Bars and restaurants across the Island are gearing up for big summer crowds that may be made even bigger by the World Cup and America’s 250th birthday party.
This Friday, Team USA will play its opener in the World Cup against Paraguay at Boston’s Gillette Stadium, and Brazil will face off against Morocco on Saturday, a game that is expected to have heavy viewership at bars and outdoor grills among the Brazilian community. With the national celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, larger crowds than usual are expected to land here on the Island.
All of these events will bring out patrons to bars, and a new opt-in legislation that was signed into law Monday by Gov. Maura Healey could allow down-Island towns to enact a later last call.
The legislative move was met with a mixed reaction. For some local restaurants and bar owners it would mean increased revenue, especially as last call in Oak Bluffs was pushed 30 minutes earlier, to 12:30 am, two years ago to align with Edgartown. However, the prospect of later nights for bartenders and servers as well as neighborhoods near downtown is raising concerns.
A few bar owners said the risk is not worth the trouble, and that transportation, like buses and Ubers, would have to adjust in order to minimize drunk driving. Meanwhile, town representatives in both Edgartown and Oak Bluffs said they’re not currently considering joining ranks with big cities in the commonwealth to let people party later.
Called “an act authorizing municipalities to opt in to a temporary pilot to extend the hours of liquor licenses and to allow for public consumption in designated districts in summer 2026,” the law is an emergency preamble that would go into effect for this summer alone, with an expiration at the end of July, if municipalities choose to take it on. On the Island, officials don’t want to.
“At this stage, there has been no discussion regarding later opening hours. With the summer season upon us, any consideration of expanded hours would require a review of public safety needs, including staffing, operational impacts, and associated budget considerations, to determine whether such a change would be feasible,” Wendy Brough, Oak Bluffs town administrator, said in an email to The Times.
Over in Edgartown, town administrator James Hagerty said that the 12:30 am last call was working for customers in the town and that pushing it later would be moot. “I don’t see Edgartown really having an appetite to have a [later] last call,” he told The Times. “It’s just not the brand we’re trying to present moving forward.”
The option to extend last call was spearheaded by Cape and Islands Sen. Julian Cyr and is twofold. It would allow Massachusetts municipalities to extend the last call at local bars and restaurants by an hour, or up to 3 am. Here, that would be an extension from 12:30 to 1:30 am. It also allows an option for creating “open carry,” or outdoor drinking, areas in municipalities during special events, such as street fairs or July Fourth celebrations.
In cities like Boston, the act is a legislative effort to meet tourism demand and bolster the economy for what could be one of the busiest summers in years. On the Vineyard, there’s debate among bar management about whether customers would benefit from such an option. But legislators say the Island towns could use the option as a short-term pilot to test a later last call and see how the public responds to it.
“None of the last calls on the Island are at the statewide max of 2 am,” Cyr told The Times. “So perhaps towns may want to use this as a pilot to figure out, ‘Hey, does this actually help? Does it make it worse?’”
Only two towns on the Island, Edgartown and Oak Bluffs, have bars that typically utilize a late-night last call, and when The Times went out to see what management and bartenders thought about the potential of a later end to the night, the most commonly used phrase in Edgartown on Tuesday was: “Nothing good happens after 12:30 [am].”
In Oak Bluffs, however, several bar owners lamented to The Times about missing the era when nightlife was “happening” in the early 2000s and noted that the Island is host to many international tourists and workers who are invested in an event like the World Cup.
There’s a buzz of excitement about the upcoming games at the local sports bars. At Coop de Ville by the harbor, the owner, Petey Berndt, said they even collaborated with Martha’s Vineyard Brewery to create two World Cup–themed beers. One, called “World Coop,” is a summer ale, and the other, called “Coop de Mundo,” a twist on a translation of “World Cup” in Portuguese, is a pilsner.
But due to landlord restrictions where Coop is located, combined with little interest in staying open extremely late, Berndt said they would “never do it,” when asked about a later last call. Even now, they are usually only open until 10 or 11 pm in the summer season, much earlier than the 1 am town-wide closing time. He added that Oak Bluffs has changed a lot in the 40 years he’s owned Coop de Ville, and what upsets him is the lack of year-round businesses.
There’s a change in attitude looming in Oak Bluffs for business owners, like Berndt, who have been on the scene for a while. Business owners in the town largely protested the earlier last call in 2023 when the Oak Bluffs Select Board passed it.
Although the last call was pushed earlier because of public health concerns, retired Oak Bluffs Fire Chief Nelson Wirtz said emergency workers are working late anyway, so a later call wouldn’t change a lot.
“It doesn’t change our operational abilities or status,” Wirtz told The Times. But he added that if downtown is particularly busy, emergency workers “do anticipate after last call, once everyone is cleared out, that our call volume might go down a bit.”
Restaurants and bars in Oak Bluffs were largely for the late last call, with some saying the economic benefit and draw for customers would be worth it. Setting Oak Bluffs apart with a later last call than Edgartown, some said, could benefit every storefront, food locale, and convenience store in the area, if people shop and eat where they plan to party later on. And sports fans could flock to Oak Bluffs bars on nights when games run long.
“I think it’s a fantastic idea to get people excited about the World Cup,” said Jordan Wallace, the owner of Midnight Taco, a downtown bar and restaurant. “I think that it’s a special occasion. And I think that it’s a small enough amount of time that we can balance the needs of the town with having some fun and creating a celebratory atmosphere.”
Larkin Stallings, owner of the Ritz Café, said he has been pushing for a later last call for a while, and thought it would be a great idea for patrons. He said for year-round and seasonal bars, staying open longer could make or break a business. At the Ritz, Stallings said that he had lost about $70,000 in profit each year since the 12:30 am call was enacted.
“This is not for everybody. It’s for people who can really get serious about what we’re doing and do it as safely as possible, and we continually understand that we have to make a profit to stay in business,” Stallings said.
Red Cat Kitchen owner Ben deForest had a nuanced take on the issue. He said he missed a time when Oak Bluffs had a vibrant nightlife, but also spoke about the importance of safety for customers, especially when “most damage is done in that last hour.”
“Like anything, there are pros and cons to this, and there’s certainly people that are gonna benefit from it,” deForest told The Times on Tuesday night.
But in Edgartown, town administrator Hagerty said his town is too “family-friendly” for a later last call to work. He also didn’t think the economic benefit would necessarily be worth it.
Many operators of sports and nightlife bars in Edgartown agreed. The co-owner of the Port Hunter, Patrick Courtney, told The Times the extension would be more applicable for restaurants in the city, and added it’s “not something that [the Port Hunter] would have any interest in.”
“Even if they changed the last call, we wouldn’t stay open past,” Courtney said.
Management at the Town, a location where many sports fans may watch the World Cup over the next five weeks, said if the law was enacted, they might utilize it a few times, but they wouldn’t extend their hours every night.
“If we had a game on, and we had enough people here watching it, we would stay open longer,” bar manager Casey Storey said as she leaned over the bar Tuesday evening. But she added that she didn’t think that would happen very often past 1 am, which is the current time people have to leave the building; 12:30 am is their last call.
Regardless of the bartenders’ and managers’ disparate opinions on the topic, the decision is up to the towns and would need to be decided by the select boards in Oak Bluffs and Edgartown.