And now, for a little local perspective…That was a doozy of a holiday weekend, its effects still lingering down here in Ventnor, a weekend that jolted the locals right out of their smug little off-season bliss.
Even after all these years, it’s still a shock to see your Philly peeps descending on your town, bringing fancy cars and haircuts and college t-shirts and the assumption that nobody actually lives at the shore. Usually, the Memorial Day weather mocks all of you, but not this year. In a dozen years of living at the shore, I cannot remember when summer threw down its gauntlet so dramatically.
Of course, like a true local, I was nowhere to be found, having bolted for a family event in Boston, leaving the beach, as someone suggested to me, to the amateurs. Returning to town on Monday evening was like walking through a political convention floor after the candidate has accepted the nomination. The town was spent. People were suddenly tan and in a mid-summer slurry cheer. Guy the ice cream man who lives near me reported perfect ice cream weather: hot air, cold water.
Best story I heard: The woman on one beach in Ventnor who had to go to the bathroom and so she got in her car, drove over the Dorset Avenue bridge headed for her home in the Heights, was promptly stopped by the Ventnor police and given a $46 ticket for not wearing a seatbelt. Harsh.
The woman who walked our dogs while we were away reported being cursed out by beach goers walking in the middle of the street. It is a street, guys. Please curb your children.
Anyway, if this weather keeps up, should be an interesting season, though nothing perhaps could top last summer for weirdness, at least at one beach at the shore, (whose location shall remain undisclosed, to protect the allegedly overzealously prosecuted but mercifully sentenced), where a friendly gent on house arrest was able to set up his chair on the sand close enough to his beachfront house so that he and his ankle bracelet were still in compliance. Must have left a uniquely Jersey tan line.