The Cape Coddah
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☀️ Who's riding the bus?

☀️ Who's riding the bus?

Plus: Remember Sea View Playland?

Cape Coddah
July 24, 2026

Good morning Cape Cod. Today marks Amelia Earhart's birthday (born 1897). She once said, 'Adventure is worthwhile in itself.' Cape Cod in late July feels like a pretty good place to test that theory. Whatever adventure you've got planned this weekend, hope it's a good one.

In this week’s Cape Coddah:

Want to buy a pizza shop?
Plan to ban crypto kiosks
Events and live music

Let’s get to it.

🚫 4-1 Vote Ends the Shelter Plan

Barnstable's Zoning Board voted 4-1 on Wednesday to kill the building permit for St. Joseph's House, the 50-bed homeless shelter hoping to move from Winter Street to West Main Street in Hyannis.

The hearing ran more than four hours in a packed high school auditorium, with plenty of emotion on both sides. The vote came down to a narrow legal question: whether the shelter counts as a religious use under the state's Dover Amendment, which limits how towns can apply zoning to religious property.

Catholic Charities argued that sheltering the homeless is a religious obligation, not optional. Most board members disagreed, saying the building's main purpose is overnight shelter, not worship.

Supporters wanted a bigger, more accessible building. Neighbors worried about loitering and nearby schools. Read more»

🕹️ Remember Sea View Playland?

Back in the early 1950s, John and Gladys Zinkevich opened Sea View Playland in Dennisport, and for more than 50 years it was the place to be on a summer night.

The heart of it was the Barn of Fun, a converted dairy barn with a clown painted on the green roof, stuffed with pinball machines and skee-ball. Outside sat a mini-golf course and a pitch and putt, with a big blue hippo statue guarding the first hole.

Business faded by the early 2000s, and the park closed in 2004. Dennis bought the land for $4.9M and turned it into Sea View Park, with playgrounds, tennis courts, gardens, and a path to the Chase Avenue jetty. As for that hippo? It lives at Nickerson State Park now. Read more»

🚍 Who's Riding the Bus?

Twenty years after a CAI series looked at hidden poverty on the Cape, a reporter hopped a bus in Hyannis to see how public transit has changed.

Turns out it's changed quite a bit. Every fixed route bus, in all 15 towns, is now free. There's also Smart Dart, an app-based on-demand ride for $3, plus programs that get people to medical appointments in Boston.

On board, a summer worker from Kazakhstan said she uses it almost daily and was floored to learn it cost nothing. A local rider since 2015 said buses run on time more than they used to, though missing the Orleans to Hyannis run means waiting a full hour.

Still, for all the improvements, the bus remains an underused piece of Cape life. Read more»

📸 @homeportcapecod |📍Scroton Creek Bridge

Tag @thecapecoddah to get your photos in the Coddah!

🚧 A Wider, Longer Sagamore Bridge

Renderings released by state officials give us our first real look at the new Sagamore Bridge, and it's a big change from the one we've been crossing for 91 years.

The $2.1 billion span will be wider and longer, with two 12-foot travel lanes each direction, plus an extra lane for merging and an expanded shoulder. The current bridge has 10-foot lanes, no median, no shoulder, and one skinny sidewalk. The new one adds a protected path for walkers and cyclists, at least 14 feet wide, with a bench at the midpoint facing the sunset.

The incline gets gentler, the supports sit on land instead of in the canal, and the signature arches get built off-site and floated in by crane.

Construction could start late next year, with completion by 2037. Read more»

Sarah Goyette, a nursing aide who's spent eight years raising her son in a Barnstable studio apartment, is one of two buyers chosen for Habitat for Humanity homes going up on Mackie Drive in Brewster.

A fisherman who spent two and a half hours treading water without a life jacket about eight miles off Truro was spotted and saved by the crew of another fishing boat.

🍕 $12.5 Million for a Slice of Nantucket

After 25 years, Evan and Maria Marley are selling Pi Pizzeria on Nantucket and retiring. The West Creek Road property, the business, and a staff housing unit are listed together at $12.5 million, marketed as "The Whole Pi."

Pi started small in 2001, out of the back of a wine-and-cheese shop. The Marleys moved it to West Creek Road in 2006, and there was a line out the door on opening day. In January. They had to shut the doors an hour and a half in because they got slammed.

Evan's been obsessed with pizza since high school, driving to New York and New Haven just to taste the good stuff. The couple hopes a buyer keeps the place going. Maria's plans? Art classes and making lightship baskets. Read more»

Nantucket's Select Board put off deciding who gets eight available rental car medallions after learning the airport has no space to offer, leaving four applicants, including Enterprise and a local Turo operator waiting on the outcome.

Two Martha's Vineyard high school students, organized the Island's first Swim Across America open-water swim, raising an astonishing $334,043 for the cancer center at Martha's Vineyard Hospital, more than $130,000 past their goal.

Martha's Vineyard is in a significant drought and Island farmers are feeling it hard, with irrigation costs climbing, pastures barely producing, and one Morning Glory Farm cattleman facing a possible $10,000 hay bill.

SPONSORED BY:
CAPE PINES PHOTOGRAPHY

Stillness has a Place

Discover the quieter side of Cape Cod. Cape Pines is a collection of fine art photography inspired by the Cape’s enchanted landscapes. Created through observation, stillness, time and reflection. Photography designed to slow the eye and bring a sense of calm and mindfulness into your home.

“It is nature at its own pace and you get to observe it… Gary’s photography of the sea and cloud keeps it all close by, even thenough we are 1000s of miles away.”
-R. Lewis, Texas.

⚖️ Orleans Eyes a Crypto Kiosk Ban

Orleans is looking to ban cryptocurrency kiosks, those machines in some stores that let you convert cash into digital currency. Police are drafting a bylaw for the fall town meeting.

The reason is simple. Police Chief Scott MacDonald cited FBI data showing 85 percent of activity on these machines is fraudulent. Orleans police have handled between five and ten local scam cases in the last year and a half, with victims usually out thousands of dollars.

The scam follows a familiar script. Someone calls claiming to be your bank, says your money's at risk, and tells you to deposit cash into a crypto account to protect it. There's always urgency and always a threat.

If it happens to you, call police fast. Within 24 hours, there's a decent chance of recovery. Read more»

👋 Meet: Lumi
🐾 American Eskimo
🎂 1 year old
♀︎ Female
Available to adopt at MSCPA-Cape Cod

SUNDAY - JULY 26

Brenda & Dan @ CC Winery | 12 PM
Jazz Jam @ Cult. Cent. of CC | 12 PM
Wayside Sound @ Flying Bridge | 1 PM
Jared Moore @ Love Farms | 1 PM
Just the 3 of Us @ Shipwrecked | 2 PM
Lee Surrette @ CC Coffee | 3 PM
LaMP @ Naukabout | 3 PM
Dane Vannatter @ CC MOA | 4 PM
Kurt High Attitude @ Red Nun | 4 PM
Chris Richardson @ Chapin’s Bayside | 4 PM
Duke Robillard @ Highfield Hall | 4 PM
Kathleen Healy @ Oliver’s & Planck’s | 5 PM
Fran Fenton @ Torino | 5 PM
Michael Oakland @ Off the Grid | 5 PM
Wild Flower Lane @ The Woodshed | 5 PM
Joe Samba @ Neptune’s CC | 5 PM
Sarah Swain & Oh Boys @ Love Farms | 6 PM
David Hoffman @ Margaritaville | 7 PM
Liam Hempstead @ Casa del Cabo | 7 PM
The Fab Four @ Cape Melody Tent | 7:30 PM
Route 106 @ Chapin’s Bayside | 8 PM
Chris Richardson @ The Woodshed | 9:30 PM

_{Nothing in this section is sponsored. We'll let you know when something's sponsored.}

Friday

78 🌡️ 55 | ☀️ | 💧 0% | 💨 ENE 7 mph

Saturday

77 🌡️ 61 | 🌤️ | 💧 1% | 💨 NE 8 mph

Sunday

75 🌡️ 59 | 🌤️ | 💧 21% | 💨 NNE 9 mph

💧🌡️ Water temperature = 69ºF

51 Freeman Avenue, Sandwich
Asking $899,000
2 🛏️
1 🛁
768 sqft
8,276 sqft lot

_{Nothing in this section is sponsored. We'll always let you know when something's sponsored.}

Thanks for reading The Cape Coddah today. If you found something useful or entertaining, please share it with someone who hung out at Sea View Playland.