≥Luvack≤ is back. The Defenders, the H2πs, the Discoverys, and the Escalades have come out of their climate controlled garages and shone their vanity plates again. They pass school buses on the left, roll through the stop signs, and clog up the rotary. Stroll is back.

Stroll has become a two-week event. The idiots came for Thanksgiving and seem to have stayed the week. Fahey and Fromaggeri has blocked traffic for days. The furs have migrated through downtown and the New York Times sells out. Even with the weather crashing down around us, they still came, wore funny hats, and ate out.

Nantucketπs Christmas Stroll is a roaring and nauseating success. The credit cards in mink take over for this weekend just as we were getting used to not seeing them. They come in force and leave their money with Santa. No other town in New England can claim the success that Nantucket has with the stroll. For a while, everyone tried. Even Swampscott had a stroll. Ours is the only one that has exploded.

As an islander, I cannot see why. The crowds are bad, the weather is generally not Currier and Ives, the sales are non-existent, and the choices fairly limited. Cobblestones and Christmas trees can be found closer to New York at a fraction of the cost. No one gets seasick or sits outside on the New York Thruway.

However, the strollers do not really come to shop. They come to sink into the atmosphere for a weekend, then go back to the minivans and Wal-Marts of Connecticut. If a snowstorm keeps them here for another day, it becomes a colleague-crushing story for the office. ≥We were on Nantucket this weekend at this cute little Inn and the weather turnedä≤

The success of Stroll highlights the success of Nantucket. We are exceptional. Nantucket is the exception to much of modern American life. Those tourists come here precisely because we do not have a Wal-Mart or a Gap or a TGIFridays. Two days before, they were at the South Shore Mall BestBuy looking at DVDπs pre-selected by the buying habits of their zip code. Mass-produced for the masses. Now, they come out here and spend the afternoon looking for their twin in stores that do not exist on the mainland. Nantucket Reds are the perfect stroll gift. ≥I went to Nantucket, had a great time, and bought you these asshole pants while you went to the liquor store and bought me another bottle of Anisette.≤

Nantucket succeeds because it is exceptional. Whatever makes us different adds a hefty percentage onto the price tag. Therefore, it is in our financial best interests to keep ourselves different.

I think two things make us different. First, we seem egalitarian. As long as you can get here, the vision goes, you can go to any beach, hike the moors, and travel the same streets as the plutocrats. Day Trippers, Locals, and Billionaires snap pictures of Santa walking up Main Street.

Second, we seem personal. If you spend the time here and act respectfully, we will learn your first name and your tastes. The Downyflake wait staff will get you the right donut while you wait. Mimi Beman will remember you and recommend a book that you will like. You can leave your keys in the car, the front door unlocked, and your kids home alone. We are the Cheers bar with shingles.

We are moving into yet another boom, when the huge money consolidates its hold on the summer. Yacht Club money makes its own rules; they can probably have a larger budget than the schools, the hospital, or the Island Home. If anyone is unsure of the resources and the ability, come to the Athenaeum and read the project reports for the Nantucket Golf Club. I do not feel the Yacht Club can be stopped, but it can be shaped.

As we look at our Aspen/Hobe Sound future, we should do whatever we can to keep those things that make us exceptional. We have a brutal tightrope to walk. On one end of the pole, we need to make enough money to live out here and be comfortable. On the other end, we do not want to do anything to push the summer folks away. All along, we are tempted to cash out and move to Maine.

The problem of the Looms is the problem for all of us. The Looms is a long-standing business that has a deep island identity. Owning anything with that history seems to be a trust. Dreamland, Henryπs, Something Natural, Mitchellπs, Murrayπs And the boatyard are all businesses that have become institutions to their customers. In the end, they are property. Seven million dollars is enough to get anyone thinking.

If the Looms is sold, then we all lose. Right now, Main Street is poorer without Coffin Gifts. And we know what happened to that store. Fewer institutions on Main Street mean fewer reasons to come to Nantucket. We become less exceptional and more like the homogenizing goo of mainland America. Further, the island continues to lose its wealth to off-islanders.

The more of the island we can control, the more money we, as a community, can make. Selling the bank and the electric company off-island removed all of those jobs. The Pacificπs dividends go straight to Fleet and not to us. Stop and Spend sends their profit away, as do other island businesses. The loss of the Looms is a loss of island capital.

What is perhaps most scary about the sale of the Looms isnπt the money or the emotion. Rather, it is the motivation for Ralph Lauren. He cannot be thinking about making a large profit. I do not believe that this is a business decision aimed at taking my bowtie money away from Murrayπs. Rather, like the sale of the Pacific National Bank, it is a vanity purchase. He wants to mark territory.

In the past, I thought Main Street would look like Freeport Maine. All local businesses would migrate away, leaving an open air Simon mall of the Gap, Starbucks, and Sam Goody. Now, I think it could look like St. John, with rows of stores built and operated as childrenπs projects by their plutocrat parents.

I think Ralph Lauren, Charles Gifford, and the like are building a vanity Main Street. We could become St. John. We could become a beautiful island owned by the richest people on earth. The vast majority of St. John is wild and ≥natural.≤ The small town has tasteful specialty stores for the visitors, staffed by locals but owned by off-islanders. These days, the counter help comes in by boat.

As a great man once said, was to keep your eye on the donut and not the hole. We are not in that particular hell, yet. We must be doing something right to fill the islandπs stores and guesthouses for a weekend in December. They are probably all still stranded here, bleeding more money out their credit cards and fighting over the Sunday papers. We want them to keep coming, standing around in the rain, then gloating to their co-workers on Monday. We do that by staying exceptional. Whatever makes us both exceptional and rich, we need to keep. Everything else should go back on the boats with the J. Crew catalogs.