Climate Champ: Bruce Elliott

Picture this: You have an empty house on Martha's Vineyard, the result of an impulse purchase in your favorite place in the world. But now you also have an almost-empty bank account. You would like to sit down in your new house, invite your new neighbors for dinner, perhaps, and have everyone eat at a table, off of plates.  

You know, from an Island friend, about Chicken Alley. You spent some time there when you were just a tourist. You bought an item or two of clothing.

But now, you’re a homeowner. Both empty house and almost-empty bank account send you to Chicken Alley as a new local (is there such a thing? You hope so.) 

And that’s where you first meet Bruce Elliott.

Bruce is a combination of small-town mayor and the best used car salesman you’ve ever met. He greets you by name. He remembers the name of your dog. He remembers what you’re looking for (bureaus, frustratingly hard to find without wonky drawers or cracks in the wood). He guides you toward the best deals and the most interesting items, including an entire wicker patio set in almost mint condition. But it’s missing cushions. You query Bruce; might he know where you could get some? Wait a minute, he says. He makes a phone call, and not only do the cushions materialize, but they materialize on your front porch. He, or someone he directed – you weren’t there to see – dropped them off. 

Over the weeks, months, and years, your house fills. You have kitchen chairs, living room chairs, throw cushions, a rug, two rugs, three rugs. You have dishes and glassware. You have your lovely wicker patio set. You have puzzles and books. Your bank account remains almost empty but isn’t emptied entirely. This is thanks to Chicken Alley. This is thanks to Bruce.

Bruce continues to greet you by name, even though months pass through the winter where he doesn’t see you at all because you’re off-Island. When you arrive back in spring and pop by, he’s got more stories. About the young woman who came by a few days ago, looking for a stroller and, hopefully, a crib. He takes these requests seriously, especially from a young mom with a small child. “That’s what I believe we’re here for, to help each other out,” he tells you. And you know he believes that because you see it every time you’re there. You hear about it from others when you’re not.

Everyone knows Bruce and Bruce knows everyone. An uninterrupted conversation with him is impossible because of the parade of people who stop and say hello to him, or wave and holler out a car window as they cruise by. And Bruce is helpless to ignore anyone who wants to greet him. A phone conversation with him for this story becomes confusing until you realize he is no longer talking to you, he is talking to a couple who have arrived at Chicken Alley and absolutely must chat with him. “Maybe Leslie wants a green leather couch,” he tells whomever it is he’s talking to. “They want to drop off two green leather couches,” he clarifies to you. “I know you bring me lots of gold and silver,” he says, this time to someone who is not you. 

Chicken Alley hasn’t always been in its newly expanded location on Lagoon Pond Road, it hasn’t always been called Chicken Alley, and it hasn’t always had Bruce. What was known as the Thrift Shop opened on Main Street in Vineyard Haven in 1962 to support, as it still does, Martha’s Vineyard Community Services (MVCS). 

If you want to know more about the work of MVCS, Scott Turton, the organization’s chief executive officer, is your guy. You discover while you chat with him that Scott used to live around the corner from your first apartment in Canada, something that feels both random and perfect. Scott lists the many, many ways in which MVCS supports the Island community. He describes its early childhood education center (from which grew a Head Start program to provide educational and supportive family services in people’s homes) and its counseling center with multi disciplinary teams of counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers who address mental health issues, substance use, and much, much more. Like Chicken Alley itself, which seems to have something for everyone, MVCS provides programming for families, youth, veterans, seniors, and people with disabilities. MVCS itself has a staff of 145, while Chicken Alley has a volunteer staff of 50 and six full-time employees. One of them is Bruce.

When Bruce arrived on the Island in 1979 — on an invitation from his buddy, Fred Mascolo, who eventually opened Trader Fred’s in Edgartown — the Thrift Store was still on VH’s Main Street, with a much smaller footprint, too tiny to carry furniture. It earned the moniker Chicken Alley when it relocated in 2007 to its current location, formerly the site of Dick’s Auto Parts, on a road that, Vineyard lore has it, used to be home to chickens and pigs belonging to the Portuguese descendents of whalers, who lived in the small homes that lined the road. In 2022, the store expanded into an adjacent building to allow for substantially increased space in which to receive and organize donations — a “game-changer” for staff, Scott says. 

Bruce didn’t find his way to the Thrift Store right away. His first job, secured within hours of arriving on Island, was at the Texaco (now Mobil) station on Beach Road. By his second summer, he was working at The Kafe (now The Wharf), a bar in Edgartown where the owners were selling photos of Bruce for $1 “because I had long blond hair,” he tells you, and you believe him because … of course! He has great hair now — thick and wavy, threaded with grey — so it must have been epic back then. “I wasn’t always old and ugly,” Bruce tells you with his throaty laugh. “I was young and handsome.”

He’s done “just about anything you can do on the Vineyard,” mostly renting cars and selling used cars. He loves cars — owns eight of them, as well as a bike that an internet search suggests might date to 1898. (He also spent some time managing a bike rental business at Five Corners.) Having been a Chicken Alley customer for some time, he began working there full-time in 2018. Another of his previous jobs was operating an antiques shop, which helps him value items that people bring by to donate.

Bruce appreciates the role that Chicken Alley plays on the Island. It feeds a circular economy, keeps perfectly good items out of landfill, and, of course, supports an organization that helps Islanders in multiple ways. Bruce is a vociferous champion of Chicken Alley’s staff and volunteers, who ensure that items people need are available. “Someone will come in and say, you know, I need a microwave, and they come out with a microwave. Someone will come in and want bedding. You think of all the things that we carry, and how people show up here thinking they're going to find it, and most times they do. I mean, 150 people come through here a day, if not more. And it’s impressive. How many of them leave happy.”

The consummate host, Bruce tells you that “presentation is everything,” which extends to Chicken Alley’s soundtrack (the Beatles, Neil Young, David Bowie, James Taylor), curated to ensure an upbeat mood. People come out, Bruce tells you, saying “they had my music on today.”

It isn’t just the music, of course, but you wish you could put your finger on what, exactly, makes Chicken Alley so special. Scott may hit upon it when he calls Chicken Alley “a gathering place.” Bruce understands that, too. He enjoys regaling you with stories about the regulars — the woman he calls “Mrs. Saturday,” who comes each week; another buddy who always buys a book; Bruce’s adored grandson who says the funniest things and holds court in the toy section. 

You’ve been talking to Bruce on the phone for 90 minutes and you need to hang up because your editor is breathing down your neck for this story. It feels rude to interrupt because Bruce is now telling you how, two years ago (thanks to the Right to Care Act), Chicken Alley paid for him to go home to Watertown, Connecticut, and take care of his mother and dying father, both in their mid-90s. “It really was awesome that they let me do that,” he tells you.

Which reminds you of something else Scott said, about not just Chicken Alley, but the Vineyard itself; and about something embodied in Bruce and the care with which he does his job, the value he places on helping people find just what they need at a price they can manage. “I get to view what that looks like when I interact with Bruce, who says, ‘Okay, this is something that needs to be fixed,’ or ‘this is something that needs to be taken care of,’” Scott explained to you. “He takes that so seriously, and it’s so much based on community and caring and taking care of each other, which is special in this world, right?” 

You’re finally saying good-bye to Bruce and, all of a sudden, he’s talking to someone else who’s just arrived at Chicken Alley. “Do you know Leslie?” he asks them. “She’s interviewing me for Bluedot Magazine. Do you know anything about Bluedot Magazine?” There’s a pause and Bruce is talking to you again. “‘It’s a wonderful publication.’ That’s one of my best friends complimenting you.” 

It’s the perfect note to end on: Bruce holding multiple conversations but somehow making each person feel seen. Bruce “draws people to him,” Scott told you. “The other day, I was standing outside talking with him, and then, probably within the space of 20 minutes, 10 people that were either driving by and yelling out his name and waving or walking by are saying, ‘I'll see you later on.’ Every single person that traversed that street seemed to know him.” 

And that’s the thing. We do know him, because he shares himself so freely. “I'm lucky people like me. I like people,” Bruce tells you. What could be truer … or more obvious? “I work for the people. I carry a title … and it’s being a good ambassador to this Island. However you want to cut it, having this job makes it even easier to be that way.”