On a dog day this summer, I paid a visit to Oak Bluffs. With midsummer traffic, it’s a bit of a jaunt from West Tisbury where I now live, but Oak Bluffs is on the water and West Tisbury center isn’t, and getting a glimpse of boats and a harbor seemed a cooling and inviting prospect. My Saturday afternoon stroll along the harbor and Circuit avenue brought back many memories.
Ask for a naked Fat Ronnie and it can only get better from there.
That’s the basic half-pound burger at Fat Ronnie’s, the new burger joint on Circuit avenue in Oak Bluffs, which comes with the simple fixings of a beef patty and bun. There are also 22 toppings (30 by the end of the summer) that you can choose from, or the fish burger made with haddock, the turkey or veggie burger or the burrito burger, to name a few.
Ray (Scott) Santinello was five years old when he got his first haircut. It took place on the third floor of his family’s home in Springfield, and the barber was a young friend of the family. It was the 1950s and the barber, Benito Mancinone, had recently immigrated to the city from Molise, a small town located on a mountain in Italy.
Mr. Santinello is 61 now and Benny the Barber, long a mainstay of Circuit avenue in Oak Bluffs, is still cutting his hair.
“He’s my barber. I just don’t change,” Mr. Santinello said on a recent Tuesday morning.
In light of several renovation projects around the downtown area, the Oak Bluffs selectmen Monday reconsidered a longstanding town policy to prohibit downtown construction work from June 1 to Sept. 15.
At a special meeting, the selectmen adopted clarifying regulations to allow construction work inside buildings during the summer with several conditions, including no work on weekends and nights.
Oak Bluffs entered the summer season Tuesday with heated debate over issues from one end of Circuit avenue to the other. At the upper end of the avenue, unfinished construction on the Edgartown National Bank’s new building was a central point of contention. Later, selectmen grappled with whether to allow a stationary food truck on the lower end of the avenue.
Winter on Circuit avenue can be quiet. Down at the Good Ship Lollipop only a few customers find their way to the door seeking chocolate treats. And yet the candy store does have at least one daily customer who keeps knocking, literally, at the window.