HOLLY NADLER
508-274-2329
When you first behold the new, unveiled bottom quad of Circuit avenue, you need to sit down and shut your eyes. As soon as you begin to breathe again, you root in your bag for sunglasses and that bottle of Excedrin migraine relief formula that, thank goodness, you purchased an hour before. You put on your shades and pound back three capsules, but as you rise from wherever you’ve managed to seat yourself, the situation sends you reeling back again.
You want to look anywhere but at the streets, but you’re mesmerized in a macabre sort of way. It must have been one of those designs that looked great on paper and sounded good in the pitching stage.
For anyone who hasn’t visited our fair downtown lately, this is what we’re dealing with:
Where the fork branches down from the Steamship and Lake avenue intersect at Circuit avenue, a mad street painter was turned loose on an unsuspecting citizenry. In every spot where pedestrians cross, we’ve got lines of white rectangles each the size of diving boards. There are enormous white arrows and ONLY signs that could probably be viewed from satellites in space. The chute descending from the ferry, once a wide, undefined road where bicyclists dingle-dangled and car drivers had the choice to wave others ahead or to madly plow into a gaggle of tourists holding a block party in the street, is now a horrifying spectacle of three boldly marked lanes, with so many arrows, lines, and ONLYs, you long for a blindfold and a cigarette before plunging ahead into the over-labeled abyss.
I know, in time this will literally fade away. But for now — and possibly the next two to three years — we’re looking at a series of street markings that bounce off the retina and rattle around in the brain like a pinball in a beeping, flashing, metal labyrinth. Let’s give credit where credit is due — there are some lovely improvements at Circuit and Lake. In the rectangle of land across from the visitors booth, an assortment of roses, petunias, and hydrangeas have been planted around a plaque dedicated to Joseph A. Farland. In fact, if the plaque is to be properly construed, this area is designated the Joseph A. Farland Square, something for which the late Mr. Farland might not have been willing to be given full credit.
But the fact is, that delightful first glimpse of town, with the lovingly restored Giordano’s and the Flying Horses in the foreground, and the mansard-roof towers above the Lamppost rising over the lower rim of town, all of this is cancelled out by the crazed new street markings.
I think the best thing we can do is jump up and down on the brash patches of paint, maybe roll around on them late at night, and if we have any herds of animals, let them graze at the intersection whenever traffic will allow. Eventually we’ll rub some of it away, and we can get back to our quiet, undistracted lives.
On the stars-of-the-future front, Oak Bluffs School students Belle Dinning, Angela Hayes, Emily Moore and James Robinson and charter school student Danielle Hopkins all have roles in My Mom Is Trying to Ruin My Life, which will be running at the Vineyard Playhouse over the next two weekends. The play was adapted by MJ Bruder Munafo from Kate Feiffer’s book of the same title.
At the Oak Bluffs School, eighth graders are just getting back from their trip to Philadelphia. June 15 is fine arts night and also the spring concert for grades four and five. June 16 at 5:30 p.m. in the Tabernacle is eighth grade graduation and on June 24, heavenly day!, school’s out for the summer.
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