The new year is a time for reflection. 2015 was a great year for Oak Bluffs, among the best since secession in 1880. According to the census, as of January 2015 we’re a town of 4,810 people with 4,346 housing units, 2,357 of which are vacant. This punctuates the fact that 54 per cent of our taxpayers who don’t live here year round are often under represented when it comes to voting.

Tis the season for partying, and since time immemorial Oak Bluffs has earned our prized Honky Tonk reputation. Well, time immemorial may be a slight exaggeration. It was in the 1700’s that our first neighborhood, Edgartown’s Eastville/Farm Neck area, was called the Barbary Coast.

Back in the sixties Woody Guthrie played at the Mooncusser, the iconic coffee house that was next door to Phillips Hardware store on Circuit avenue. His son Arlo, who played at the high school for the Nantucket Nectar festival, is famous for the popular Alice’s Restaurant that is played every Thanksgiving on our own WMVY-FM. The song’s catchy refrain: “You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant” suggests the goods one can get at Phillips — Oak Bluffs’ 87-year-old hardware store.

Emanuel Joseph was known as the first Portuguese settler on Martha’s Vineyard. Born in the Azores in 1774 he married Mehitable Luce here in 1796. Most of the early folks from the Azores were sailors or whalers; thankfully for Oak Bluffs, the town’s year-round population increased largely due to the Portuguese.