Sand dollars

Want to enjoy the best beaches on MarthaÕs Vineyard? Step one: become a millionaire

by Jason Gay

PEOPLE ON MARTHA'S Vineyard like to think they're an easygoing, unimpressed bunch. Point to James Taylor paddling his sea kayak on Chilmark Pond, and island people will pretend not to notice. Mention someone's gazillion-dollar summer house, and they'll shrug and say, "Whoop-de-doo!"

It's true that the Vineyard is more laid-back than other famous summer resorts. Call it the anti-Hamptons: many people on the island go out of their way to show they're not movers and shakers. The unshaven guy in flip-flops next to you in line at the Bite, a clam shack in Menemsha, could be an $8-an-hour housepainter or a $400-an-hour tax attorney.

But that cute class-mingling stops when it comes to the island's beaches. Martha's Vineyard -- summer playground of the Clintons, the East Coast literati, the media elite and their tree-huggin', civil-liberties-protectin' brood -- is home to one of the snobbiest shorelines in the nation. Most of the island's finest beaches are open to members only. Others are restricted to residents of specific towns. And the few beaches that do admit everyone are packed like Green Line cars before a Sox game.

Not everyone minds, of course -- especially those with their own private beaches. "Beach access is increasingly a hot-button issue on the island," says Richard Reston, editor of the twice-weekly Vineyard Gazette. "But those who have access are being more quiet about it than ever."

The most esteemed private beaches on Martha's Vineyard are the "key" beaches, which take their name from the locked wooden gates that keep the general public from entering. Most of these beaches -- Quansoo, Black Point, and Hancock are a few -- offer spectacular views of the island's south shore, untouched sand dunes, and the kind of big, crashing waves that would impress a Hasselhoff. They have limited memberships and small crowds, which makes them attractive to CEOs, Internet tycoons, and media/lit/entertainment folks who want to frolic in peace.

But unless you got in on the Yahoo IPO or recently married a Murdoch, you're probably not going to stroll on one anytime soon. Right now, the going rate for a Vineyard beach key is $130,000 -- and climbing. "It's become really crazy," says John Alley, a long-time selectman in the Vineyard town of West Tisbury. "It's what the market will bear."

It wasn't always this way. Thirty years ago, when old Vineyard farming families began selling off chunks of their coastline in the form of private beach "associations," a beach key could be bought for as little as $2000. As recently as the early 1980s, it was possible to get a key for less than ten grand. But the island's real-estate booms of the mid-to-late '80s and the mid-to-late '90s have sent prices through the roof. Over the past two years, in fact, the value of beach keys has climbed more than $50,000.

Beach-key associations differ from traditional beach clubs in that members actually buy a small piece of real estate. A beach association is essentially a shoreline subdivision; each key holder owns a sliver of sand running from the dunes to the ocean, equivalent to about two-tenths of an acre (this doesn't mean the member has to sit on this specific slice of sand -- anyone who owns a key is entitled to use the entire beach). When the key holder decides to sell, he or she is basically free to seek the highest bidder, though beach associations typically hold the right of first refusal.

What else, besides a key, do you get for all this money? Not a whole lot. Key beaches are deliberately kept no-frills. No big signs mark the entrance; in fact, it's easy to get lost on the labyrinth of dirt roads leading to the locked gates. There is no staff on site; no lifeguards, either. Members must unlock the gates themselves and park their own cars in the association's grassy parking lots. If they have to take a whizzer, they must head for the ocean or the dunes, since there isn't a bathhouse on the premises.

Key beaches aren't the most social of places. Privacy is respected to the utmost. Members plunk their coolers and chairs tens of yards apart. Cranking loud music is disapproved of; so is major boozing. Nudity, though allowed, is expected to be discreet. Dogs are to be kept under control. Even a rowdy game of touch football will get you some angry looks. (Given the number of big-time entrepreneurs on a Vineyard key beach, accidentally kicking sand in someone's face on Saturday could result in your company's hostile takeover on Monday.)

Still, there's no shortage of plutocrats eager to drop more than a hundred large for a key. Kathryn Ham, a local real-estate attorney who has handled several key transactions, says that they're among the most coveted items in the island's white-hot real-estate market. If a key came on the market, she says, it would take her "about a day" to find a buyer. (Others might not even take that long; some real-estate agents' beach-key waiting lists are longer than George Regan's Christmas-card list.)

"The obvious reason [people want keys] is that it's really an exquisitely beautiful area," Ham says. "Secondly, it's rarely crowded. And frequently, the people who are sharing the beach with you are people you know or are in your social circle." Indeed, beach keys are something of a permissible status symbol on an island that is known to shun status symbols. "People like the exclusivity," says Selectman John Alley. "They like the fact that they can go there and so-and-so can't."

Still, the prospect of being labeled a snob is enough to make some key-beach users wary of talking about their membership. Call it the Vineyard's version of liberal guilt. Even the most hardened association members realize that for every person on the Vineyard who goes to a private beach, there are thousands of others who can't. "You look around and see it's a beautiful beach, and you're not bumping into other people and listening to other people's music," says one Boston professional who doesn't own a beach key but rented a summer home that came with one. "But at the same time, it's unfortunate that the public doesn't have access to it."

Vineyarders tend to be resourceful, though. Over the years, plenty of nonmembers have found ways to sneak onto the island's key beaches. Keys belonging to long-time members (who got them when regular folks could still afford them) have been duplicated and hidden under rocks and behind trees for friends to use. It's also easy to scale the gate; bikers can always sling their bikes over to the other side. And there are those who access key beaches by entering at a public beach and walking along the waterfront to the association beach. All of this is considered trespassing, however, and lawbreakers risk getting tossed by grumpy association members.

Alley, who grew up in a time when farmers considered coastal property worthless for agriculture and islanders rarely lounged in the surf, finds the privatization of the island's coastline somewhat amusing. "I think the real old-timers would be shocked if they found out that people pay that much money to go to the beach," he says.

THE SCARCITY of public coastline is a thorny issue on the Vineyard. And it's not just the private beaches that are under fire. A number of island beaches are open only to people living in a particular town (imagine if the Public Garden were open only to residents of the Back Bay, and you'll get the idea). Earlier this year, residents in Alley's town, West Tisbury, debated whether to open their beach, Lambert's Cove, to the public at large. The measure failed, and though residents cited environmental, overcrowding, and parking concerns, others suspect they really wanted to preserve the beach's exclusivity.

"People talk a good game around here about the beaches, how they should be open to the whole island," says Alley. "Except, of course, for the beach that they go to."

Part of the problem is a still-on-the-books ordinance from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which holds that waterfront property owners own their coastline down to the low-tide mark -- right where the ocean meets the shore. In nearly every other state, property rights extend only to the high-tide mark, which means the public can use almost all of the beach. But Massachusetts allows public access to private coastline only for the purposes of "fishing, fowling, and navigation" -- which means that unless you're purposefully striding through the sand with a rod, a shotgun, or a boat in tow, you're not supposed to be there.

Repeated attempts to junk the old ordinance have failed, and it's not surprising. Having property rights extend to the low-tide mark makes beaches extremely valuable, and no one wants to give that up. It also makes it difficult to do anything about it. Given the current price of beach keys, one conservative estimate puts the value of the Quansoo Beach Association, which is about one mile in length, at $15 million. That price is out of reach for a lot of conservation organizations or towns that would like to buy private coastal property and open it to the public. (Not that they'd necessarily be allowed to, even if they had the money: some private beach associations maintain covenants that prohibit members from selling their stakes to conservation groups.)

But even those frustrated by the privatization of the Vineyard's shoreline understand the allure of a beach of one's own. Says James Lengyel, executive director of the Martha's Vineyard Land Bank, which buys open space using money raised from real-estate taxes: "It is ipso facto chic simply to be able to spend this sort of money on something that is so frivolous. But the beaches that are keyed are sensational places. Anyone would want to be there."