Tisbury police chief Daniel Hanavan is bracing for the thousands of cars and visitors that will disembark daily from ferries into Vineyard Haven streets this summer. Edgartown police chief Antone Bettencourt is taking special note of the rise of underage alcohol purchases, while his Oak Bluffs counterpart, Erik Blake, is getting ready for summer bar closings in his town full of bustling night spots.

Coming on the heels of a successful Memorial Day weekend, new Edgartown business owners expressed excitement for the coming season and the hope that they are helping to breathe new life into a downtown that has seen a good deal of commercial space turnover in recent years. The trend has not translated to empty storefronts; instead where one business moves out, another takes its place, and the retail landscape this summer is a lively mix of old and new.

Want cupcakes? Well, you won’t find any at Johnny Cupcakes, the new store that opened last Saturday on Circuit avenue in Oak Bluffs.

The store may smell like frosting, and the décor may include a giant whisk and a stack of cupcake tins, but the pastry display cases aren’t refrigerated because they contain non-perishable items: limited edition T-shirts.

“We trick a lot of hungry people,” said Johnny Earle, founder and CEO of Johnny Cupcakes.

Last Sunday evening at the Old Sculpin Gallery, as the Chappaquiddick ferry shuttled back and forth and fishermen dangled their lines off the boardwalk, art enthusiasts and passersby contemplated the artistic expertise of three recent high school graduates, Noelle Nelson and Courtney Mussell, winners of the Martha’s Vineyard Art Association 2012 Scholarship, and alternate Christine Janak.

The wind whistling across the Great Plains of Katama is music to the ears of Lily Walter as she works her one-acre plot at the Farm Institute. A few short miles away in Oak Bluffs, Molly Flam is turning her love of flowers into a business plan. And up in West Tisbury where the summer traffic thins and cows and horses graze by the roadside, Rusty Gordon is striking out on his own as a small grower for the first time in 23 years.