🥊 Margate v. Sea Isle: The readers respond | Down the Shore

Before we compare Margate to Sea Isle, in light of the Kelce parking lot drama, it must be said: Sea Isle has gotten a lot more like Margate in recent years. Prices are up, neighborhoods are crammed with beach mansions that pack in multigenerational families, driveways are filled with SUVs all summer long. In fact, a lot of Shore towns, including Ventnor and Brigantine, have become more bougie.

The ability of regular middle-class families to go down the Shore for anything more than a couple of days continues to be challenging as these towns evolve.

And while Jason and Kylie Kelce, and, possibly, Travis, and maybe you-know-who, will be all over Sea Isle June 26-27 for their annual debauched charity events, underscoring Sea Isle’s lovable reputation as a mecca for dive bars, aging cover bands, and raging keggers, the truth is, it’s becoming more and more the domain of wealthy people. Like, say, the Kelces!

(Note: Taylor Swift spent childhood summers in Stone Harbor. Last summer, she was swarmed by fans on Long Beach Island while attending pal Jack Antonoff’s wedding.)

After last week’s ribbing of Margate for its turn in the global publicity spotlight, when a Longport woman told Kylie she wasn’t welcome in Margate, readers of Down the Shore had a lot of thoughts.

A few tried to defend Margate. Thank you, next.

Just kidding! Steven Alten accused me of trying to stir up trouble and of being the real Shoobie. I hear you. Though I’m not technically a Shoobie as I live down here year-round, maybe I’m something worse: a local, but not really a local. I admit, I was not born here.

Alten continued: “Her thinly veiled references about Margate being some kind of elitist country club is laughable. Yes it is a wealthy community, but so is Avalon, Sea Isle, Stone Harbor, Ocean City, and many other Shore communities up and down the coast.”

My point exactly. Just ask Garage Beer label owners Jason and Travis Kelce.

Rich Solimeo thinks the Kelces should “openly and intentionally avoid Margate. Their next date night, paid for by Margate’s mayor, should hit every surrounding town’s best venues.”

“Margate used to be fun,” writes Bill Morgan. ”No more. Stick to Sea Isle.”

Marcus Ferreira sees a through line from the Kelce drama to wind turbine opposition.

“No second chance for Margate, which is a Shore town that hypocritically accepts federal and state subsidies to rebuild after storms but ‘unequivocally opposes’ offshore wind turbines that are necessary for our region to rapidly decarbonize, which would reduce sea level rise and storm severity. The Kelce thing is just a minor symptom of a larger problem.”

Food for thought!

📮 Are you a Shore house owner experiencing a slow down in rentals? Are you dropping your prices? Are you a renter who got a good deal? Let me know for a future story by replying to this email.

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☀️ Looks like another lovely weekend.

— Amy S. Rosenberg (Find me at @amysrosenberg. 📷 Follow me on Insta at @amysrosenberg. 📧 Email me here.)

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🍰 Happy days at the Holiday Snack Bar, where owner Eileen Bowker told me how peace was made with Beach Haven. At last!

🏳️‍🌈 Martha-Ann Alito, wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and allegedly behind two controversial flags flown outside their homes in Virginia and on the Long Beach Island waterfront, told a writer posing as a sympathizer at a gala that she contemplated raising another flag and complained she would have to look at a Pride flag “across the lagoon.”

🍻 In Ventnor, a noncontroversial flag was flown on the beach: The word “Delco” on an empty beer can.

🚓 Ocean City’s police drones caught six teens in a car stolen from Camden.

🪂 Venomous spiders will not parachute into New Jersey this summer.

🐢 Kindergartners in Stone Harbor released baby terrapins into the wild.

🎥 Shirley MacLaine moved on from Atlantic City to Margate, where she was filming director Brad Furman’s People Not Places at Dino’s Sub Shop. She reportedly “commented” on the loudness of nearby leaf blowers.

⛴️ The Cape May-Lewes Ferry is back on schedule after issues with its fleet, and we are spelling Lewes correctly this time.

🗓️ Celebrate Juneteenth in Ocean City on June 15, from 1 to 5 p.m. at Seventh and Haven.

📖 Read about Ocean City’s original Black community.

🎖️ Go see the newly unveiled Bernie Friedenberg statue in Atlantic City to honor the hero World War II medic.

🦮 The buzzy Queen Bean Bistro in Ventnor has a menu for your dog.

🦪 Eat like LaBan: Our critic Craig LaBan was on Barnegat Bay with the folks from Laughing Gull Oysters.

👑 Eat like a king. The King’s Pub, in the old Pic-A-Lilli on Tennessee Avenue in A.C., is expanding its hours.

🎸 Vibe at the summer’s best outdoor shows.

🌿 More vibe: Enjoy “high society 420 bingo night” on June 19 hosted by Michelle Tomko at The Joint in A.C.

⛳ Golf and jazz for free at North Beach Mini Golf on June 23 featuring Tom Angelo’s All Star Jazz Quartet.

🍻 And of course: wait in line at the Ocean Drive in Sea Isle for a chance to have Jason Kelce pour you a drink.

Pitney’s, the bed & breakfast at the Jonathan Pitney House, named for the father of Atlantic City, is actually located in this nearby Jersey Shore town.

A. Ventnor

B. Brigantine

C. Linwood

D. Absecon

If you think you know the answer, click on this story to find out.

Or take a shot and email me with the answer for a chance at a shout-out.

Kudos to last week’s first correct response from Sherri Hoffman. It is Ocean City that recently added drones to patrol the boardwalk.

Henrietta Shelton, 81, is the force behind the Chicken Bone Beach Jazz Foundation and its wonderful weekly summer jazz concerts across from Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. They begin June 27 with Jason Marsalis.

Shelton agreed to answer a few rapid-fire questions, slam book style.

Favorite beach: Missouri Avenue beach, of course, a.k.a., Chicken Bone Beach.

Favorite place for summer breakfast: Gilchrist at Gardiner’s Basin. I love their blueberry pancakes, bacon and eggs. And grits.

Your idea of a perfect beach day: Take a nice sandwich, maybe a sub, and pack up and just take a book, make sure I have some lotion on, and I just go and relax and look at the ocean. Do a little napping.

Perfect night at the Shore (other than a CBB jazz concert)? Of course I have to stop by Hard Rock and see the different costumes in the hotel, and then sit and look at the entertainment on the floor. They always have a nice crowd.

Favorite Atlantic City restaurant: Setaara.

When Memorial Day weekend approaches, I feel: Excited because my jazz concerts are starting.

It wouldn’t be the Jersey Shore without: The beautiful beach.

Best thing for kids to do at the Shore: Come to my Youth Jazz Institute for our summer jazz program.

Surfing or fishing? I used to surf.

Sunrise or sunset? Sunset.

Shore pet peeves? I’ll be glad when the roads are all fixed up in Atlantic City.

The Shore could be improved if we all just: Understand that the stigma of Atlantic City being dangerous is not true.

Ed Tettemer’s evocative description of Strathmere, where he recommends the Kelces sneak away to from Sea Isle on their golf cart, is this week’s Shore moment.

When the Kelces want a little peace and quiet and anonymity, they only need to sneak a couple miles north of Sea Isle, just above the Paint Chip Testing Station, to Strathmere, where the beaches are free, the old-timers are quirky, and the annual wacky boat parade is called “Nightmare.” Jason could wear his Mummer’s outfit to our local speakeasy, Twisties, and never appear out of place. The town that opened its best bar in the middle of Prohibition, and whose 4th of July Parade is something out of a 1959 Life Magazine spread, and whose illegal beach fireworks are far more glorious than most shore towns could authorize, and whose one-person post office reeks of the cannabis smoke seeping in from the adjacent apartment, embodies the Kelce persona without the greased poles.

✍️ Send us your Shore memory or moment in 200 words. Tell us how the Shore taps into something deep for you, and we will publish the best of them in this space during the summer.

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