That's right, Bruno Battaglia, now nearing 60, back for another summer of beach bumming on the Ventnor shoreline. Hey Bruno! You look, well, EXACTLY, the same. "Nothing has changed," he says. Battaglia, who prompted a bit of a firestorm last summer after revealing his determination to live each and every day happy and relaxed and working on his tan, looks in excellent mid-summer bronzed form. At least from the front. I almost didn't recognize Bruno from a distance this morning because he was wearing a black tank top on his way to the beach. I've never seen Bruno with a shirt on! But Bruno says early in the summer, when his front is much tanner than his back, he doesn't like to go shirtless except on the beach. At some point, working on his back in the early morning hours, he will have evened himself out, he says, and will leave the shirt at home. Here's a picture from last summer for comparison's sake. Meanwhile, he's in towel crisis, with the last of his orange and yellow sun towels in rotation. He can't find any more! Help! He's even thinking of switching to a palm tree motif, which seems to be in all the stores. Good to see you made to another summer in Ventnor, Bruno. You never know what could happen over a winter. (Running on the Boardwalk yesterday, I did note that a lot of people got pregnant! Congratulations, Ladies!) One woman he passes on his way to and from the beach lost her husband over the winter, so the ever-helpful Bruno is spending extra time talking with her. awwww. Anyway, good to see Bruno's back:

It seems every entertainer who comes to Atlantic City cannot resist a lame joke about the place, or about gambling. It's amazing, really. No matter who they are, Springsteen, Santana, Spektor, they all turn gooey in the Queen of Resorts. "Hey, anybody win any money today?" they all seem to ask their audiences at some point, as if that concept were hilarious in and of itself. But on Saturday, at the incredibly jammed with people Borgata, comedian Bill Maher weighed in with one that was not quite as lame as the ones I've heard before. "It's like religion," he said of the casinos. "They're selling an invisible product." Not bad. Though not as good as his Elliot Spitzer joke, which is unprintable. But the best Atlantic City story told by a comedian I've come across recently has to be the one in Steve Martin's excellent memoir of being a standup comic: "Born Standing Up." It seems that Martin's days of performing standup reached their end in 1981 in, naturally, Atlantic City. We screwed up on King Tut, and Martin said the heck with it. As he writes: "...I was exhausted, physically and existentially. When I performed the song King Tut, a guitar suspended on wires ... would descend from the rafters. I would then Tut walk over and strum it only once, and it would ascend back into the ceiling, creating the shortest guitar solo in the history of show business. For the third night, in a row, the guitar failed to descend, leaving me horribly stuck. I guess that I hadn't greased the right union guy."
Ouch.
He continues: "In the wings, I began swearing to myself. ... I went to my dressing room ... I never did stand-up again."
Oops, sorry about that.
Speaking of torsos, if you missed yesterday's blog post exhaustively documenting in photos the return for another season of tanning of our favorite beach bum, Bruno Battaglia, check it out. Bruno is in excellent mid-season form, though he admits to some awkward chest-back tan discrepancy.

Took a little spin on LBI this week for a story that will be on line this week and in the Sunday paper. Once again, I was, um, charmed to see how much of LBI is off limits to schlubs like myself. So many paths to the beach, so many marked private, including ones that lead to driveways for several homes, not just one. This has been a dispute between LBI and the feds over beach funds for years. Was supposed to get better. Meanwhile, here's a little guide to those fun signs that basically say, Keep Out Schlub. The irony is, when I finally found my way onto the beach, the true access problem emerged: The steep cliffs you must climb down to actually get down to the little sliver of beach still left. Mother Nature may yet have the last laugh. But once you're there, it's definitely the loveliest strip of shore in Jersey, imho.
All of these so-called private lanes lead directly to the so-called public beach.

1. These guys want privacy, but they are proud to tell you who they are:

2. Aww. Cute little feet. Can't we come too?

3. Nice sign. The owners actually drove by me while I was taking this picture and offered to make me a similar sign. They did not offer to let me walk to the beach on the lane, though. Rats!

Thank you for showing us what the sunrise looks like on the beach we can't get to!

Tranquility? Without us?

Et tu Mickey? The beach is the other way!

The story about filmmaker Steve Chernoski's Mercer-born quest to divide the state into North and South Jersey brought about lots of strong reaction. Some of it was from people who believe the true dividing line should be east and west.
Retired Army Engineers Capt. John Fallon II said history should be the guide, not flip flops or stilettos, bennie or shooby, Super Bowl parade or no Super Bowl parade. "You see this was settled over 350 years ago. In those days they didn't have road maps and when people considered New Jersey they realized that it is divided East and West. There was an East Jersey with the capital at Carteret and a West Jersey with the capital at Burlington. If you look at a road map you will not find North at the top of the page. North is several degrees to the left . The division between East and West Jersey was a line drawn from just above Brigantine, the border of Atlantic and Ocean Counties. It runs due North. East and North Jersey are identical.West and South Jersey are identical Just hold the map with North at the top and you will see.."
Todd Kimmel of Philadelphia refers to a wikipedia entry about West Jersey and another item on Craigslist that links West Jersey with beer and Ben Franklin.
Others clung to the notion of a Central Jersey and felt the discussion of that in the story was inadequate. (It was mentioned, guys). I did try to include a discussion of the Central Jersey wikipedia angst, but it was cut from the story for space (this is how things work around here), which I guess is not as bad as being cut from any one's notion of how to divide up the state. Keep trying, Mercer!
There were some novel ideas for dividing the state. From one reader in deep South, it's the Mullica River (a little extreme). Others fell back on the Turnpike Exit (in this case, 9) to settle the matter. And another reader suggested the Mason Dixon line should be extended from Pennsylvania.
As for LBI, one reader on Steve's blog suggested that it is the place at the shore most populated by actual people from New Jersey, rather than New York or Philly. I'll have to mull that one over.
Personally, I like the idea of an East Jersey, united by proximity to the Ocean and populated by those of us who do not go Down The Shore but are already At The Beach while everyone else is still stuck At the Pleasanville Tolls or bottlenecked around exit 63.
And note to Steve: I take full credit for the south Jersey shore-Philly shoobie inbreeding aside and the Staten Island snark. They were not your quotes, (and were not in quotes) just my little jokes.

Photo by Danny Drake/Press of Atlantic City
Truly, this past weekend was as brutal down the shore as up the city, heatwise, and with the ocean still cold, well, ideal beach conditions still await us. Actually, I have that info second hand because I had the good fortune to spent the weekend in Huntington Beach, California, where the temps were fine, the ocean water was a crisp but lovely 65 or so, the barbecue pits built in every 25 feet or so, dogs allowed on the promenade, swim anywhere you want, the lifeguards can handle it, nice cool diner at the end of their pier, no worries out there, people. But the sun was like going in the wrong direction, got in my eyes as the day got later, what's up with that? Anyway, back at the Jerzey shore, it was beastly hot all day Monday until around dinner time when that miraculous wind shift took place. Suddenly, you could feel the cool air from the ocean spreading out over our little beach town. Weather doesn't shift subtly in a beach town. You feel every shift in wind direction. The wind coming from the mainland, the dreaded land breeze, will bring hot, buggy air and cold water temps, but when that breeze shifts, it can literally turn your head. Was a beautiful twilight run on the Boardwalk.

My dad at the beach was always an incongruous sight. He was more of a solid land guy, tennis, walking, not too much of a sand and sunworshipper. I can't remember him in the ocean at all. My memory of him visiting at the Jersey shore was out on the beach in a chair, socks and sneakers, tennis shorts and short-sleeved shirt, and, of course, a Knicks baseball cap. A true shoobie, even if he was from New York. But he was happy to be with his children and grandchildren at the beach, for obvious reasons, and so he parked himself in a chair and took it all in long enough for us to snap a picture, anyway. I think the beach is a place where so many of us have our seared-into-our-psyches memories of our parents, maybe because those long days in the sun allow all the shared love to really bake in, hazelike. I believe it was Tom McGrath at Philadelphia Magazine who wrote that the shore was the only place he ever saw his father ride a bicycle. And don't we all know just what he means by that. My memories of my mom at the beach are pretty vivid too: in her arms in the ocean, always packing cantelopes for our day trips (Jones Beach, parking lot 6, if we were early enough). I can remember her bathing suits and her then-out-of-style rubber flipflops (what were they called then? Something else.) And in her later years, it was the Jones Beach boardwalk where my father would take her, armed with first a folding chair stored in the trunk for rests, later a wheelchair. Was a respite that worked until the end. The other day, running on the Boardwalk, there was an older man in front of me who, from the back, looked and walked just like my dad, dressed in the same old guy jeans and sneakers. For a moment, it seemed...But you know, after a minute or two of that, I ran a little faster just to get in front of him, to move back into the present. It's a beautiful and trippy place, that ocean out there, with the smell and spray and light and breeze, the endless horizon to who knows what, and memories that originate in its vicinity in some ways seem to never quite evaporate.

That's right, smoke on the water ... from fires in North Carolina. True enough. Wildfires down south combined with shifting winds out of the southwest blew smoke up the eastern seaboard and left even Jersey beachgoers in a haze of chokey smoke on Saturday. Felt a slight little burn in the lungs myself. That can't be too healthy. On the upside, the water was quite warm.
But if that was annoying, Father's Day weather at the shore had even Saturday's smoke fest beat. Was kind of like, you wake up, and it's cloudy. But before you can even say, Should we go see Zohan, the sun was peeking through, and your neighbor was on her way out to the beach. But before you could even really get it together to get out there yourself, it was raining along with the sun. Then, it wasn't. CBS3 ran a funny speeded up Charlie Chaplin-esque video from Ocean City of people leaving the beach, then returning to the beach, then leaving the beach, all day long. Around 4 p.m., it seemed like the decision had been made: deluge, thunder, lightning, exodus. Only, around 6 p.m., the sun came out again. My daughter and I finally made it into the ocean at that point. Now, at 7 p.m., it's sunny still, perfect beach weather.
In any case, whatever the wacky weather, the beach is certainly not the worst place to hang on Father's Day, though during an off-shore errand, I was touched by the sight of some dads buying sneakers for their little boys at Dick's. For my father, an old street baller from Brooklyn, there was no higher calling than buying his kids the perfect fit sneaker. Some more thoughts of my dad at the shore, in honor of the day, are here.

Philadelphia Will Do takes up the challenge of parodying the philly.com video girl-guides to the shore. With deadpan philly.com stars like Lilliana and Julie, that's not as easy as it sounds. Or maybe it is. Like the piping on the shorts. Anyway, whatever happened to the original stars of the philly.com web series, Gabby and Catherine?

Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healey has filed a lawsuit against the town of Bradley Beach and its police force for allegedly using excessive force when they arrested him in 2006 while he was celebrating his niece's graduation from the State Police Academy in Sea Girt. In this UPI story, his lawyer, Ralph Lamparello, says the mayor was shoved to the ground and hit with peper spray outside his sister's bar. "It's a Shore town with Shore cops," he said. "Anybody who's gone down the Shore knows what I mean."
Probably anyone caught up in Avalon's infamous "magic bus" underage drinking raids, which led to a class-action lawsuit, might have something to say about that. (Long Beach Township has its big white "emergency management" school bus parked and ready to go this summer).
Anybody care to weigh in on that?

That would have been unfortunate. Weather reports of impending doom and thunder and clouds sent lots of people home early on Sunday, but it turned out to be one of the best days yet. The sun hung in there, the breeze was nice, the beaches were (sorry) not too crowded and the ocean, well, let's talk about the ocean. Saturday, the ocean was 66 degrees. That means, it's almost warm enough to not be obsessing about how cold it is. You could swim and mean it. Sunday, though, it had dropped two degrees to 64 (at least along the Atlantic City-Ventnor-Margate-Longport part, reports from Avalon had it in the 50s). That's a big two degrees. Those two degrees meant, you could take a dip, but not without a lot of anticipatory build up and motivation. But it was not so cold that you couldn't stay in for a bit once you were in. But truly, if it's going to feel like summer, we need those two degrees back, plus a few more.
In other news, we made like tourists on Saturday and took a whale watching boat tour off Cape May and, ok, it's Jersey, so we didn't see a whale, but we saw some very cool dolphin stuff (mating, a little newborn kind of a dolphin guy who looked like a little black football swimming with mom, lots of pods, a dolphin snatching a fish out of the air) and, as a finale, an American Bald Eagle perched in a tree. That was spectacular. There had been word of a whale hanging around the Delaware Bay, and they do see them on these tours, but not for us. In any case, thanks to Nicole our guide. Here's a fun fact: Just like the shoobies, the dolphins who return every year to Cape May, or to Wildwood, or to Ventnor, are the same dolphins, year after year. So if they act like they own the joint, well, it's because they do.
Postscript: Speaking of weather, and hippy dippy weathermen, was a shocker to see this morning that George Carlin had passed away. I grew up listening to George Carlin records, over and over again, and I think that like many, Carlin was the guy who showed me what it was to laugh until it hurt. Carlin was scheduled to perform at the Borgata on July 26th. He will be missed.

After months of debate, in which organic and local produce won out over one man's desire to have everyone to shop in his store, the Margate Farmer's Market debuts today in the parking lot of Steve and Cookie's restaurant in Margate, 9700 Amherst, between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. and weekly in the summer from now on
Writes owner Cookie Till, who, frankly, made mincemeat out of her rival, Casel's owner Howard Seiden, who opposed the market: "...well the day is finally about to arrive! We have 17 vendors plus a mini kids camp, atlanticare with health info and screening and an info tent covering subjects from what to do with your vegetable purchases to lawn care and cleaning supplies that are in harmony with the environment and benefits of using native plants when planning a garden.
EVERYBODY is talking about it so i think we will have a crowd."
Fliers are promising produce, baked goods, eggs, seafood and ... honey. Sweet.
UPDATE: Two thumbs up, Cookie! There are some amazingly cool veggies and herbs for sale in that market, exotic looking cauliflower from Jah's creation, all kinds of unsual herbs an lettuces from Muth's, and fresh scallops from Barnegat Bay. Lots of choices. Next week, I'll have to walk counter clockwise because I ran out of cash halfway through (splurged on the $8 shitake mushroom basket). Nice scene, crowded as promised, very neighborly, will be a kicking dinner. Thanks, Cookie.

No offense to Lilliana and Julie, our current Down the Shore video guidles, or Gabby and Catherine, the late lamented interns conscripted to be philly.com bathing beauties, or, for that matter, Alli and Erica, the Philadelphia Weekly parody of same, but THIS is a Jersey shore video.
VERY amusing journey of shoobie/benny alientation from 4th of July beach busts to, naturally, a Christmas Eve courtdate. Excellent job, BTwall60. Best comic musical unraveling of ridiculous judicial system entanglement since Arlo Guthrie got busted for littering.

Ah, summer. My first two hour limit parking ticket of the season. This is a stoopid one, as I could have easily just made that illegal right turn off Ventnor Avenue to go the wrong way on the one way street for just that little bit to get to the reserved Inky parking spot in back of the office. Like I usually do. Rats! Don't the Margate police know I am upstairs doing Important Shore Journalism?
But I promise not to ignore this ticket. I've been down that road before. And trust me, once you've been up against the tag team of Wildwood Parking Enforcement followed by the Sitting At the End of the Bridge Longport Speed Trappers you learn your lesson. In Jersey, blow off a parking ticket, your whole life can start to unravel.

Meanwhile, in case you missed it from yesterday, here's a reprise of someone else's legal problems at the Jersey Shore: "Arrive on vacation, leave on probation." Lilliana and Julie, take note. Stuff happens down here you can only dream of.

Also, previously on Downashore:

I get cool looking veggies and incredibly tasty scallops at the new Margate Farmer's Market.

I really really want people to read this thing I wrote about my dad at the beach.

As Wildwood goes, so goes the nation? Oops, that's the lede that didn't get in the paper: A link to this Wildwood story I did that may or may not have retained some of its original intent and humor by the time it got into the paper.

And, because Belmar Benny liked it, a pictorial guide to LBI's no access signs barring schlubs like me from getting to the beach along what should be public walkways.

And finally, a public service announcement: The ocean temperature is 58 degrees.

You gotta love the way things work in Atlantic City. Take a concert like Steely Dan at the Borgata on Friday. Sold out for weeks. So, naturally, when we walk up to the box office at 8:15 p.m. for the 8 p.m. show, the guy behind the counter smiles and says, "How about front row seats?" Hoo-kay. "Guy must not have wanted to leave the table," he says. Thank you, Mr. High Roller. We buy the seats (previous and intermittent connections to free seats having been at the moment severed, long story) and go inside. The usher looks at the seats, notes the location (front row, center, on the aisle) looks up expectantly and sees ... not who she was expecting to see. Anyway, we get escorted past our friends who bought seats weeks ago, down to the stage, where I am practically knee to knee with the security guard with his back to the stage, which is not necessarily where you want to be if you're me. Thank you for not letting me occasionally move over a few empty front row seats so I could see the drummer, Mr. By-the-Book Security. Anyway, watching Donald Fagen (above, from a New Orleans show) from a few feet away, and from below, is arguably way too close, but it was still cool, his voice sounded great, some lush backup by aces Cindy Mizelle and Tawatha Agee, and it was a great show, despite no Dr. Wu. That's an amazingly uniquely textured sound, and it just happens to be his. Sweet show. The point worth remembering, though, is it's never, or rarely, truly sold out in Atlantic City. They save so many seats to comp to VIPs that occasionally the VUP's like myself luck out. It's usually worth playing those last minute odds.

Previously on Downashore...

So yesterday was an odd day on the beach, at least in Ventnor. Ocean was a balmy 60 degrees or so, everything's relative, and all was fine as high tide approached. Jersey beach goers know the drill. You move back a few feet every half hour or so, no worries, until high tide has everyone squished together up by the dunes, and then, you reverse the human accordian and spread out slowly as the tide recedes. Well, yesterday, the ocean was in no mood for subtlety. Out of nowhere, or maybe because of that little eroded ridge, or climate change (though not ocean warming), it was like whoosh, up and over and roarding calf-height through a mass of beach chairs and people like it was Brian Westbrook tearing through the defense for the first down. More than a few people could be heard muttering "global warming" or "like a tsunami" as they frantically gathered up their drenched towels, looked for their flip flops and tried to salvage their Arts and Leisure sections (forget it). And moved back, only so the SAME thing could happen again. Fool us once, and we shall be fooled every time. Guy the Ice Cream Man pointed out that it was a full moon, not necessarily the end of days (above, the ocean receding later on). UPDATE: It's the new moon this week, as an alert reader pointed out, not the full moon. Rut ro! But truthfully, it was frightening. People looked shaken up. This was no annoying tide coming in scramble. This was a GET OUT OF MY WAY kind of thing. You could easily imagine, a few more feet in height, and the thing would be up and over the boardwalk, if not the whole island. Was disconcerting to say the least. We don't stand a chance, in the long run.

PREVIOUSLY ON DOWNASHORE: It depends on the meaning of "sold out" I guess: Adventures at the Steely Dan show at the Borgata.