🧘‍♀️ Recovering from the 4th | Down the Shore

Did anyone from Philly bring trash down the Shore? Fess up! With city workers on strike over Fourth of July, a couple have copped to loading up the trunk with a contractor bag and driving to Ventnor with their Shoobie trash, or, in another case, Atlantic City.

But with the weekend bursting at the seams with people and trash already, authorities said it was actually impossible to tell if there was a strike-induced bump. North Wildwood Mayor Patrick Rosenello said, “There was a huge amount of trash generated across the entire town, but I cannot necessarily pin that on the fact that Philadelphia isn’t picking theirs up anymore!”

With the strike over, Philly should return to normal, even if the Shore won’t for another seven weeks. Shore piles!

This weekend was insane, and not only because of the amount of trash. Businesses had to close for a day this week to recover from the crowds. There were hour-long lines for coffee, three-hour waits for pizza, pleas for cold-cut civility, offers to pay beach block homeowners to park in their driveways. There were wall-to-wall tents on the beach, with a late afternoon high tide making things tighter by the hour.

In Ocean City, teens posted TikToks of chaotic boardwalk crowds. Cape May Mayor Zack Mullock told the A.C. Press’ Bill Barlow that water usage in the town broke records.

In Ventnor, there were so many people in the water that the beach patrol’s practice of corralling bathers in front of lifeguard stands yielded to a spacious couple blocks. (The corralling returned on the 6th.)

Avalon Mayor John McCorristin (still not a Union League member), called it, in one of his signature all-caps emails, “PROBABLY THE BUSIEST FOURTH OF JULY EVER.”

Speaking of Avalon, there was a LOT of reaction to my story about the Union League’s Whitebrier footprint and whether Avalon was now too exclusive even for Avalonians.

ICYMI: Read that story here, and keep scrolling for reactions. Also, keep reading for trivia and a drippy castle memory!

📮 Did you try to get a parking spot near the beach this weekend? What strategies did you use? Should towns be running beach shuttles? Is it fair for people who live near the beach to park on the street? Let me know by replying to this email and I’ll include your most interesting responses.

Have ideas or news tips about the Shore or this newsletter? Send them to me here.

⛅ If the rest of the summer is half as nice as last weekend, it’ll be fine.

— Amy S. Rosenberg (Follow me at @amysrosenberg, 📷 on Instagram at @amysrosenberg. 📧 Email me here.)

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🏨 A familiar tale: Atlantic Club redevelopment plan unravels.

🏠 Affordable housing moves forward in Cape May.

👮 North Wildwood Police are now going to patrol West Wildwood.

🏝️ The Clam Cove Reserve wetlands got another boost to shore up the peninsula-turned-island off Long Beach Island.

🚨 A Pennsauken teenager was accused of firing a gun near the Wildwood boardwalk.

🐤 Barnegat Light’s nesting plovers are having an exceptional year.

🎾 Freehold native Amanda Anisimova plays Aryna Sabalenka in the Wimbledon semifinals Thursday.

🍝 Not your Nonna’s gravy: Craig LaBan samples some inventive Italian Shore restaurants.

🍝 Not your backyard BBQ: Feast on the New Jersey State Barbecue Championship and Anglesea Blues Festival.

🪂 Atlantic City’s Air Show will be Tuesday and Wednesday.

🎭 Next best thing: Broadway at the Beach.

🏴‍☠️ Arrgh: Board an interactive pirate ship off Long Beach Island.

🚣‍♀️ Not to be missed: Lifeguard races kick into gear Friday, in North Wildwood and Longport.

Regarding this story on Avalon, most agreed the town has gotten so exclusive even its exclusive residents feel excluded! Lots of you miss the old Avalon.

A couple people thought the prices in the story were too low (real estate websites do show single-family homes as low as $2 or $2.5 million, and beach block homes as low as $5 million, but what is even going on when we’re saying “as low as $5 million?”).

Here are some (lightly edited) excerpts:

Kathy Tauber: You would be hard-pressed to find a single for anything like 2.5 million — more like 4 and up. As for beach block, more than double that I would guess, and last week there was an airplane ad for one offered at 26.5 million.

We are surrounded by people who have paid these prices and do need rental income. They pay to have their flower boxes planted with contractors using a forklift. They have their cars washed and detailed on-site. And, I suspect, many of them are members of the Union League as you stated in the article.

Jim Meehan: For the people who’ve finally realized that Avalon and Stone Harbor are now reserved for [the] self-important, come on down to Wildwood, where everyone is welcome. On my last visit to Stone Harbor, I was actually embarrassed for them.

Bill Morgan: Yeah I’m done. Avalon was always high-end but had room for all of us. Now it’s all rich people. Off to Wildwood or Sea Isle or North Carolina next year. Hope no more state or federal money goes into beach restoration for all those rich people.

Paul McGarvey: My times in Avalon from the late ’50s to the late ’60s were a universe away, even from the era from the ’80s, which you discussed. I had buddies who were officers on the Beach Patrol; I could stay with them. There was also a wonderful friendly, comfy boardinghouse ($), or another buddy’s home where I could crash. The surf was sublime: strong & consistent, and a block off the beach was a great bar where we could reconnoiter, salty & tan, for a bucket of steamers and a pitcher of ale. Ah, well. From the mid-’80s to 2005, I had a place on the dunes in Surf City. It, too, has succumbed.

Camille Sauerwald: There was one summer when we shared a rental with friends. There was a cover band at Shelter Haven (now The Reeds) that packed in the older college crowd and young professionals who came to Seven Mile Beach for several summers. Do I remember correctly that they covered Fleetwood Mac so well that people thought it was really them? Was it? Maybe those young professionals did so well that they kept coming back after they had kids and made their pile. Maybe they’re the ones who had to build the monster mansions that line the streets now.

Barbara Elliott: Unfortunately, the Union League has provided an example that other “affiliation groups” can follow to carve out select Jersey Shore spaces and make them available to only their members. I would not be surprised if some venture capital types snatch up some prime Jersey Shore real estate and then create a “club” that charges 5 or 6 figures for memberships.

Betsy Scarcelli: My husband’s uncle had a true beach cottage on 25th Street. One floor with an attic, 3 bedrooms, no closets, and a screened-in front porch. In the ’90s we went to the Golden Inn with our kids and enjoyed our efficiency room with a small kitchenette and easy access to the beach and pool — it was idyllic! I’m sad that many of the shore towns are becoming so expensive the typical family can’t rent a vacation home for a reasonable amount. Avalon is the apex of this.

Joseph Duffy was first with the answer to last week’s question: Which current NFL coach vacationed at the Shore as a child? The answer: Sean Payton. .

This week: This restaurant and entertainment pier (including sea lions) once anchored the Atlantic City Boardwalk’s inlet section? Was it:

A. Nucky’s Pier

B. Captain Starn’s

C. Million Dollar Pier

D. Pier 39

If you think you know the answer, email us here.

From Heidi Bahnck: Like a sea turtle returning to the beach where she hatched to nest, I return to 14th Street Beach in Ocean City every summer, the beach I’ve been visiting since before I was born. Photographic proof exists of my mom, proudly pregnant with me, standing on 14th Street Beach in the mid-1970s, the distinctive white arch of the Ocean City Belle on the boardwalk behind her.

The 14th Street Beach is anchored in my memories as the place where I built countless drip castles in the sand, captured and released tiny sand crabs, and dodged seaweed in the waves on my much-loved inflatable raft.

When my son was born, we anchored ourselves next to the fishing pier again, teaching him to recognize the arch of the former Ocean City Belle, and setting him loose to run joyfully around the beach, jumping waves and boogie boarding, a next generation sea turtle imprinting this special place in his memories too.

Send us your Shore memory, distant or recent, for a chance to be featured here! Email us here.

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