The Northeast has its share of resort locales: The Hamptons, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, even Fire Island. But if you’re trying to find a respite from it all ("all" meaning New York’s crowds, velvet ropes and SUVs that have never seen mud) you’re essentially running into the same demographic you had been trying to escape. But there’s a nice, little alternative sitting off the coast of Rhode Island.
Accessible by ferry and sparsely populated, Block Island is a regional destination that feels worlds away. Fusion cuisine is for the most part limited to fish plus batter plus fryer and for a night on the town revelers don their finest frayed shorts and drink beer to bar bands of benevolently raucous salts churning out classic rock standards. There are no condos and the only mega resorts are of the Victorian variety with TVs and air conditioners in short supply. In fact, Block Island is essentially losing real estate. How? Rather than cutting up land into smaller and smaller subdivisions, an island conservancy buys back private property to repurpose it for public use. Dear residents: don’t change a thing.
RSS 2.0
Comments on this entry:
Ha, Ha Pfister! As a native of the area just off the coast of the island I must laugh as Block Island is filled with veal farms and nuclear waste dumps. Dear reader you don't want to go there the sky line is dotted with smoke stacks and the water is saturated with killer dolphins. Seriously keep going to Martha's Vineyard or the Cape. Nothing to see here folks.
--
meg neddih a ti peek ot gniyrt m'i
The only thing is there is nothing to do there...like nothing! The ferry (open bottles are welcome) over is nice but that's about it. Yeah, it's less grounded but there might be a reason for that…
There are plenty of places "up island" on the vineyard -- where you would be hard pressed to find a single New Yorker -- where the locals laugh in your face if you ask where the nearest dry cleaners are located.
The worst thing about Block Island is that it's not very pretty. If your goal is to be secluded, wouldn't you want to be surrounded by breath-taking landscapes? Well, you wont find them there. However the small towns that surround the Island are lovely, like Charlestown.