SMILE! YOU’RE IN SEA ISLE

SIC OBSERVATIONS

New Jersey has roughly 130 miles of coastline. This “corridor” state, sandwiched between New York City and Philadelphia, is a popular summertime destination. From Sandy Hook in the north to Cape May in the south, the New Jersey beaches are inviting and accessible and I have spent my life kicking around several of them. Most of my Jersey beach destinations are in the northern half of the state. Places like Belmar, Point Pleasant, Sandy Hook and Seaside Heights, in no particular order, were some of the beach towns I would visit for the day or an overnight. Each town has its own alluring qualities, whether it’s the rough, surfing waves and the popular bar D’Jai’s of Belmar, or the beautiful porch of The Columns in Avon-by-the-Sea, the solitude of IBSP or the frenetic activity of the boardwalk in Seaside Heights and Seaside Park, I’ve enjoyed this natural resource for a long time.

ISLAND BEACH STATE PARK, NJ

D'JAIS BELMAR

THE COLUMNS, AVON

ISLAND BEACH STATE PARK NJ 

Since I met Janet though, I’ve now enjoyed visiting a number of the southern towns in New Jersey. In her youth she often traveled to the Wildwoods and we have stayed in Wildwood for short trips these past two years. This year we rented a house in Sea Isle City.

THE ORIGINAL VACATION FROM HOME

Travel has taken us around the world to faraway beaches, and there are plenty of places to visit still, but the beaches of New Jersey are our original VACATIONS FROM HOME! Going to the New Jersey beaches was our first experience with travel and because Janet and I have so many fond and varied memories of our times there, we wanted to share our experiences. We got together with several family members from several states in America and from England and rented a house large enough to fit everyone.

A NUMBERS GAME

SIC Rental

We rented a house in Sea Isle City that easily slept the 17 of us and we split the $10,000 price tag. Sadly, with the high season comes the high prices, but we got to watch the young boys from England play in the New Jersey surf for the first time. 

The rental houses are tall and large and every available inch of land in town has some structure on it. 

Sea Isle City has less than 3,000 year-round residents, but during the summer season that number swells past 40,000. 

It should have seemed crowded, but for our week there it was quiet and relaxed.

THE PROMENADE  

This barrier island community doesn't have a boardwalk, but it has a macadam promenade that runs north nearly to the border with Strathmere at 29th Street and south to 55th Street. It is popular with bikers, runners and strollers. Mostly in the northern sections of the promenade are businesses like restaurants and ice cream parlors, a small arcade and a busy outdoor Tiki Bar (one of several found throughout the town), but in the southern portion there are just homes fronting the promenade. 

All along the street side of the promenade, facing the sand dunes, are park benches. All are emblazoned with memorials to loved ones. It's a nice touch for this family-oriented beach town.

FISH ALLEY

Before it was a Shoobie paradise Sea Isle City was a fishing village. The last enclave of this rich, vibrant history is found in the area called Fish Alley. Now being hedged in by condominiums this back bay, marsh area was settled by Italian immigrants in the early 1900's, and thrived for decades. Development and stricter fishing regulations and storms have pinched Fish Alley into a smaller space, but places like Carmen's and Mike's and Marie's Lobster House or the Lobster Loft are still the places to go for casual dock side eating while in Sea Isle City. One night we even had Carmen's cater a massive family style meal that we carried back to our rental house! 

Thankfully Sea Isle City has begun to embrace the history of Fish Alley and has promoted the area with a large welcome sign arcing over the street and a granite monument relating the history of the alley. There's also a new boardwalk along the water's edge.  

Fish Alley is still a working harbor and a number of commercial boats dock here, so it's possible to have them cook it for you, catch it for you, or even go out and catch it for yourself! Hopefully, further condo development will be curtailed to allow the remnants of this fishing village to continue.

BEACH TAGS

Requisite beach tags can be purchased at the SIC Welcome Center at 300 JFK Boulevard during the day and 24/7 at a cash only vending machine at City Hall. Daily fees are $5.00, $10.00 weekly and seasons are $20.00 if purchased before May 15. Wednesdays are FREE! But, we already had beach tags that came with our house rental. 

There is free parking on the street and for a limited time during the day at the library and paid meters closer to the beach.  

THE VIEW FROM OUR BALCONY

A SURVIVOR’S TALE OF THE NEW JERSEY SHORE

 A BENNY IN SHOOBIE LAND

For most of my life I have lived in the Garden State and for all my years I’ve been a “Benny”. That’s the derogatory term for a tourist to the northern part of the Jersey Shore. Bennies come from the North Jersey/NYC area and are usually loud, crass and doling out $100 bills like they were singles.

I can attest that I lived up to the description, except for the, ahem, large bill part. I doled out singles like they were gold bricks.

Janet is a “Shoobie”. They are tourists to the southern portion of the New Jersey coast; from Long Beach Island to Cape May. The derogatory name supposedly comes from the late 1800’s when tourists from the Philadelphia area traveled by train to the New Jersey beaches, usually with a lunch packed in a shoebox that was bought onboard. 

NECESSARY EVILS

Despite the name-calling, and whatever the meaning behind the names, tourism is an important industry in New Jersey. Bennies and Shoobies are a mixed blessing to the beach town communities from Sandy Hook in the north to Cape May in the south. All the towns rely on tourism dollars in a short season of just over three months, and from Memorial Day to Labor Day these communities swell with vacationers, clogging traffic, clogging the boardwalks, transforming the serenity of the seaside into a bustling money-making churn and not without the notice of year-round residents who spit venom with their derisive comments at this necessary onslaught of commerce. 

Belmar beach tags

Despite my advanced years I have never spent more than two days in a row at the New Jersey shore. Now, these overnight trips could never be considered a vacation to the normal traveler. Instead, calling it a cheapskate’s “survival course” would be more appropriate with me sleeping on couches, or in cars, or getting a cheap room in a stifling dingy, rooming house for the night. 

Mostly they were day trips to the beach for me. Countless day trips, fighting the traffic each way, arriving home from Sandy Hook, or Asbury Park, or Belmar, or Seaside Heights sunburnt and encrusted with sand.  

CHEAP FUN

As a young man traveling to the Jersey shore was a calculated flurry of stealth tactics trying to avoid paying for the beach tags nearly every shore town forces you to pay to get on the beach. Sometimes I would get to the beach very early, before the guards would man their posts and dashing quickly into the ocean as the cops who patrolled the sands looking for those requisite tags strolled by. Or, sometimes when staying overnight at a colleague’s place one of us would walk up to the boardwalk to see what color badge they were using that day and grabbing one from the collected cache at the garret they rented. Sometimes, I would spend the money for a tag, only to share the cost by handing it over to a friend waiting on the boardwalk. It was a constant dance of cheap, but harried fun. Admittedly it was never easy. 

Janet had similar experiences in her youth in dodging the gatekeepers to the beach. Her weekends also involved late nights at area dive bars, cheap breakfasts and cheap dingy rooms. 

Many of her tactics will remain a secret with me, but it is no wonder we are a perfect couple.

WILDWOOD DAYS

Over the past two years my NJ beach experiences have changed, for the better. Janet rented us a one-bedroom condo a block from the beach in Wildwood three or four days each time.

Each year it was the week after Labor Day when things were winding down towards the off-season

Prices are lower, but the weather is still wonderful and the ocean still warm and inviting.

It was nice to just casually stroll onto the beach each day and then have a place to rinse off afterwards, and, although Wildwood beaches are always free, after so many years of dodging the system, it felt like we were getting away with something! 

WILDWOOD NJ

Wildwood was familiar to me because it reminded of my seaside haunts in the north. Wildwood is as edgy as Seaside Heights or Asbury Park.

IRISH RIVIERA v CAPE MAY
Wildwood though is the outlier for the southern towns. The 130 miles of New Jersey coastline are decorated by several very beautiful towns. In the north there are places like Deal and Mantoloking or anywhere along the Irish Riviera which includes the breathtaking mansions along Ocean Avenue in Spring Lake, or the neat, quiet tree-lined streets of Avon-by-the-Sea or Sea Girt to name just a few. In the south though, apart from Wildwood, there is a long string of beautiful towns. 

BREAKERS HOTEL
SPRING LAKE NJ

Starting with the painted ladies of Cape May and followed by the very expensive real estate of the barrier island towns of Stone Harbor, Avalon, Sea Isle City and Ocean City, and anything on the 18-mile stretch of Long Beach Island, the Shoobie world has, for me, a completely different vibe. Don’t worry, tourists are disliked everywhere you go. 

PAINTED LADIES
CAPE MAY NJ

PARADISE AT A PRICE
This year we upped our game and rented a whole house in Sea Isle City, with Janet’s siblings and their families, her daughters and their families, and my son and grandson in a four-story edifice that had seven bedrooms, a few of those with bunk beds, and ample parking underneath for all of our cars. Everyone was comfortable and every day was spent at the beach, a short 5 block walk from the house. 

$10k FOR THE LEFT SIDE

The best part was there were enough beach tags for everyone, as part of the rental package. 

The bad part was the house cost $10,000 for the week!!! 

I almost fainted when I heard the cost, but it was split three ways and we made most of our meals in the massive well-equipped kitchen on the top floor.

I had never experienced the New Jersey beaches like this and if not for the high costs, I could get used to it. Each day was the same. 

After lingering over donuts in the morning, we’d then parade en masse to the beach with all of our sand toys and boogie boards in tow. The little kids and teenagers frolicked most of the day in the water or dug holes in the sand while the adults chatted the day away, beers and hard seltzers in hand with the occasional cooling dip in the Atlantic. The beaches are wide in south Jersey and the sand is super fine!

After dinner it was a card game on one of the two outdoor decks and cigars and bourbon on the other. For this long-time cheap Benny this whole trip was relaxed and easy, and the week went by too quickly. 

Wish I had done this sooner!   

NEW BEGINNINGS

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME

This is the year of Medicare. UGH. But, as your traveling duo ages, we are not slowing down. Our traveling, in the year since the sun was in the same position in the sky celebrating my birthday, has been a steady though cautious exploring of this world. Albeit closer to home we have still managed to visit Wildwood and Sea Isle City on the New Jersey shore, soaked up the sun in Virginia Beach, flitted off to Austin Texas to eat Barbeque, went scuba diving between rum drinks at a resort in Jamaica. We hiked in the Great Smokey Mountains in Tennessee and along the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania. We even braved Dutch Wonderland, a children’s amusement park in Lancaster, PA with my grandson!! 

Currently the house is brimming with family from England, our first physical contact with them since 2019!  

The Experiment at
4 months

Depending on your political proclivities or sensibilities it feels like the world is opening up again and we’re ready to travel out there again. I am very fortunate that God hasn’t decided to cut bait and run with his “Greg” experiment because this new year holds such promise.

Love you all.

Thanks for reading.

Greg

© 2021 Greg Dunaj