CapeCodTimes.com – Pufferbellies Nightclub, along with the 2.36 acre property it sits on, has been purchased for $1.96 million by a trust on behalf of Hy-Line Cruises, said Philip Scudder, Hy-Line vice president of marketing.

The locally-owned ferry company made the deal for the property on Route 28 next to the railroad tracks at the end of May, according to Scudder and town assessors records. It was bought to serve as off-site parking for future ferry-goers heading to Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, he said.

“We have been looking for off-site parking for several years,” Scudder said, “We’ve been anticipating growth in the market and we are pretty much at max capacity here on Ocean Street.”

Because it still holds a two-year lease, Pufferbellies will continue to operate this summer and have the option of operating through next summer as well, according to Scudder. Hy-Line will not begin redevelopment on the property until the lease expires, Scudder said.

First they turn the Mill Hill into a retirement home, and now Pufferbellies is going to be a parking lot. Another dagger in the heart of the old Cape Cod. Granted, the last few years haven’t been stellar for Puff’s, but back in the day the place was legendary. Our Keller Williams and The Wailers shows there were absolutely amazing, the place had so much potential.

The Real Cape actually tried to buy Pufferbellies last year, we had a verbal deal done and the owner flaked on us at the last minute on the day before we were supposed to sign papers. We were going to close it for a few months to restore it to its former glory, then re-open it as The Cape Cod Music Hall with a steady stream of national acts while giving local bands a top notch venue to cut their teeth at.

Apparently the owner figures a parking lot is more vital to Cape Cod than a bad ass music venue. Kinda strange since he is an entertainer and musician himself. Oh well, people gotta park somewhere right? It’s just too bad that they had to murder another Cape Cod institution just to make room for a bunch of SUV’s with Connecticut plates.

Do a little moment of silence today and pour a little beer on the ground for our dead homies, because Cape Cod just took another step closer to the grave. I have a sneaking suspicion that retirement homes and parking lots aren’t quite the attractions that the young people and vacationers are looking for when deciding where to spend their time and money. Sad day indeed.

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WL – When great white sharks return to the Cape in the coming weeks they will be swimming into waters that afford them greater protections.

On Thursday, the Division of Marine Fisheries adopted emergency regulations – effective immediately – that restrict activity around white sharks.

“The summertime presence of these sharks has resulted in substantial public interest and this interest is prompting an increase in deliberate interactions between white sharks and humans, including the development of cage diving and other white shark tourism businesses, as well as incidents of recreational boaters attempting to attract white sharks to their vessels,” said the advisory issued by the state.

The advisory stated that people are prohibited from attracting or capturing white sharks in Massachusetts waters unless they have been issued a permit from the division of marine fisheries. The permit is designed to protect both sharks and people, the advisory said.

What about protecting the humans? Where’s our emergency regulations? Maybe the state should advise white sharks that they are “prohibited from attracting or eating humans in Massachusetts waters”. When’s the last time you saw a human take a bite out of a sharks kayak, huh? Regulate the sharks, they are the ones eating everything in sight.

In all seriousness though, the fact that we need these regulations is insane. Anyone that isn’t a shark specialist or marine biologist that deliberately interacts with white sharks deserves to be eaten as far as I’m concerned. It just goes to show how arrogant humans have become over the years. Imagine if they released these regulations 50 years ago? People would be like… “so don’t go near the giant, perfectly designed, apex predators in their own environment? Ummm… OK, thanks Captain Obvious.”

Not us though, not today. Everyone wants to take a selfie with the man eating, hunting machine. I say let Darwinism do its thing. You want to deliberately interact with a natural born killer be my guest, but don’t come crying to the rest of us when you get bitten in half. What’s that old saying? You mess with the shark, you get the five rows of razor sharp teeth?

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MVTimes – This season, TTOR has initiated a program under the close watch of federal authorities to control an animal known for its intelligence and ability to gobble up eggs and newly hatched chicks — the crow.

Each summer season, The Trustees of Reservations (TTOR), a nonprofit conservation organization that manages miles of pristine beachfront on Chappaquiddick open to the public and accessible by over-sand vehicles (OSV), gears up for the arrival of state and federally protected shorebirds that seek out the gravel and sand of Martha’s Vineyard’s shoreline to nest and lay eggs.

For the past several years, TTOR utilized box traps for both skunks and crows. This year, TTOR implemented a more controversial antipredation tactic, lethal crow control. Although they don’t like using this method, TTOR ecology assistant Caitlin Borck said it is necessary.

In conjunction with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, TTOR put up mock exclosures to attract the intelligent birds.

“The thing is that crows are very smart, and they will teach other crows their behaviors,” Ms. Borck said. “If we were not to remove these smart predators from our property, they would continue to teach other crows more and more that exclosures are a food source.”

TTOR wants to remove the intelligent crows from the property so that no new crows will learn the behavior. In order to do this, chicken eggs are put in the mock exclosures for two weeks and cameras monitor for crows that are targeting the exclosures. Once identified, with USDA approval, TTOR places toxic eggs in the exclosure.

This, my friends, is a little thing we like to call a “god complex”. Somehow these people have decided that it is up to them to decide which species should live and which should die, and they are doing it in stark contrast to the wishes of a little lady named Mother Nature. Would we start killing lions so they don’t hurt the poor wildebeests?

I care about this not because I am some crow loving hippie. I care because it scares the ever loving crap out of me. Crows are one of those animals that definitely know something we don’t know. They’ve tapped into some sort of dark energy and they are privy to some kind of evil spirit that is watching us from afar. I don’t know about you but when crows are around I stay extra alert just waiting for them to attack me and peck out my eyeballs or something. They just have some weird look in their eye, and I don’t trust them.

They talk about how smart the crows are in this article, saying they teach each other how to eat nesting Plovers, but they don’t seem worried at all about what happens when they start teaching each other how humans are murdering them with poison chicken eggs. Well, I am. Cut the shit Vineyard before the crows start holding militia meetings and planning some serious Alfred Hitchcock shit.

I don’t even think Plovers lives are worth closing off a beach, they definitely aren’t worth antagonizing the devil crows into mounting some apocalyptic, black magic, aerial attack on humans. There are some evil beings in nature that you just don’t fuck with, and crows are firmly planted on the short list. So let’s just leave them alone before they come rap, rap, rapping at our doors OK?

P.S. What more proof do we need to know crows are scary as shit other than the fact that a flock of crows is called a “murder” of crows. Seriously, LOOK IT UP.

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Globe – Amid your rhythmic footfalls, Falmouth Road Race landmarks come and go. The Nobska lighthouse. The flat miles along the Vineyard Sound. The loop around the inner harbor. You check your watch at each mile marker. Right on pace. As the beachside finish nears, the crowds grow larger and louder. You sprint beneath a giant American flag, cross the line 150 yards later, and find a bank of photographers clicking away. Then, with the satisfaction of a race well run, you step off your treadmill.

Welcome to the world of remote road-race participation.

For the first time, runners can enter Falmouth as remote participants and experience a virtual version of the 7-mile course on their treadmills. To make it all possible, the 43-year-old race partnered with Hopkinton-based Outside Interactive. At the heart of the system is the company’s Virtual Runner app and high-definition course video. When used with an optional footpod attached to a shoelace, Outside Interactive’s software automatically adjusts the video speed to each runner’s exact pace — or the speed can be adjusted manually for those without a footpod.

As the course video plays on a laptop, tablet, or television, runners may feel as though they are actually running through Falmouth, minus ocean breezes, of course.

Game changer! Here I was thinking my Falmouth Road Race days were over. Looks like Hippie is coming out of retirement ladies and gentleman, but it will NOT involve me on a treadmill.

I’ll just hire a Brazilian for the day, have him put the footpod on his shoelace, plug it into the flatscreen, throw him on a treadmill, plop my ass on the couch with a twelve pack of BL’s, a pint of Fireball and a couple of linguica burgers, and then watch the course roll by on my television. Basically I’ll have a cook out in my living room, except…

Road Race? Ran.

I’ll even make my way down to the Heights afterwards for my post run hot dog and chocolate milk. Then I’ll walk all over the place for hours breathing heavy and stretching, maybe swing by the Shanty with my number still on, talk about how much I hate that Nobska hill for a few hours. I might even wrap myself in one of those tin foil capes.

It will be just like when I used to actually run the Road Race, except I won’t puke at miles 2, 4, and 6.

P.S. Oh, who am I kidding? I’ll definitely still puke at miles 2, 4, and 6.

thanks to RPV for the tip

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Globe – Hillary Rodham Clinton has a busy calendar of Massachusetts fund-raisers in the next few weeks, starting Wednesday with events in Boston and Chestnut Hill and branching out to different pockets of the state early next month.

The July 2 events will take the front-runner for the Democratic nomination from Holyoke, one of the poorest cities in the Commonwealth, to Osterville and Provincetown, two upscale Cape Cod towns.

With co-hosting opportunities for $27,000, which can also purchase a photo with Clinton and inclusion in the Hillstarters program for high-dollar fund-raisers. In Osterville, the $27,000 also includes a reception with Clinton, according to a copy of the invitation obtained by the Globe.

The Hillstarters Program huh? That’s an interesting name for selling yourself to people for inordinate sums of money. Sounds kinda prestigious, maybe we should get The Real Cape into this elite club of social iniquity?

I don’t know though, $27,000 sounds a little expensive to be a Hillstarter. I’m pretty sure the Sultan of Brunei gets Victoria Secret Models imported right to his palace cheaper than that, and Hillary Clinton is no Victoria Secret model. I mean, Bill doesn’t even hook up with her, and we all know Slick Willy will hook up with pretty much anything *cough* Monica *cough*.

P.S. Maybe we should hold open primaries for anyone running, and the people we vote for get to run for President. Then they all get allotted the exact same amount of money to campaign with. That way the candidates aren’t beholden to anyone or anything when they get into office. Seems like a way to make sure when a position is filled by the voters, it is filled by a completely objective politician as opposed to an indebted prostitute. Seems like if we took money out of politics, greed and cronyism might go with it. Then I wouldn’t have to write blogs comparing politics to prostitution, it’s a win for everyone really.

*disclaimer: we would have written this exact piece about any politician from any party doing this on Cape Cod.

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The Vineyard Vines Ad with logo removed…

The original Cape Cloth image with their logo…

Cape Cloth can’t buy a break. First they get slapped with a frivolous copyright infringement case from Diadora, and now Vineyard Vines straight jacks one of their marketing photos, erases their logo and uses it to sell their swag.

The ultimate irony is this tweet from Vineyard Vines when they realized they were caught…

Oh how nice, the huge corporation that just curb stomped the little guy wants to make it better by donating to the fund to help that same little guy fight another huge corporation that curb stomped them as well. What a noble gesture. I swear you couldn’t make this shit up if you tried.

VISIT CAPE CLOTH

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CapeCodTimes.com – Heritage Museums & Gardens will not face criminal charges related to the building permit issued for its zip line park.

The clerk-magistrate in Barnstable District Court has decided not to issue a criminal complaint in the case brought by Carlo DiPersio and Don Stainbrook, two neighbors of Heritage, according to a copy of his decision.

DiPersio and Stainbrook sought the complaint under the Old King’s Highway Regional Historic District law that sets up protection for the areas north of Route 6 from Sandwich to Orleans. The allegation was that Heritage moved the location of two buildings after a certificate of appropriateness was issued by the Old King’s Highway Historic District Committee in Sandwich.

The clerk issued a ruling dated June 4, two days after a hearing, saying “complaint denied as to all counts.”

The Saga Continues

Well, it’s nice to see that there’s still a shred of sanity around here. It really is good to know we live in a place where people that build a park where kids can have wholesome outdoor fun won’t get thrown in the slammer. Of course you’ll still have to waste hundreds of hours defending yourself against two wackos at every committee, department, and court on Cape Cod if you dare to give teenager’s an alternative to doing drugs, but hey, Heritage should have known they’d be in for a fight when they decided to build an outdoor park that attracts people, creates jobs, keeps kids off the streets, and is… GASP… fun. Facing criminal charges is a totally normal part or zip line construction everywhere right?

P.S. If Carlo DiPersio and Don Stainbrook can file criminal charges against Heritage for building an outdoor park, we should be able to file charges against them for hating kids, fun, and life in general.

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Twitter: Hippie - Insane Tony