Soaring prices upend lives on Nantucket

[unhappycamper]

Soaring prices upend lives on Nantucket
By Tania deLuzuriaga
Globe Staff / May 5, 2008

NANTUCKET - Every week Lynne Robinson does the math. And every week it gets a little worse. Already working two jobs, she still owes the oil company $526. The water heater is running on kerosene. And with gas going for $4.53 a gallon, she is fearful of whether her taxi company will be able to break even this summer.

"The things that were necessities are becoming luxuries," she said.

As the cost of oil skyrockets, prices everywhere are on the rise. But on Nantucket, where the mainland is an hour's ferry ride away and everything from flour to diapers has to be shipped over, it is even worse. Prices for almost everything have been climbing. A small box of Cheerios at Stop & Shop is now $3.69, compared with the $2.99 Boston shoppers pay; a gallon of milk costs $4.59 at the Grand Union, 80 cents more than in Boston; and a plain burger at the folksy Fog Island Café is $10. Add $1.50 for cheese.

Higher prices have long been the trade-off for living in this tiny island community, where stop lights are nonexistent and neon signs are banned downtown. But beneath the patina of multimillion-dollar homes and tony tchotchke shops that Nantucket is known for lies a middle-class community whose members are going to new extremes to make ends meet as prices reach record highs.

Robinson, an island native who has raised four children, said she is increasingly grateful for the meat her son brings in from fishing and hunting, and she and her husband are hoping to buy a pellet stove before next winter to cut their home heating bills.


Rest of article at: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/05/05/soaring_prices_upend_lives_on_nantucket/

[Breeze54]

1. I don't know how they can survive there with those prices...

If I lived there, I think I'd be doing the shopping on the mainland once a month!
I'd organize a food coop and buy in bulk and get people with trucks or vans to do
the shopping and everyone pitch in for the ferry fee's and the gas, etc. to have
them go get all the orders! That's insane and it's only going to get worse as the
summer comes on. I'll bet there will be more bicycles and mopeds on the island this
year... maybe horses!

[cleveramerican]

2. story in the Herald yesterday, Real estate prices dropping on Nantucket

was 20mil, marked down to 16mil.
Nobody's buying at the top end of the market.
The end thats usually immune to economic downturns.
Tyco guy's ocean side estate.
Such a bargain