From New York Magazine on the Obamas' possible summer plans:
The rumors that the Obamas will be vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard this summer have been spreading since April. Locals are famously ho-hum about these kinds of things, but even they admit that this could be an unusually crowded August on the island, with three sets of Democratic Party royalty descending at once.
The Clintons are expected to return to Edgartown, where they have often stayed at the home of Richard Friedman, a Boston real-estate developer. Caroline Kennedy will be at her mother’s former estate in Aquinnah. And while the Obamas’ plans are still unannounced, most people expect the First Family to settle on Oak Bluffs, at the northeast end of Martha’s Vineyard.
A few Vineyarders say they know whose home it’ll be. “The rumor is that it’s Wayne Budd,” says one, referring to the prominent Boston lawyer who was associate U.S. attorney general under the first President Bush. “He has a very large house with guesthouses that would be perfect for the Secret Service and his staff.” Budd has denied this, and a wealthy friend of the Obamas who claims to have been provided a photo of the chosen house says that the Oak Bluffs rumor is wrong. “The picture I received looks like it could be West Chop,” this friend says, referring to a neighborhood across the harbor. “But West Chop is totally white—so totally white that it would be a surprise.”
Even if the Obamas do choose West Chop, they’ll surely spend considerable time in Oak Bluffs, a town known for attracting most of the upper-class black professionals who stay on the island. As liberal as it is, the Vineyard is about as racially integrated as a college dining hall—blacks and whites get along fine, but they generally don’t socialize. “There’s not a lot of overlap between black and white,” says radio executive Skip Finley, who started vacationing in Oak Bluffs in 1954 and has been living there full-time for the past decade. “I don’t think anybody’s insulted by it. I’m certainly not.” It’s an arrangement that springs largely from the self-segregating impulse among black Vineyarders, who have come to the island to connect with each other. “We have people here who are black and upscale and racist,” Finley continues. “They don’t want to be around white folks, and they don’t have to.” By choosing to vacation in and around Oak Bluffs, the Obamas would be throwing a spotlight on one of the most demographically unusual towns in America.
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The Clintons are expected to return to Edgartown, where they have often stayed at the home of Richard Friedman, a Boston real-estate developer. Caroline Kennedy will be at her mother’s former estate in Aquinnah. And while the Obamas’ plans are still unannounced, most people expect the First Family to settle on Oak Bluffs, at the northeast end of Martha’s Vineyard.
A few Vineyarders say they know whose home it’ll be. “The rumor is that it’s Wayne Budd,” says one, referring to the prominent Boston lawyer who was associate U.S. attorney general under the first President Bush. “He has a very large house with guesthouses that would be perfect for the Secret Service and his staff.” Budd has denied this, and a wealthy friend of the Obamas who claims to have been provided a photo of the chosen house says that the Oak Bluffs rumor is wrong. “The picture I received looks like it could be West Chop,” this friend says, referring to a neighborhood across the harbor. “But West Chop is totally white—so totally white that it would be a surprise.”
Even if the Obamas do choose West Chop, they’ll surely spend considerable time in Oak Bluffs, a town known for attracting most of the upper-class black professionals who stay on the island. As liberal as it is, the Vineyard is about as racially integrated as a college dining hall—blacks and whites get along fine, but they generally don’t socialize. “There’s not a lot of overlap between black and white,” says radio executive Skip Finley, who started vacationing in Oak Bluffs in 1954 and has been living there full-time for the past decade. “I don’t think anybody’s insulted by it. I’m certainly not.” It’s an arrangement that springs largely from the self-segregating impulse among black Vineyarders, who have come to the island to connect with each other. “We have people here who are black and upscale and racist,” Finley continues. “They don’t want to be around white folks, and they don’t have to.” By choosing to vacation in and around Oak Bluffs, the Obamas would be throwing a spotlight on one of the most demographically unusual towns in America.
Read more here...