every winter when days grow mild and pleasant, hundreds of thousands of nomads stream in from all over the country and Canada, turning the town into a pop-up metropolis nicknamed “The Gathering Place.” Some of the arrivals are leisure-loving snowbirds—folks with generous pensions or lucky retirees whose savings made it through the financial meltdown of 2008—while others are survivors, clinging to the ragged edge of the social contract. Their circumstances are reflected in the range of dwellings parading along Main Street.
