Fit to Be Fried in Vineyard Doughnut War

OAK BLUFFS, Mass. -- Lured by a sweet smell floating above the salt air of Martha's Vineyard, they gravitate to the corner of a cluttered parking lot in the dark of night. Hunger guides them, but so does the excitement of knowing the secret passageway -- past the dumpster and to the left of the pile of cardboard.

It's a summertime tradition known around here simply as the "Back Door Donuts." For close to 20 years, doughnut lovers have indulged in the ritual -- lining up at the back door of a bakery in downtown Oak Bluffs for apple fritters and cinnamon buns fresh from the Fryolator.

Some travel 15 miles from the other side of the island for this treat. They are a young crowd, queuing up six or seven deep, twenty-somethings and teenagers with a bad case of the munchies.

"These Boston cremes are so good -- they're warm still," said 25-year-old Emily Leighton, licking the chocolate and cream from her fingers a few weeks ago as she stood in the lot with a trio of Scottish friends. "We love to come here late at night."

On a busy night at the height of summer, Martha's Vineyard Gourmet Cafe & Bakery could sell 150 doughnuts and fritters, almost all of them around 1 a.m., when bars let out.

But an outbreak of politics threatens the tradition. After receiving dozens of letters from one neighbor complaining about noise and sanitation, Oak Bluffs selectmen voted three weeks ago to put a Cinderella leash on the late-night doughnut trade, forcing the bakery to abide by the town's 12:30 a.m. closing time for restaurants and ordering an end to back-door sales.

The move set off a powder keg of protest. More than a thousand people have signed a petition. Letters to the editor of the weekly paper have called for the return of the back-door doughnuts. "Outrageous! The gentrification and homogenization of the Vineyard has taken one of the nastiest turns yet. No more back door doughnuts?" wrote one Michael Ball of Chilmark. Even a Vineyard Gazette editorial has spoken out for them.

When selectmen convened their first meeting after issuing the edict, a doughnut debate erupted.

The complaining neighbor, a 76-year-old retired lawyer named Joe Vera, took the floor and quickly moved his rhetoric beyond car doors and loud voices keeping him and his wife awake nights. He blamed the back-door fried dough habit for American young people's obesity problem. He argued that the doughnuts were tantamount to fast food, anathema on an island that successfully fought to keep McDonald's from moving in.

"We should not be encouraging teens to gather for this," he declared.

The movie director and screenwriter Peter Farrelly, who lives most of the year on the island, stood up and sided with the doughnuts. "I've been just sick about this all weekend," he began. "I've been going there for 15 years."

He picked up steam: "The world is at war. We're talking about doughnuts."

Selectmen had already cautioned Farrelly to direct his comments to the board, but he stared directly at the bakery owners, Janice Casey and Rita Brown, and said: "They're about Martha's Vineyard, about everything that's right about this place."

Farrelly then likened town leadership to Barney Fife on a power trip, recalling an "Andy Griffith Show" episode when Barney starts arresting townspeople for jaywalking. "That's what this is like," he boomed.