Who owns the Jersey Shore? | Morning Newsletter

Erin Reynolds here, filling in for Taylor on this fine Monday morning. The day is looking gorgeous, with lots of sun and temps in the high 70s. A walk to help beat back any end-of-the-weekend blues is certainly in order.

Beach season is upon us — eliciting deep feelings for all who treasure time at the Shore (both in season and off). But as Inquirer reporter Amy S. Rosenberg writes, the season also throws competing interests into high relief. In our lead story, she explores how controversy over wind turbines and the upscaling of Shore towns raises the question: Who owns the Jersey Shore?

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— Erin Reynolds (morningnewsletter@inquirer.com)

Change is afoot at the Jersey Shore.

Last summer, Facebook groups were flooded with people who’d newly bought into towns, drowning out the locals who’d long considered the towns theirs, loaned out for the summer.

Wind turbine farms coming to the coast also have people concerned about spoiled horizon views. Could that send property values plummeting?

And perhaps most personal to Inquirer reporter Amy S. Rosenberg, people (and municipal ordinances) are increasingly less tolerant of dogs’ off-leash, off-season joy. They see it as a threat to their own beach rituals of walking without the possibility of a dog getting in their way.

All this talk prompted Amy to ask: Who is the Shore for anyway?

🎤 In her own words:

“The idea that an off-season beach is not an appropriate, let alone joyful and well-deserved, place for an unleashed dog is ingrained in Jersey Shore culture, just like the idea that the existing view of the horizon must be preserved for the people who own property or who lie on the beach and stare at it.

Is that truly the only way to look at it?”

Click here to read the full essay.

New regulations rolled out by the Biden administration have put America on a very fast road to an all-electric future. In just seven years, 60% of all new cars sold in the U.S. will have to run on batteries.

Philadelphia isn’t remotely ready to handle them.

Because EVs now take four to six hours to fully charge, the city will need tens of thousands of spots where car owners can park and plug in. At present, there are just 184 publicly available charging ports. (Compare that to Pittsburgh, with a quarter of our population, which has 304.)

Since few Philadelphia car owners have garages or private parking spaces, it seems likely that the city’s future charging network will end up in that public netherland between the curb and sidewalk — transforming our public thoroughfares as profoundly as street lights and underground sewers did a century ago.

Unless the city takes a strong hand in the design and placement of electric chargers, columnist Inga Saffron writes, we could soon see a land rush as people claim curb space for ad hoc charger installations, resulting in the same kind of chaos we had with streeteries.

How could the city tackle the challenge of EV charging? Inga shares some thoughts. 🔑

The USDA could boot this cafeteria staple from elementary and middle schools across the country. What is it?

A) Chocolate milk

B) Smucker’s Uncrustables

C) Chicken nuggets

D) Nachos

Think you know? Check your answer.

😋 Eating: Good barbecue. Here’s our guide to the region’s best.

🏘 Touring: This couple wasn’t interested in living in a traditional rowhouse, but an updated home built in 1875 seemed right when nothing else did.

Hint: This housing and civil rights attorney is poised to become Philly’s first openly LGBTQ City Council member

Adel Nauru

We’ll select a reader at random to shout out here. Send us your own original anagram to unscramble if you’d like. Cheers to Claire Chepurny, who correctly guessed Sunday’s answer: Erykah Badu. Email us if you know the answer.

Thanks for starting your week with The Inquirer!