WELLFLEET — For years, the police have been watching a growing stream of 20-somethings pour down from the Beachcomber parking lot onto Cahoon Hollow Beach where they play drinking games, chug from funnels, and generally party like rock stars.
This past summer, Police Chief Michael Hurley said, there was a 32-percent increase over last year in private charter buses taking groups of 15 or more at a time to the Ocean View Drive dropoff spot. Hundreds more arrive by Uber and Lyft, he said.
“They park all over town and Uber up there with their chairs and their 30-packs,” Hurley told the select board on Sept. 27.
“I mean, they have every beer game going on down there that you can possibly imagine,” Lt. Kevin LaRocco told the select board. “Beer pong, funneling, hard alcohol. Everything goes on down there, and it’s crazy.”
What was once just an occasional overflow from the Beachcomber bar and restaurant, which leases the town’s parking lot at Cahoon Hollow for $50,000 a year, has become in the last five years a scene out of Animal House. The police presence at Cahoon Hollow has had to grow to deal with — or some would say enable — the summer-long beach bash.
LaRocco said the police this summer recorded over 352 commercial bus trips (up from 241 in 2021 and 73 in 2019). It’s not just the Funk Bus — it’s Cape Destinations buses and others from off Cape, along with thousands of Uber and Lyft dropoffs.
On weekends, cars line up outside the Beachcomber starting at 6 a.m. to get a spot in the Cahoon Hollow lot, LaRocco said. This clogs Ocean View Drive and requires that officers stay on the scene to prevent accidents.
During the July 4 weekend this year, Wellfleet police called in the sheriff’s office and the Harwich police to help patrol the beach with six ATVs. That’s in addition to the usual three Wellfleet officers on duty.
More and More Officers
Patrols started after the summer of 2018 when police officers on the evening shift dealt with frequent calls of intoxicated revelers leaving the beach to await buses. They were loud and rowdy and urinating in the bushes, Hurley said.
In 2019, LaRocco said, one police officer on the beach found himself in the middle of a drunken melee involving some 40 people. After that, the town purchased two ATVs and increased the number of officers on the beach and on Ocean View Drive from one to three during weekends from July 4 to Labor Day.
Police now stagger the bus pickup times. A cop welcomes every party bus with a little speech, telling them there will be a police presence on the sand, a firm pickup time, and no drinking on the roadways. Police officers stand at the top of the dune and confiscate open containers by the barrel full, Hurley said.
LaRocco told the select board there have not been more arrests, fights, or medical calls because the police presence has maintained “controlled chaos.”
But Hurley worries the town’s luck will run out if 2023 sees another 30-percent increase in party buses.
Beyond the Beachcomber
Part of the draw is the Beachcomber, one of the only bars on Cape Cod that sits on the Atlantic Ocean, LaRocco said. But the Beachcomber fills up fast, and there is no question that most who descend on the beach are there to drink their own alcohol and have no interest in the bar itself, Hurley said.
The Beachcomber owners and the bus companies pay a combined $12,000 of the $37,000 total cost for the police details, Hurley said.
Alcohol is allowed on Cape Cod National Seashore beaches. While drinking is against town beach regulations, the town owns only a slice of the beach the width of the parking lot.
“Most do it extremely responsibly,” said Seashore Supt. Brian Carlstrom of the drinking. But Carlstrom confirmed he is working closely with the town to get a “superintendent’s compendium” in place for the Cahoon area next summer.
A compendium is a temporary local regulation used on National Park lands — for example, to close a beach after a storm destroys the stairs, Carlstrom said. It was invoked to stop dangerous partying at Biscayne Bay in Florida, he said, where boats would raft and moor together for a massive floating bacchanalia.
But making a rule is easier than enforcing it. Carlstrom said he does not have anywhere near enough staff to do so. Hurley said for his staff, too, enforcement would be a heavy lift. He imagines it would require something like what was done in Nantucket in 2016, when 60 state police officers were deployed to handle out-of-control partying at Nobedeer Beach.
The Nantucket approach can work to “change the culture,” Hurley said, but it will take a few years and it could be “tough and very combative.”
Four of the select board members expressed support for banning alcohol consumption on a portion of the beach. None had an appetite to penalize the Beachcomber.
Board member Mike DeVasto had a different take. He argued that banning alcohol on part of the beach could just push the problem elsewhere and said perhaps the problem should be envisioned as something to embrace.
“This is a big event that the town is hosting without voluntarily hosting it,” DeVasto said. “Maybe there is a way to capitalize on it.”
Truro resident Raphael Richter, owner of the Funk Bus, made a similar argument. Wellfleet, he said, is extremely rural and fortunate to have the Beachcomber bringing in tons of visitors. Richter said he has offered to support the police effort by paying a per-passenger fee on top of the $500 a week he already pays for dropping off and picking up at Cahoon Hollow. In the end, he added, why shouldn’t the police in an internationally known beach town dedicate heavy patrols to the beach on summer weekends?
