How serious is Belmar about cracking down on noise after dark? Just ask Joseph Palermo, who was fined $572 for letting a woman ring the bell on his bicycle, the Asbury Park Press reports.

Read the full story.

Alcohol may bring an end to teen nights at Jenkinson’s nightclub on the boardwalk in Point Pleasant Beach, the Associated Press reports. Owners plan to discuss the problem today.

The club sets aside Tuesday nights for teens to dance and no alcohol is sold. However, dozens of teens have been charged with alcohol-related offenses, including 12 with underage drinking this past Tuesday. They ranged in age from 14 to 17. Authorities believe most are from out of town and use public transportation to get to the town.

A Jenkinson’s spokeswoman told the Asbury Park Press the club might eliminate the program or change the night that it’s held.

Lou Ann K. Behan, a lawyer-turned-composer-playwright who grew up at the Jersey Shore, has a new musical comedy, "Over the Boardwalk," premiering tonight in Reston, Va., the Washington Post reports. The play is set in 1963 but highlights what Behan describes as widespread current efforts to "gentrify the boardwalk scene at shore towns from Atlantic City to Ocean City and down the coast."

The boardwalk-on-the-beach culture, with the attendant images of cotton candy, honky-tonk music and inexpensive, family-style entertainment, may soon be a thing of the past, she tells the Post, if developers continue to remove the old piers. "If we gentrify all of these vacation spots, where will the working-class families go?"

Read the full story.

This is a Margate Bridge pass (as captured on iphotobooth, anyway). Feel free to get to know it. If purchased, it will a) get you a cheaper toll rate to get over that quirky privately owned bridge and causeway that connects what we locals call (and I'm not proud of this) "off-shore" (and everyone else calls home) with Jerome Avenue in Margate, and b) will help speed things along for the rest of us, thank you very much. Wave to the ospreys nesting on the Longport side as you drive in.
Now, in the interest of full-disclosure, I will admit to this: During my
reverse-shoobie trips into Philadelphia (Does this makes me a, say, floopie because I'm wearing flip flops into town?), I have been known to absentmindedly wave a Margate Bridge Pass at the EZ Pass detector to try to get over the Ben Franklin Bridge. It doesn't work. I'm not sure what you would call a shore local who tries to gain entree to Philadelphia with a Margate bridge pass (please be nice), but doofus is probably a good start. Too much sun, maybe. See, it works both ways.

Inquirer photographer Michael Plunkett has shot a lovely video from Seaside Heights. It's a series of animated postcards from a colorful beach town. Check it out here.

An Ocean County man drilled nails into his wife's head and chest with a construction nail gun before turning the tool on himself in what investigators are calling an apparent murder-suicide, the Inquirer reports.

James B. Tomkinson, 77, of Stafford Township was pronounced dead this morning at the Atlantic Regional Medical Center, where he was being treated for head and chest injuries he inflicted on himself, according to township police and the Ocean County Prosecutor's office.

The day before, Tomkinson, a retired school teacher, killed his wife Susan, 76, with the nail gun, inflicting fatal head and chest injuries, while in their Cutlass Avenue home, police said. Police were summoned to the scene after a relative discovered the couple and called 911, said Lt. Thomas Dellane.

The motive is still under investigation. Dellane said there were no prior police calls to the house.

Stafford Township sits west of Long Beach Island.

Google Map: Where it happened

Beachwood Beach West in Ocean County has been designated a "Beach Bum" by the National Resources Defense Council, which publishes an annual list of "beach bums" and "beach buddies." The beach violated public health standards 51 percent or more of the time samples were taken.

This year's list is based on the percentage of monitoring samples tested during the 2006 beach season that violated public health standards and practices that buddies use to help protect the public from exposure to beachwater pollution.

This is what NRDC said: "Beachwood Beach West is a small, river beach located in the town of Beachwood. It is a local beach with a short beach season primarily used for shallow water wading. The beach is in a low-lying area and receives storm water discharge from a major state roadway and an aging state-constructed storm drain. Local efforts to protect the beach include vacuuming storm drains prior to the beach season to minimize overflows, hiring a company called Geese Chasers to scare off waterfowl several times a day during the feeding and nesting periods, and using police officers to enforce poopscoop ordinances. Sixty percent of samples taken exceeded bacterial standards."

Here's the NRDC's 2006 "beach buddies," so designated for monitoring beach water quality regularly, violating public health standards less than 10 percent of the time, and taking significant steps to reduce pollution: North Carolina: Kure Beach and Kill Devil Hills Beach; Wisconsin: Sister Bay Beach and North Beach; California: Laguna Beach; Michigan: Grand Haven City Beach and Grand Haven State Park beaches; and Maine: Libby Cove, Mother’s, Middle, Cape Neddick, Short Sands and York Harbor beaches.

The rest of the "beach bums," so designated for violating public health standards 51 percent or more of the time samples were taken: California: Avalon Beach (north of Green Pleasure Pier) (53%) and Venice State Beach (57%); Maryland: Hacks Point (60%) and Bay Country Campground and Beach (56%); and Illinois: Jackson Park Beach (54%).

See a NRDC map and see how clean is your beach.

Video: America's 'Dirtiest' Beaches

So...you may be wondering, what does 100 degrees feel like? Thick, palpable, can't breath heat. Intensive care unit heat. Living at the shore in an old house without air conditioning, you quickly learn the basics, like, the house guests will arrive during the hottest day of the summer.
Also this:
Land breeze, bad.
Sea breeze, good.
Land breeze: flies, hot air, heat, existential dread.
Sea breeze: cool, flies go back to the bay where they belong. Optimistic sense of own survival returns.
Ceiling fans and air vents just don't work like they used to, I guess. The wall units are effective only until the old wiring blows their fuses. The tried and true freezing cold shower right before bed time trick you learned as a child helps. The ocean, fortunately a perfect 77 degrees to go with the perfect 100 recorded at A.C. International (in fairness about 10 miles inland), is filled with swimmers long after the lifguards go home at 6 p.m. (Some years, this kind of heat is also accompanied by a humorless, freezing ocean due to an upwelling effect that pleases nobody but the ice cream vendors.) Giving up your one air conditioned room to your child seems like the ultimate sacrifice. You vow to upgrade before next summer, but then, like a miracle, something in the air shifts. Literally. if you're outside at the shore, or even sometimes if you're inside, you can feel the moment it does. The breeze is suddenly cool again, coming from the ocean, from the east, from that unbroken horizon of coolness and water! Rejoice! The wicked land breeze from the west is dead. This morning, I felt a shift around 3 a.m., I think. The air, no longer coagulating around the eyes and throat. It is ... circulating.

Authorities say a British tourist was stabbed to death in Margate over the weekend, the Associated Press reports.

The Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office says Paul Ritch was on a two-week vacation to the United States and was with some friends from New Jersey. The 37-year-old went to the beach, ate dinner and visited some night spots.

Police responded to an emergency call about 2 a.m. Sunday near North Washington and Monmouth avenues. Ritch was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead about an hour later.

The medical examiner says Ritch suffered a single knife wound to his heart.

There's no word on a suspect and the murder weapon has not been recovered.

All eyes won't be on the slot machines in Atlantic City casinos today, The Associated Press reports.

Thousands are expected to line the beach and boardwalk for the annual airshow.

The "Thunder Over the Boardwalk" show will feature flights by the Air Force Thunderbirds, Army Golden Knights parachute team, an F-15E Strike Eagle Demo Team and numerous civilian aerobatics.

Parking will be at a premium and traffic is expected to be heavy.

More information at www.atlanticcityairshow.com.

Taking photos at the show? Email them to us at downashoreblog@gmail.com and we'll post them.

Margate's been in the spotlight recently - and not a welcome spotlight, given that the camera crews have been swirling since a British tourist was stabbed to death there last weekend. Today, Inquirer columnist Dan Rubin turns his attentions to the Shore burg. Specifically, he looks at Maynard's, an old-school bar that stands amid tony restaurants and shops, a holdout from a different time. (Yes, the man who was killed in Margate drank there the night he died, and no, there was no trouble at the bar.)

Read the full story.

Mary Jo Codey, who is married to Senate President Richard Codey, recently returned from a 10-day stay at the governor's oceanfront retreat on Island Beach State Park, just south of Seaside Heights in Ocean County, writes Bergen County Record columnist Charles Stile. Codey said his "wife negotiated with the governor when I pulled out of the race in '05. She said if he's getting out, can I still use the beach house for a week or two? My wife had enough street smarts." Codey, however, said he did not accompany his wife because a) he had work to do, b) he's an Irishman prone to sunburn and c) he hates when the wind blows the wrong way and the green flies attack.

Read the column.

The lighthouses along New Jersey's shore are so much more than photographs on souvenir postcards, subjects for paintings and models for light-catchers in kitchen windows, writes Diane Stoneback of The Morning Call in Allentown. Although often overshadowed at vacation time by beaches, sun and seashells, they have stories to tell to all who are willing to listen.


Read the full story.

Hi, folks. Sorry for the lull in postings - we've had lots of vacations among the Downashore team. I'm back from Seattle myself, which for all its water is pretty far removed from a Shore trip.

In any case, our own Amy Rosenberg today writes about a Ventnor woman whose spirit lives on through her blog. Jennifer Cakert died last year at age 26, and her mom takes comfort in the thriving online community that keeps her alive.

Read the full story.

The Press of Atlantic City has an interesting story today about how those energy drink cocktails (Red Bull martini anyone?) you love to down at Shore watering holes and elsewhere could cause health problems. (Hint: yes, alcohol slows you down and energy drinks speed you up, but you're still going to get drunk anyway.)

Read more here.

The Cape May County Herald reports that Wildwood's going to have to sell at least two liquor licenses to make its $24.1 million budget. If that doesn't happen, taxes are probably going up. So if you're a property owner in Wildwood, cross your fingers for those licenses to move. They're set aside for hotels and motels with a minimum of 100 rooms, and the minimum bid is $250,000 per license. Of course, lots of Wildwood's kitchy neon motels have been sold to make way for condos, so there's a smaller market than there used to be.

Read about it here.