Oak Bluffs’ Tivoli Day takes place Saturday, Sept. 16, offering a full day of fun with a street fair highlighting local business to celebrate the end of another summer season on Martha’s Vineyard.
It began as a bicycle race. Forty years later Tivoli Day is the end-of-summer celebration of Oak Bluffs. There are no bike races any more, but there is just about everything else.
Tivoli Day marks the beginning of a slower pace on the Vineyard, but it does it in energetic style. Circuit avenue is closed to cars, and foot traffic of all kinds takes over.
Tivoli Day, the pedestrian-only street fair that is an annual event in Oak Bluffs for more than three decades, was declared a success this year, well attended by both vendors and visitors. People of all ages enjoyed end-of-summer sales, food and music.
Save the date for Tivoli Day, arriving in Oak Bluffs for the 36th year on Saturday, Sept. 14. The celebration of summer’s end, or the beginning of the shoulder season, is from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and takes place all along Circuit avenue, which is closed to traffic for the event.
Tivoli Day was about shopping and strolling and talking and eating and shopping and eating. People couldn't avoid the shopping and the eating. How could they when neon pink signs screamed from the sidewalk about $4 T-shirts and $10 sweatshirts, when the smell of hot dogs and fried foods dogged them from one end of Circuit avenue to the other. Everyone seemed to have a bag over one arm and a grease-stained cardboard food box in hand.
