So Many Beautiful Pictures of Strawberry Fields Whatever's First Annual Martha's Vineyard Vacation

Last Wednesday Strawberry Fields Whatever went on vacation together, on the island of Martha's Vineyard. We stayed till Friday morning and squeezed so much fun and beauty and whimsy and food into those 40 or whatever hours. Here are lots of pictures from our perfect vacay.

LIZ: Here's me and LJ on the bus from Boston! LJ's the one on the left, in case you somehow don't know us. The bus was totally the worst part of everything, but still we are so radiant and bright-eyed.

LJ: I like this photo because I'm an "angelic goof" in it. Liz is sly. 

LIZ: And here's LJ on the ferry, being Nan Rupert. You'll learn more about Nan Rupert in like two and a half minutes.

LJ: As I'm sure you can imagine, I'm very into my Nan pic. I look so "tra-la-la" and droll, and it's magic how my plastic cup of beer has somehow turned itself into a deep rouge strawberry daiquiri! However, the photo (below) of me looking SO HAPPY while Liz is sly (again! Liz was so slyyyyyy en route to Martha's Vineyard) and George Harrison-y in the background is definitely my fav pic from our ferry ride, because my face looks as happy as I truly was. Our ferry was named "Island Home," by the way, which is lovely, and should be the name of a Kinks song, from 1966. 

I REALLY fucking loved the ferry. I remember thinking, on the ferry, that "it seems right now like" being on that ferry was one of the greatest and most important things that had ever happened to me. It was almost sad to look forward and imagine all the other great and important things that were about to happen to me on Martha's Vineyard, over the course of the next couple of days- I was a little bit worried that I'd forget all about the ferry. 

But I wouldn't! I never did. The ferry was one of my favorite parts of all Martha's Vineyard, and one of my favorite moments of the whole ferry was when Liz and I were both looking out at the light against the waves of the water, we were silent, and I thought how nice it was to get to spend my time with someone who also just wanted to look out at the waves and be silent, and neither of us had to to explain about it, or apologize, or try to compete over who loved the waves the most or how or why we loved them. So here are those two perfect wave-watchers: 

LIZ: And then we got to the island and met up with Jen! Look how cute she is, with her wine and banana. This photo was taken on the back porch, with a stunning view of the tennis courts at our lovely Martha's Vineyard Resort.

LJ: I agree that Jen is extremely cute. 

LIZ: Oh my god our hotel room was so great. It was like an entire mini-house, with a kitchen and living room and a gigantic bedroom downstairs and another bedroom in a little loft/attic space that you accessed by climbing a spiral staircase. That was my bedroom and I miss it so much. I made this photo the wallpaper on my iPhone home screen and now I just stare at all the time and dream of being back in that bed.

LJ: Jen and I were Martha's Vineyard roommates because we are both insomniacs who need to pee a million times before we fall asleep or else we'll have worse insomnia over not having easy access to a toilet. We slept in a king-size bed that was very comfortable and great but also excessively huge. Oh rich people and their crazy needs! There is no reason for any bed to ever be that big.

LIZ: Our first island dinner was at the Lookout Tavern, where we sat outside at a picnic table. Jen got hearts-of-palm salad and fries, LJ and I split a lobster roll and fried clam strips. For drinks Jen and I had margaritas and LJ had something called Catcher in the Rye, which I think involved bourbon? Maybe she'll explain. After dinner we had beers at the bar of a restaurant called Nancy's, then went back to the room and dished and gabbed.

LJ: Sure! I'd love to talk about my Catcher in the Rye, the most ideally-suited to me drink I've ever drunk, right down to its JD Salinger-themed name. It was: Bulleit bourbon, ginger ale, soda water, lots of ice, and lemon and lime. I like how I am eyeing those clam strips fucking lecherously. 

LIZ: So one of the most important things we did on Martha's Vineyard was conceptualize a feature film, which happened during our Wednesday-night gab sesh. The movie's titled Blurred Lines 1: it's written by Laura Jane Faulds, Elizabeth Barker, and Jen May, and directed by Wes Anderson. Set at a tiki party on Martha's Vineyard in the early 1960s, Blurred Lines 1 stars Laura Jane Faulds as Nan Rupert, Elizabeth Barker as Tippi Taylor, Jen May as Kit Jones, plus the entire cast of Mad Men as the tiki-party guests. Here are our preliminary notes on the characters/plot:

To translate, for those who can't read my handwriting: Nan Rupert (née Tate) is a dry-witted party animal who knows how to live, Tippi Taylor (née Klönschnack) is a feminine, beehive-coiffed lover of tiki, and Kit Jones is a newspaperwoman and a bachelor in Manhattan. Nan is married to Roland "Buddy" Rupert, a dashing alcoholic who works in the train industry. Nan and Roland have two Schnauzers, named Kirby and Lindsay. Tippi's husband is Chaz Taylor, a blonde meathead who's a bad manager but a good guy; they've got two sons, Mattie and Chaz Jr. Kit's steady is Bob Cosgrove, a literary hotshot and freelance writer.
       Robin Thicke plays Roland Rupert, Owen Wilson plays Chaz Taylor, and Bob Cosgrove is played by the fictional character Ken Cosgrove from Mad Men. EVERYBODY SMOKES and they all went to VASSAR.
       We also established that the seventh most central character in Blurred Lines 1 is a "ne'er-do-well," an old flame of Roland Rupert's who turns up at the tiki party uninvited in a brazen attempt to win Roland back. Later on we identified the ne'er-do-well as Evelyn Stone, a struggling artist who sleeps with lots of artists and works as a secretary at a magazine for artists.
       Blurred Lines 1 will be succeeded by Blurred Lines 2: The Fondue Party, a comedy of manners directed by Nicole Holofcener.

LJ: One thing I just wanted to add is that Buddy Rupert is a self-made man. Oh and also I think that Lindsay is probably a boy Schnauzer, but I am not 100% sure about that. 

LIZ: One of the few things that could possibly rival Blurred Lines 1 in importance is the discovery of Our Market, a grocery store down the street from Martha's Vineyard Resort. It's the most gorgeous grocery store any of us has ever seen in her life.



LJ: My thing about Our Market is that it is my favorite store. Literally. Out of all the stores, in the entire world, it's my favorite. Fuck it. Fuck Creatures of Comfort or, like, the Commes des Garcons store or a really good record store or whatevs. I prefer Our Market. Groceries, Newspapers, Liquor. Boom.

On Thursday we were at Our Market buying booze and Cape Cod potato chips, and I was standing in front of the beer fridges at the back of the cool liquor store portion of Our Market holding a bottle of regular champagne in one hand and a bottle of pink champagne in the other, as is my wont. "Should we also get beer?" I asked Liz, "Is that excessive?" 

Before she had a chance to reply, I said, "Actually, I don't care if that's excessive." 

"I don't care either," said Liz, and then this stranger standing a few feet away from us said "I don't care either!", and it was SO COOL OF HIM. ONLY AT OUR MARKET WOULD A THING THAT COOL HAPPEN. We loved him so much. He reminded us of David Brothers, and he was wearing a pink shirt. 

LIZ: Also on our street was the Book Den East, which is probably now my favorite bookstore on the planet. The store's inside a house - but, like, the back house of the owners' property; it's really creaky and musty and cluttered and magical. This is the backyard of the Book Den.



And here's a shot of the windowsill in the Book Den children's nook.

LIZ: The third best thing on our street was this haunted house, which we've adopted as Strawberry Fields Whatever official headquarters.




LIZ: The alternate headquarters for Strawberry Fields Whatever is this darling pink house, which we found in the little village of gingerbread cottages.



Here we all are, posing in front of the heart house two-by-two:

LJ: There was something about the gingerbread houses that made my inner Nan Rupert kick in. I just can't see myself, as a fully-functioning adult female, wanting to live in a house that is painted in the same colors as a child's toy. I mean having a whimsically-painted house be your alternate Strawberry Fields Whatever headquarters or backdrop to drink iced coffee against is one chill and wonderful thing, but to live in? I don't relate.

So here is my favorite gingerbread cottage, a very serious gingerbread cottage. I admit that the Astroturf tarp lining the front porch is kinda gauche, but check out all the churchy windows! Oh who cares about the south of France, pleeeeeease life let me live here when I'm seventy:

LIZ: We visited the gingerbread cottages on Thursday, when it was gray and chilly and sometimes rainy. Here are LJ and Jen, hanging at the beach and loving life despite the bad-news weather:

LJ: Here is the dumbass picture of my sandy foot that I am obviously taking in the picture above, just to put things in perspective for you:

LIZ: Also on Thursday we went to the Flying Horses, which is a carousel or - to put it more Strawberry Fields Whateversy - a merry-go-round. Here is us on the merry-go-round:

LJ: Also on Thursday, we ate some fudge. Well, sadly, Jen didn't- Burdick's Fudge on Martha's Vineyard doesn't make vegan fudge, which is stupid of them. Everybody should be able to have this fudge. 

My piece of fudge was cranberry-flav, and it was my favorite thing I ate on Martha's Vineyard. I took one bite of it and announced, "If there was any doubt in my mind that I would one day come back to Martha's Vineyard, it's gone now. I will have to come back to eat this fudge again," only probably in real life there were more likes in that sentence.

My favorite dessert in the world is strawberry ice cream, and this fudge was like a smarter, cooler, richer, weirder take on even the best strawberry ice cream I've ever had. It's like regular strawberry ice cream is Love Me Do, and the cranberry fudge is It's All Too Much. 

LIZ: Our last island meal was at Nancy's. This was the view from our dinner table:

LJ: Here is the NAN view from our dinner table! I like describing the Martha's Vineyard ocean and sky as being "moody." 

PS: Now it is later and I am looking over this post and just noticed something very important, which is that (I think) these two photographs of Liz and I's respective Nancy's dinner table views PERFECTLY represent EXACTLY how we each see the world, as the writers you know us to be:

LIZ: For dinner Jen got a Mediterranean plate that was not very awesome, and LJ and I split a fried seafood platter that was pretty much heaven. Jen drank Narragansett beer and I drank a glass of malbec and LJ drank an Amstel Light, aka "Nan's beer." 

LJ: I feel really cool about how I drank Amstel Light at Nancy's. That is probably the most romantic detail of all Martha's Vineyard, to me. The fried whole belly clams from our seafood platter were my (VERY close) second-fav thing I ate on Martha's Vineyard after the cranberry fudge. They were grey and slimy and had sand in them. They tasted like the ocean. The fried clam strips from the night before were also awesome, but they were just a dumbed-down version of the real deal designed to prevent boring rich people from getting grossed out by, God forbid, a non-boring thing. Every day since I left I think about what it felt like for my teeth to cut against the hot fried batter and hit the gummy grey ocean-flavored belly of a mollusc hid inside. 

LIZ: One last Nancy's shot. Look at LJ's hoodie! Look much I love my phone. 

LIZ: Back at home we read tarot cards, and drank pink champagne and cans of Malibu + pineapple juice and cans of Dark & Stormy cocktails. Each of us had a really great tarot sesh. I'm in love with my final-outcome card and think about it all of the time and it's already changed so much for me.

LJ: My Heart of the Matter card was the QUEEN OF CUPS!!!!!!!! #everything

LIZ: LJ and I took the ferry back to the mainland early Friday morning. Here's Martha's Vineyard going away from us, breaking our hearts.

LIZ: It's too sad to end with that last pic, so here's one of the three of us on the beach. It really captures our Nan/Tippi/Kit spirits. Our Nan/Tippi/Kit spirits will live and breathe inside us forever, no matter where in the world we are.