans we’ll have online ordering from the website or the Toast app. We’re going to set up racks inside the restaurant where you can grab your food that will have your name on it. We’re prepared to regulate how many people will be allowed in the building at one time. We’ll have designated parking spots where you tell us what car you have, when you pull up, you pop your trunk and we put the food in your car for you. We have the opportunity to make Nomans a really solid takeout place that’s really safe because there’s tons of space outside and inside the building.”

Nancy’s will also have online ordering. The menu will be a combination of offerings from the upstairs restaurant and the snack bar. It will have a generous offering of Middle Eastern food, like it did when his grandfather, an emigre from Lebanon, opened the restaurant in 1960.

“Our Middle Eastern food has always been popular with Islanders, so it’ll have a big presence on our menu,” Mr. Abdelnour said. “Hopefully you’ll be able to come to the snack bar window and pick up your food. It would be great if people could come to the window and order it too, but at this point we don’t know. We’ve got a six-person management crew at Nancy’s and we’ve been meeting and going through every possible scenario. If it’s just takeout, how do we do it? How many staff members is it going to take?”

Restricted outdoor seating, now allowed in some states, remains a moving target. Even if limited seating is eventually allowed on the Vineyard, Mr. Abdelnour thinks it may not be economically viable. “Some states are allowing 25 per cent capacity, the highest I’ve heard is 40 per cent capacity,” he said. “At Nancy’s and Nomans, it’s very hard to make a profit every year with 100 per cent occupancy. Right now we’re guessing at what the space requirements will be. We’ve talked about having plexiglass between tables on the patio and at the snack bar window. We could literally spend ten grand on plexiglass without knowing if it’s required or not. And it might be ridiculous once you put it up. If just masks are required, what kind of masks are acceptable? Is a bandana okay? We don’t know if we should be sourcing [N-95] masks. There’s so much up in the air that it’s truly impossible to plan.”

Late last month a 17-member reopening advisory board was created by the Baker administration to provide a strategy for restarting the state economy. The board consists of business owners, public health officials and municipal leaders and it will make its recommendations to Governor Baker on May 18.

Mr. Abdelnour advocates the creation of a similar advisory board on the Island. He thinks it could include representatives from the hospital, health agents, public officials from each town, business owners, Steamship Authority and others.

“I agree that public health is top priority. I just want us all to be on the same page and sharing information equally,” he said. “Right now there’s a lot of mixed messages and you don’t know what to believe. The health agents have to do the contact tracing for each case of Covid-19 and that’s a lot of work. It seems like an advisory board working on a set of Islandwide regulations, with the health agents’ input, could expedite the process. I think the health agents will find that restaurants will be very happy to work with them.”

Nantucket recently created a draft reopening plan for restaurants that allows for two seatings for breakfast, lunch and dinner at 40 per cent capacity, on a reservation-only basis. Dinner seatings would be at 6:30 and 8:30 with an hour maximum dining time.

But in Mr. Abdelnour’s view, it’s not a workable plan.

“The theory is you’d be allowed to clean the dining room between the two seatings. That might sound reasonable to a health agent but there’s no way you can make that work in reality,” he said. “You can’t have a server help all those people at one time and your kitchen couldn’t handle it either. Nobody is set up for it, unless you’re a banquet hall.”

He said the plan is also questionable from a public health standpoint. “What if you have 200 people waiting outside Nancy’s at 6:30 at night and then those 200 people leave and pass by 200 people waiting for the 8:30 group?” he said.

“This is why it’s important that we’re all involved when regulations are put together. We need business people helping make the policies. We might have a different idea that will work for both sides, and might help keep more people in business.”

Clarification: Seaweeds, a wine bar owned by Olivia Pattison and Danielle Pattavina, is opening in the space formerly occupied by 20x9, which is moving to a new location, still to be determined.

The Ocean View restaurant, a long-established Oak Bluffs eatery and bar, was destroyed in a fire Thursday morning that drew a comprehensive response from Island fire departments.

Speaking to the Gazette by phone late Thursday, Oak Bluffs fire chief Nelson Wirtz said the state fire marshall was on the scene, and that an investigation was under way.

“It looks like it’ll be a total loss,” said the chief, who was off-Island attending a conference but had monitored the work of firefighters from afar.

The two-alarm call went out just after 10 a.m. Thursday for the fire at 16 Chapman avenue. Heavy smoke filled the air and was visible across the harbor. Flames could be seen shooting from the roof of the restaurant. A third alarm went out just after 10:30 a.m. calling for all fire department heads and requesting an ambulance on the scene.

Chief Wirtz said crews arrived to a building engulfed in flames.

“When they got there, they had a nearly fully involved fire,” the chief said.

Firefighters from every Island town converged at the scene to knock down the blaze with a full array of apparatus. The Oak Bluffs ladder truck was at the forefront of the response effort, while trucks from other towns and fully clad firefighters crowded the pavement around the restaurant, their hoses snaking in every direction around the burning building.

Chief Wirtz said firefighters used two pipes flowing 1,500 gallons of water per minute as well as hoses to contain the fire. He was unsure the total amount of water used.

“I would say a lot,” he said.

No one was believed to be in the building at the time, and there were no reports of injuries.

Roads surrounding the restaurant and nearby park remained were closed off during the response.

At dusk Thursday, crews were still at the scene. “They’re still really busy down there,” Chief Wirtz said.

The restaurant has been closed for maintenance work and was due to open next week, according to owner Mike Santoro, who spoke to the Gazette by phone from Florida Thursday.

“It’s just a shock right now,” Mr. Santoro said. “It’s crazy.” He said he did not think there was anyone in the building at the time.

Mr. Santoro also said he had already received a flood of calls and messages from people offering their condolences.

“It makes it a little easier when the community reaches out,” he said.

He said the top priority at the moment is his employees.

“My thoughts are with my employees right now,” Mr. Santoro said.

Mr. Santoro bought the business from the Jackson family, former longtime owners, in 2015. The building is owned by Charles C. Hajjar, an Island real estate developer and businessman who owns several hotels and other properties.

Mr. Santoro, who leases the building from Mr. Hajjar, said he had contacted him to inform him about the fire.

The restaurant sits on the site of the old Ocean View Hotel, which was destroyed by fire on a bitterly cold night in January 1965. That fire too saw an all-out response from Island firefighters, who battled the blaze for hours.

Only one wall was left standing.

More pictures.

At their Thursday evening meeting, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission voted to approve a significant modification to the North Bluff Seawall Project that will feature a new roundabout at the intersection of Sea View Avenue and Circuit Avenue Extension in Oak Bluffs.

The project, brought to the commission by the town of Oak Bluffs in collaboration with Waterfield Design Group — the same company responsible for the design of the Oak Bluffs Circuit Ave. streetscape — aims to drastically improve traffic circulation and enhance the attractiveness of the area.

In addition to a landscaped roundabout, the revamping of the North Bluff will include a reconfiguration of parking spaces, and a more concise queuing area for Island Queen and HyLine passengers, complete with a concrete plaza and landscaped granite sitting walls that will double as stormwater planters.

The project had come to the commission as a modification to the North Bluff Seawall project, which was approved by the MVC and completed in 2016, and consisted of the installment of a 720-foot-long corrugated steel seawall and boardwalk from Oak Bluffs Harbor to the public fishing pier. The seawall project served as a component of Oak Bluffs’ streetscape master plan, and will connect to the new plans via a harborside walk.

The roundabout itself aims to alleviate “slow and disorganized [traffic] circulation,” the proposal states, in addition to addressing pedestrian safety concerns by adding crosswalks, of which the current site has none.

After deliberating on the project’s key issues, mainly traffic and transportation and scenic views, commissioners decided that the benefits far outweigh the detriments, ultimately approving the modification in a 13-1 vote.

After being met with some resistance in previous meetings by commissioners on the number of parking spaces that had been cut for the project, applicant Tim Wong of Waterfield Design Group offered to modify the proposed parking arrangements, resulting in only one less parking space than there is currently.

Additionally, minor changes were made to the plan’s taxi staging area to include both commercial/certified cabs and rideshare vehicles, in addition to relocating the tour bus staging area to enhance scenic views.

Commissioner Trip Barnes argued that the amount of parking that will be available is still not sufficient. He said the sitting areas by the passenger ferries seem to be a misuse of space, as it takes away from potential parking.

The sitting areas near “wayfinding” marks, he said, “that’s going to become a big ashtray and wastebasket.”

“The rotary is a good thing,” Barnes agreed, but said the rest of the project raises concerns: “We shouldn’t be giving up parking spaces.”

Commissioner Ernie Thomas agreed, and although he acknowledged the area is in need of work, said he is “totally at a loss as to why [the project] is an improvement … It feels like somebody designed this who hasn’t been there in the height of the season, and tried to pick someone up from a boat.”

Thomas, who works as a rideshare driver, said, “I don’t think this is going to work.”

Commissioner Doug Sederholm clarified that the current version of the plan only reduces parking spaces from 65 to 64. “It is now a complete and utter mess down there in the summer,” he said; the project will help “to create some order to it.”

“It does make sense to me, what their plan is,” Sederholm said, “The town seems comfortable with it, the town is proposing it, the town went out and got grant money to do it, let’s give them a chance. I think it’s a good plan.”

Commissioner Fred Hancock said the project is generally “a great benefit” to the area. “Currently, what you have is a big, ugly parking lot in between ferries,” he said, “It is not an attractive area.”

Commission vice chair Jim Vercruysse agreed, and said the project is indeed an improvement, as it “makes some order out of the chaos that is down there now.”

Commissioner Kathy Newman noted that the completed portions of the Oak Bluffs Streetscape project have “come out beautifully.”

“It’s not going to be a magical solution, but if it could improve a bit, that would be great,” she said.

“It seems like a huge improvement,” commissioner Brian Smith said, “I can’t see any reason to deny it.”

Commissioners subsequently approved the project in a 13-1 vote, with Thomas as the only dissenter.

After the vote, chair Joan Malkin offered her opinion: “I think it’s a great project,” she said. “I really look forward to it … I think it will make a wonderful gateway for Oak Bluffs, which is suffering in that regard at the moment.”

“I’m very happy that we were able to have some role in helping this become as great as I think it promises to be,” she said.

Under blue, magenta, and white lighting, Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School (MVRHS) students wearing all-black outfits performed in the annual 2022 Winter Concert at the Performing Arts Center. From the Minnesingers’ spirited performance of “Go Tell it on the Mountain,” arranged by Nicholas Vangeloff, to the M.V. Big Band swaying into Steve Slagle’s arrangement of “Fables of Faubus,” composed by Charles Mingus, the students earned the crowd’s applause on Thursday night.

The concert had a couple of first occurrences. The school’s percussion ensemble made its debut, and new MVRHS drama teacher Nate Punches emceed the concert, providing humorous commentary while informing the audience about each piece, and highlighting the effort that manifested the concert.

“Our students worked really hard … It truly is an incredible sound,” Punches said, also underscoring the years teachers put into cultivating the high school’s performing arts culture.

The owners of Island Food Products have signed a purchase and sale agreement to buy the historic Oak Bluffs grocery Tony’s Market, marking a first foray into retail for the only Island-based food service distributor.

The agreement was signed Dec. 31 and includes separate clauses for the grocery business as well as the land located at 119 Dukes County avenue, both owners confirmed Monday. The sale is expected to close in late January or early February, owners said. The sale price has not yet been disclosed.

“We’re thrilled,” Adam Bresnick, a partner at IFP, told the Gazette Monday.

Longtime Tony’s Market owners Dave and Ellen Richardson expressed similar excitement.

“Both sides are enthusiastic about this, and I know this is going to go forward,” Mr. Richardson said in a phone interview.

Part Island bodega, part everyman general store, Tony’s Market has been a cornerstone Oak Bluffs grocery and retail mart for more than a century. The business, which includes a deli counter, food section and alcohol sales, has been continuously operating since 1887, according to Mr. Richardson, and has been known as Tony’s since at least World War II, when it was bought by the eponymous Tony Veira.

Mr. Richardson and his wife purchased the business in 1992 from previous owners Bill and Gerry Correllus.

Formerly a small grocery and deli in a neighborhood that included a fish and meat market, the store was expanded to its current size by Mr. Richardson after he took ownership. And while the meat and fish markets have since disappeared, replaced by what are now galleries in the Oak Bluffs arts district, the ever-reliable Tony’s remains.

“In the very beginning, it was groceries. The business center of Oak Bluffs was up there,” Mr. Richardson said. “It was handy for people. And it still is.”

Mr. Bresnick said that while Tony’s ownership is changing, the market, its mission, and name would stay the same. Although IFP will own the business, management will remain largely unchanged. And Mr. Richardson expressed excitement that longtime staff, including 30-year veteran manager Kelly Hill, would be staying on as well.

“Tony’s Market is Tony’s Market. They’re doing a great job, and the goal is to make it so that when our group does become the owners, nobody knows anything happened,” Mr. Bresnick said.

A broadline food distributor, IFP was founded in the late 1980s by John Roberts and now has an ownership group that includes Mr. Roberts’s son, Mr. Bresnick, as well as others with minority interests. The business has grown to become an essential cog in the Island’s food chain, supplying Vineyard restaurants and retailers with any and all items associated with food service, from paper to protein to dry goods, and transporting the products to the Island from the mainland.

“We’re the biggest little business nobody knows about,” Mr. Bresnick said.

The distributor has worked with Tony’s Market as a client since their founding and has deep familiarity with their operations and stock. But owning a retail business represents a new frontier for IFP — one Mr. Bresnick said they are excited to explore.

“There’s a very good synergy between the companies,” Mr. Bresnick said. “And it just seemed worth the risk to see if we could do something like that, to make the base of the business stronger for both sides.”

Both IFP and Tony’s owners said that the pandemic had created new challenges for their businesses. While Tony’s saw rare dips in sales, IFP had to adapt to a restaurant industry that essentially shuttered for the busiest months of the year. But retail remained strong, Mr. Bresnick said, and when Mr. Richardson, who just turned 80, put the grocery store on the market, purchasing Tony’s seemed like a safe next step.

The 10,000-square-foot market sits on a quarter-acre parcel assessed at $974,000, according to land records. Mr. Richardson purchased the land in 1995 for $165,000.

A separate agreement and down payment by Vineyard Haven grocer Elio Silva to purchase Tony’s fell through in November, Mr. Richardson confirmed, when Mr. Silva withdrew his interest. That left IFP to come to an agreement with the Richardsons.

“They’re sort of the retail version of what we are. When you walk in there they do a little bit of everything,” Mr. Bresnick said. “It just fits.”

Mr. Richardson, who is now living in Bristol, R.I., said he never considered changing the name of Tony’s Market when he purchased it. He expressed excitement that Mr. Bresnick and IFP felt similarly.

“As far as we were concerned and involved, it would always be Tony’s Market,” Mr. Richardson said. “It’s a good thing for the community, and the old ‘fella’ who turned 80 back in August.”