Smaller Crowds, Business Down Over Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day Weekend is traditionally among the rowdiest and busiest times of the year on Nantucket, especially in the downtown area. But not so much this year.

“We had one of the quietest Memorial Day weekends I can remember,” one of the island’s first responders told the Current on Monday.

With the annual Figawi race not coming to Nantucket for the third year in a row, the event’s party tent was once again absent, and the crowds in the downtown area were noticeably thinner. Businesses that typically see some of the highest volumes of the year during Memorial Day Weekend reported that they were indeed down compared to pre-COVID-19 years.

“I’d say it was down,” Chicken Box co-owner Rocky Fox told the Current.

“It was down a little,” concurred Debba Pitcock, general manager and managing partner at The Rose and Crown. “Not having the (Figawi) race definitely had an impact on business. It was a busy weekend but not busy like prior years. It was uneventful. No issues. People were mostly well-behaved.”

Fresh, the sandwich and liquor store on Salam Street that is normally positioned close to the Figawi event tent, was well off its usual haul from the weekend.

“It was honestly very very much down for us, about 40 percent Thursday to Saturday,” Fresh co-owner Charlie Merritt said in a message to the Current. “Sunday and Monday we were the same as usual (15 percent better Monday than normal years). It 100 percent was more tame though than usual.”

At another popular Memorial Day Week hangout - The Tavern and Gazebo - it was a similar story. But owner and general manager Luke Tedeschi - who last year made the notable move of setting The Gazebo’s age minimum at 25-plus to curb underage drinking - said that was actually a good thing.

“Our last true Figawi weekend was 2019,” Tedeschi said. “In 2020 we had the pandemic and no Figawi and last year in 2021 we were still under some restrictions like the indoor bar couldn’t be open because of remaining pandemic restrictions. So this year was, to me, an entirely different dynamic. It was a younger crowd and it wasn’t as many people. The Tavern and Gazebo were busy but it wasn’t crowded. It was much more manageable and it was good. It was a much better behaved crowd I feel because it wasn’t so intensely packed. It was definitely more manageable and for me it was busy but people had a good time and it was more enjoyable than the times where it is just so overwhelmingly packed.”

Nantucket’s public safety officials largely corroborated those accounts. The Nantucket Police Department made no arrests in the downtown area - and just one for the entire weekend, which was for a domestic assault, according to Nantucket Police Lt. Angus MacVicar.

“Our downtown police officer Jerry Mack, his report to me was that town was certainly busier than it had been the last few weekends, but he felt like the people here were an older crowd, not the younger, 21 and under crowd we often see during Memorial Day Weekend,” MacVicar said. “The only thing I can say, people just weren’t here in the numbers that they have been in the past where we’ve seen those calls for service.”

On a normal Memorial Day Weekend, police would respond to more than a dozen noise complaints for loud parties, MacVicar added. This year island police had only six noise complaints, and those were not for large parties.

“That was not a hundred 20-year-olds parties, it was someone playing loud music,” MacVicar said.

Nantucket Fire Department Chief Steve Murphy said his crews responded to 20 calls for emergency medical services. Only six of them were related to “the festivities of the weekend” according to Murphy.

In our own online poll of Nantucket Current’s Instagram followers about Memorial Day Weekend, 2,732 people voted. While most thought the weekend activity was about the same, 36 percent believed it was less busy than usual.