After a year of negotiating with the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), the husband and wife team of Daniel Sauer and Wenonah Madison-Sauer signed a lease on Monday to take over Back Alley’s in West Tisbury.

The Sauers plan to operate a counter-service establishment with a focus on homemade, Island-grown food.

Don’t Stop the Music

Musicians from the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School last weekend participated in the All Cape and Islands Music Festival held at Bourne High School.

The students were chosen by audition in November; it was the third consecutive year that all the regional high school students who auditioned were accepted.

With a special town meeting to cut a quarter million dollars from the current fiscal year budget in Oak Bluffs already scheduled for Feb. 22, on Tuesday selectmen turned their attention to the 2012 budget where the situation is even worse, with a $1.1 million projected deficit.

At the outset selectmen voted to approve a hiring freeze for the coming year, a move that will save the town $300,000.

But whether town leaders will need to ask voters for a Proposition 2 1/2 override remains an unsettled question.

This is where old ferries go when they die: to the scrap metal yard.

The ferry Islander, the Vineyard’s favorite diesel ferry that served the Steamship Authority from 1950 to 2007, is now being cut up into pieces somewhere on the New Jersey shoreline.

After she was sold by the Steamship Authority for $500,000, the Islander had a tough go in New York city running between the Battery Maritime Building and Governors Island.

Two years ago she was sold on eBay for $23,600.

Now she is scrap metal.

Sometime this summer, Vineyarders will have another opportunity to buy freshly-harvested blue mussels from Vineyard Sound. The forecast is even better for the year 2012, if all goes according to plan for Menemsha fishermen Alec Gale and Tim Broderick.

The two men have big plans. They have been working with the town of Chilmark, the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group and others on an experimental blue mussel farm off the north shore of the Vineyard.

Delta Air Lines announced this week it would begin seasonal daily, nonstop service between the Vineyard and New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport from May 25 through Sept. 6 this year.

Service will be operated with 50-seat CRJ-200 regional jets.

Delta’s managing director for domestic network planning, Joe Esposito, said the airline’s “global gateway at JFK will provide convenient one-stop connecting service between Martha’s Vineyard and nearly 50 international destinations.”

Still reeling from the revelation last week that the West Tisbury School will need over $1.5 million in repairs, on Wednesday the selectmen discussed the town’s next steps.

Selectman Cynthia Mitchell, who also serves on the capital improvements planning committee, said that the group had met on Monday to discuss the news in light of the town’s other major capital projects, including a $5 million library renovation, half of which may be covered by a state grant, and new police station that could cost the town up to $2 million.

None of this year’s snowfalls has amounted to a blizzard, but the town of Tisbury’s response might well qualify as one — a paper blizzard.

The town has decided to get tough on people who do not clear snow from their sidewalks, and in pursuit of the goal of slip-free footpaths has issued hundreds of warnings and citations to businesses and residents over recent weeks.

Yet many sidewalks still are not being cleared.

Playboy, back in its heyday, published some great literature. This helped bring a bit of cover to those buying the magazine.

“Hey, I’m only interested in the articles,” was the standard line.

Next week the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition hits the stands. Although not completely naked, the models just about bare all. And the cover line this year for any guy caught by his wife or girlfriend glassy-eyed and drooling over the pictures?

In a few months gulls will patrol the dunes of South Beach seeking the ill-grasped sandwiches of naive tourists, but on Thursday the deserted area was the domain of “the bird.” That’s what contractor Michael Warminsky calls the extremely low-flying, modified Bell 206 helicopter that began sniffing Vineyard beaches this week for what remains of the physical legacy of the Vineyard’s encounter with World War II.