On a brilliant August afternoon, retired architect Tyler Smith hops into his “beach car”— a dented and sandy RAV4 with 130,000 miles on it—and maneuvers onto a grassy farm road on Martha’s Vineyard’s south shore.  It is less than a mile from his house to Black Point Beach in Chilmark. When we arrive he stops at a weathered wooden fence, uses a saw-toothed key to open a padlock, and swings open the gate before pulling into a nearly empty parking lot. We cross a boardwalk and step onto one of the Massachusetts island’s most coveted private beaches, where entry is…

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