Once upon a summer my friends and I decided to go to Nantucket, a vacation paradise that is located off the coast of cape cod in Massachusetts. Although I had been to the Cape over 54 times, I had never been to the elusive, exclusive and evasive island known as Nantucket. This intro is shitty but im done;.

There is only one way to get to Nantucket. Actually there are three ways but the other two require you to be a rich business tycoon or the heir to a coal mine. You can fly in via private plane (Nantucket has a small airport); you can take the fast ferry, or you can save thirty bucks, waste 2 hours of your life, and take the slow ass ferry.

Once the slow ass ferry actually arrived, there was a mad rush to board. I wasn't sure if everyone was just excited to begin their vacation, or if they wanted to make sure that they got a seat at the top. The ferry adheres very strictly to the schedule, so if you need to be on board by 9:35, you damn well better be on at 9:35. The slow ass ferry waits for no-one.

This was the second ferry of the day, and it wasn't all that crowded. There were plenty of room to spread out and even take a nap if one was so inclined. The weather was foggy and overcast, causing most of the passengers to take shelter below deck, which was outfitted with touchscreen gaming machines and televisions set to the Fox news channel.
I didn't take many pictures on board the ship, because everything just looked so cloudy and depressing. Luckily, once we made it to the island, the sun finally showed up.



Once off the boat, we were dumped directly into Nantucket center. Some of the roads are cobblestone, which helps preserve the beauty and awe of the past. The roadways are also designed to incline the millionare residents to purchase big ass SUVs so that the roads don't shake the shit out of your car and eat up the tires, as was the case with ours.



Most of the restaurants and stores in Nantucket you will have never heard of, so most of the time you will have no idea what anything will be like. While this can be an exciting and adventurous change of pace, it can also be very surreal. I am still in disbelief that there is not one McDonalds on the entire island - not that I would have eaten there; its just nice to know that there is always a dollar menu double cheeseburger at your fingertips.

Of course, it is summer tourist season so everything will be very expensive. An easy way to tell how expensive something is is to see what fancy names they give to common everyday things. A sandwich shop is cheap; a dellicatessin is not. Soup is cheap; bisque is not.
Nantucket only has dellicatessins and bisque.

The Turkey Terrific

Pictured above was one of the greatest sandwiches I have ever eaten, the Turkey Terrific. While costing a tourist-gouging eight dollars and only boasting four ingredients; turkey, stuffing, bread and cranberry sauce, it is still a work of perfection. It is the signature sandwich of Provisions, which even sells shirts that pay homage to it. I didn't buy a shirt, but next time I will. I did however buy all the required ingrediants after I got home, ensuring that I will be eating a makeshift Turkey Terrific for lunch everyday for the next three years.

While Nantucket does have a police force, most of the patrolling is done by police on bicycle in town and 4 wheelers on the beach. Either way, they really didn't seem to care that we were always drinking in public. It is also possible that our brown bags completely fooled everyone.

Shopping isn't limited to the center - the route to the beach is also full of things that millionares can buy - from fancy gazebo birdhouses and copper pigs to this $1,500 treasure chest. Ironically, if I did buy the treasure chest, I wouldn't have any money left to put in it.

The perimeter of the airport is guarded by a chain link fence and family friendly barbed wire fence. Apparently the exterior of the airport was used the mid 90s TV sitcom 'Wings'. However noo ne has ever cared about that show so we will move on.

The last beach I went to was on Cape Cod, which is easily accessible to anyone within driving distance. The downside to this is that everyone does go there, resulting in overcrowding beaches with screaming kids, morons blasting 80s style boomboxes, and a greater chance of getting spotted trying to sneak a drink from a warm can of Fosters beer. Not this beach though. Even dogs could roam freely, shitting anywhere they pleased.

While the beach adventure was epic, there is only so much of it you can take in one sitting. While one may think the beach would be a pile of never ending fun, in reality it becomes a little tedious. You never get to see the bikini volleyball showdowns or sandcastle building/explosion competitions that the spike network would lead you to believe happen 24/7. Usually you just swim once or twice while trying to apply enough sunscreen and avoid eating sandwiches that are full of actual sand. So we headed back to our shelter for the night, which turned out to be quite an impressive house a short distance away.

If the drab, grey siding of the house depresses you, it may further sadden you to know that you can't do a god damn thing about it. Nantucket apparently has some sort of homeowner assocation law that requires every house to look the same. Something about preserving the look and feel of the olden days. Either that or the owner of a failing hardware store that sells only grey shingles is slipping greenbacks to a friend at town hall.

Pictured above is the kitchen area of the house, complete with some stupid hanging baskets. I would like to know at what point in history did someone decide to take baskets and use them for interior decorating. Its incredibly common too - although you may not even realize it. I would like to take every basket in america that is currently being used for decoration purposes and fill them to the brim with scorpions. Then I will drink that tequila and celebrate.



There was even a piano in the living room! Thats how you can tell a place has class. The piano was decorated with five picture frames, a sailboat, one of those metal wind chime things, a vase of pussywillows and not one but two lamps. At one point I successfully played the end theme of super mario bros 2.

After a hearty meal, we all decided it was time to see what kind of nightlife this old island had to offer. I enjoyed this first bar - the Nantucket Lobster Trap. Although the menu wasnt all that large, it offered a decent selection of good summer brew.
If you are more of a mixed-drink sort of person, your options consist of apple juice, windex or peanut butter, which are all kept in close reach nearby.

While I was looking around the resturant, I came across what seemed to be a sort of employee training guide, which instructs the wait staff on how to converse with their guests. Full of spelling errors and unnessessary punctuation, these instructions would surely horrify most any patron. .... My favorite part is at the end, where if Roy finds out that you order the white zinfindel, it makes him clinically depressed and angry about ice.

The Above series of pictures pretty much depicts the events that happened between 10pm and 2am. Its just hard to turn 'we drank beer and danced like morons' into an entire paragraph.

Ah the next morning - waking up not realizing where the hell you are and the proud owner of a sinful headache, not to mention that your wallet is pretty much empty and you may or may not owe everyone apologies.

We ultimately decided to face the harsh daylight and enjoy some lunch. Pretty much everyone ordered fish and chips. Not really because anyone even wanted to eat it, but goddammit this was Nantucket and it's what you're supposed to do. Just the same way that if you went to Coney Island, it would be your patriotic duty to stuff your gullet with hot dogs.

I spent my lunch staring at this topless mermaid.

Like it or not, it was now time to go home. Average joes like us had to get back to work, and everyone else had to get back to designing new hedge mazes for their mansions. We got to the waiting area a little early - however soon enough this entire place was filled with trophy wives and fat children.

This line of cars is waiting to be loaded onto the boat for transportation back to the mainland. Some people are actually rich enough to do this.

We did however get one last thrill for the price of admission that weekend. About halfway through the ride, everyone felt the boat make a sudden turn. There was something in the water! In the middle of nowhere! I was secretly hoping for a dead body, but eventually turned out to be a dead dolphin. The boat did a huge circle around it, and then went back on course. I am sure however that we were mere minutes away from seeing a great white shark attack the shit out of it, which would have been the greatest thing to happen ever.

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