CapeCodOnline.com – An East Falmouth man who allegedly tried to use a stolen credit card to pay for a ride to the Falmouth Police Department faces a litany of charges in connection to that incident and an unrelated burglary.

Paul Stites, 32, pleaded not guilty to 10 charges spanning two cases at his arraignment Monday in Falmouth District Court.

In the first case, an East Falmouth resident reported she found Stites in her home Friday when she came out of the shower, court records state. He said he needed to use the phone and had knocked; however, she later found her husband’s wallet and credit card and some jewelry missing from her home. The credit card was later used at a gas station and some of the jewelry was recovered at an area pawn shop.

Stites is charged with breaking and entering during the daytime putting a person in fear, two counts of larceny of more than $250 and receiving stolen property in connection with that incident.

While investigating that matter, police contacted Stites and told him to come to the police station for questioning. He did so on Saturday, but according to court records the taxi driver who took him to the police department told officers that he was using a credit card with someone else’s name on it.

It’s been quite a while since we’ve seen an Einstein of East Falmouth at work here on The Real Cape. Make no mistake, this ladies and gentleman is one for the ages. Paul has secured himself a spot in the pantheon of all time greats with this move.

Hey at least he was doing the right thing and turning himself in right? It takes a real upstanding citizen to do whatever it takes to get himself to the station in his situation. He could have let the fact that he had no money hinder his ability to be in full compliance of the law but he didn’t. He stepped up, did the right thing, and faced his theft charges head on… with a stolen credit card.

You can’t teach that type of ingenuity folks, it takes a special breed of person to face the music of 10 assorted stolen property and theft charges by committing a little credit card fraud right in the police station parking lot. Hey FPD, you don’t want Paul using a stolen credit card right in your face? Then don’t ask him to come to the station when you know damn well his cash is all tied up in stolen coins, that’s pretty much entrapment.

What is there to say about Afroman other than he’s about as funny of a human being as we’ve ever met. He was cool enough to let us hang out with him in a top secret location when he was on The Cape for his show at The Beach House. Catch a glimpse of the man in his element…

(video by John Beninghof @johnbeninghof)

CapeCodOnline.com – Tired of winter? Summer’s coming — and the forecast for this summer is a good one, several in the hospitality industry said, with expectations running higher than last year.

Both summer bookings and asking prices for vacation home rentals on the Cape Cod are up this year, according to WeNeedaVacation.com, a vacation rental booking business that makes an evaluation based its own listings.

Bookings through mid-February for summer lodging on Cape Cod are up 6.3 percent from the same time last year, the booking company reported. The bookings increased 7 percent on Martha’s Vineyard and 3.3 percent on Nantucket.

I’m not one to complain about weather or winter, but when I woke up this morning to more snow falling I had just about fucking had it. Enough is enough. I literally thought to myself that I would trade having to deal with thousands of New Yorkers for not getting one more inch of snow in a heartbeat.

Well I need to apologize because it looks like my wish is going to come true. Be prepared Cape Cod, the summer people are coming, and they are coming in hot! I think this winter has been so bad that I kinda actually miss the little martians. Has Mother Nature driven me to the brink of insanity or does anyone else agree?

I’m not saying I won’t want to murder everyone in my way like two days after they wash ashore. I’m just saying that after eighteen feet of snow and weeks of cold so brutal it turned me into Ashy Larry, a fanny pack or two and some schlub asking where the bridge to The Vineyard is might actually be kind of a welcome sight this year, amirite?

CapeCodOnine.com – The shark tournament will be back — but not in Oak Bluffs.

In the wake of the tragic death of Oak Bluffs Monster Shark Tournament director Steve James in January, his family has decided to continue the tradition with a shark tournament in Newport, R.I., July 17 through 20, according to state shark expert Greg Skomal.

Martell’s hotel was the de facto headquarters for the tournament, which James estimated brought as much as $4.5 million to the town’s economy. At its peak, the tournament drew nearly 300 boats with big cash prizes.

“The town wasn’t in the mood,” Vail said. Town meeting voted 64-40 in April to support a nonbinding resolution to make the annual shark tournament a catch-and-release event.

“I’m looking forward to trying this on for size,” Vail said.

The Monster Shark Tournament had been held in Oak Bluffs for 27 years, but in recent years drew fire from animal rights groups and locals. The weigh-in, when boats returned at day’s end with their catch, attracted big crowds to the Oak Bluffs harbor docks. The weekend crowds sometimes became rowdy, to the point the town imposed additional fees on tournament participants to pay for keeping the peace.

“This hysteria took over,” said Wesley Hotel owner Peter Martell of the votes against the tournament. He blamed the behavior of onlookers.

“They should have been controlled,” he said.

“It was too bad to lose him,” Martell said of James. “Everybody had a good time.”

He said the jury is still out on whether a fishing tournament without sharks will draw crowds and business.

“I don’t see them getting a lot that first year,” said Skomal, the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries shark scientist. He used to spend his summer weekends going to fishing tournaments to collect data and samples for scientific study. Sharks are caught relatively close to shore, but big game fish such as marlins, tuna and swordfish are found far out to sea in areas close to the Gulf Stream where there are deep underwater canyons. The larger vessels required for a roundtrip of 200 miles or more are beyond most budgets and use a lot of fuel, he said.

I know that was a long excerpt, but I wanted it all there so we could break the entire thing down into one sentence;

The town of Oak Bluffs was “not in the mood” to host an event that “attracted big crowds” where “everybody had a good time” and brings “$4.5 million to the town’s economy”. Seems legit.

I mean why on earth would anyone want big crowds and large quick injections of cash into the local businesses of a vacation destination area? It only fundamentally contradicts the basic foundation of our economic survival. I get it though, big crowds having a good time are just awful. I’m sure Indiana is working on a way to ban the Indy 500 as we speak and I’d imagine that New York will be cancelling the Macy’s Parade ASAP right?

Newport must not have any experience with these large crowds of people having a good time. They will probably cancel this event after one year. There’s no way they can know what they are in for, it’s not like they have any big Folk Festivals or anything.

It is absolutely exhausting keeping up with all the ways the fun police are literally killing Cape Cod.