👋 Summer comes knocking early| Down the Shore

Is the Jersey Shore worth it?

For the second straight year, we put it to the test.

We compared a week at the Jersey Shore with a week in Dublin, the Outer Banks, and Mazlatán, Mexico, a town with a boardwalk longer than Atlantic City’s.

The bottom line: Things are pricey all over, and a week at the Shore continues to be pretty sky-high. And no sooner did I predict, in this story, that day-tripping would see a resurgence, I got an email telling me Shore day trips would cost 11% more this summer. (Send me your cost saving tips here.)

Meanwhile, hello! Welcome back to summer and another season of our Down the Shore newsletter. Like the typical Shore visitor, we’ll just pick up like we never left, no need to call ahead. Memorial Day weekend was already heralding an early summer, calendar-wise, but somebody definitely flipped on the lights a week earlier.

With the iffy MDW forecast, beaches and Shore towns were filled last weekend with people pretending it was summer. Wildwood police, meanwhile, were busy this week serving cease-and-desist orders to would-be promoters of teen pop-up parties planned for the holiday weekend. In Long Branch, Pier Village, rowdy young crowds had already brought police out in force.

Did anything happen since last year? In case you missed it, this winter featured snow, cold, and ice that wondrously froze the ocean and the bay and broke apart in geometric patterns. It was striking and beautiful and captured here and, in video, here, by local drone photographer Jordan Glick.

But maybe you were here this winter. Are you one of those buying Shore properties and moving here year-round? How’re you doing without a nearby Trader Joe’s? Is the coastal weather odder than you thought (so much wind!)? Let me know how it’s going.

In my predictions story, I took a stab at foreseeing the future of Atlantic City’s Irish Pub, dormant since January over fire suppressant issues, and on whether Ocean City will see a new hotel on the Wonderland Pier site. Read my 10 predictions here.

⬇️ Keep scrolling for news, recs, a Q&A with food influencer Luke “Scrappy” Spotts, and, of course, your Shore memory.

📱New! Join us over text message in the Down the Shore group chat we’re calling The Shore Line. You can talk back to us!

📮 Let’s dive into a hot topic. Will you be trying to circumvent new e-bike rules? Do you agree with the boardwalk bans? Have you purchased the required insurance? Let me know by replying to this email, and I’ll include your most interesting responses in a future newsletter.

Have ideas or news tips about the Shore or this newsletter? Your own Jersey Shore memory? Pet peeves or beach etiquette debates? Send them to me here.

⛆ Hot beachy temps this week, but the weekend should (but you never know) bring rain.

— Amy S. Rosenberg (Find me at @amysrosenberg or on Instagram at @amysrosenberg. 📧 Email me here.)

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💛 Alas, poor Spirit! The big yellow planes that flew cheaply out of our lovely little Atlantic City International Airport were truly a way of life for Shore people. They’re gone now.

🦪 Sweet Amalia Oyster stand and market remains in a stalemate with the Pinelands Commission.

🔊 The beach bar once located — to residents’ annoyance — in front of the Ocean Club condos in A.C. applied to move to a location further up the Boardwalk.

🔨 Towns have been rebuilding boardwalks, tennis courts, and more in the offseason.

🗳️ Ocean City voters gave Mayor Jay Gillian a fifth term.

💵 Beach replenishment money is back.

🤍 Ocean City emergency responders were searching for a 19-year-old man who went missing while boogie boarding around 5 p.m. Monday.

🍌 Watch surfer Ben Gravy in Sun Bum’s Banana-Eating World Championships on Saturday in Wildwood. (Also, read about efforts to help Gravy videographer Zayn Makki, who was spinal-cord injured in an April diving accident.)

🎹 Check out Dan DeLuca’s guide to a summer of music, from Charlie Puth to Wu-Tang Clan to A.C.’s own Gutter Drunk.

💆‍♀️ Get a massage at these eight spas, says Elizabeth Wellington.

📖 Elizabeth also recommends these beach reads from authors with Philly connections.

🏥 Visit Naval Air Station Wildwood Aviation Museum, now with an exhibit on the World War II Camp Boardwalk.

🏳️‍🌈 For an LGBTQ haven, Abigail Covington advises Asbury Park.

🍗 Check out new locations for these popular places: Skinny Joey’s in Wildwood, Nana’s Good Eats in Atlantic City, and, settling in at the A.C. sea wall, Zoagies.

🍻 The new (rain-friendly) brewery/winery hopping shuttle service in Cape May County starts this weekend.

This bayside tavern was nearly a century old when it closed in 2024. New owners reopened last weekend and vowed to keep the vibe, coconut head decor, and jukebox.

Is it:

A. The Irish Pub in Atlantic City

B. The Whitebrier in Avalon

C. Twisties in Strathmere

D. Maloney’s in Margate

For the answer, read this story. Or take a chance and email me with the answer.

Food influencers are multiplying every day. But one, Luke “Scrappy” Spotts, 23, got my attention for his love of gritty, under-the-radar spots that I also love, like Pho Sydney in A.C., and Pollos Asados PLV in Pleasantville.

Spotts said he fell in love with Pho Sydney as a seventh grader in Margate and even wrote a letter to the Atlantic Avenue mainstay but never heard back. He’s still trying to get their attention!

After working in Shore kitchens, he wants to promote the many independent places run by immigrants. “The South Jersey area has a really cool food scene,” he said. “If you get trapped in the summer towns and don’t venture out, you won’t experience it.”

Spotts answered our questions.

Why is everything at the Shore about food?

That’s a great question. A lot of people, they’re on vacation, and the two things you do, you chill, and you eat and drink.

Favorite beach: Mansfield Avenue in Margate.

Favorite summer breakfast: The Emotional Support Potatoes at Queen Bee Bistro in Ventnor: Yukon gold potatoes, shaved onions, horseradish cream sauce, cherrywood smoked bacon, two types of cheese, over easy eggs.

Perfect beach day: Get a hoagie from Rosa’s over the bridge, hang out at the beach all day, melt in your chair, drink a few Modelos.

Perfect night: Dock’s Happy Hour, then maybe a drink at Ducktown. Spend the rest of the night at Maynard’s and walk home.

Best Shore sandwich: The Cuzzie’s cheesesteak fresh off the grill.

Ice cream or water ice order: At North Beach Creamery in Ventnor, a gelati with black cherry water ice and soft serve twist.

When Memorial Day approaches, I feel: Stress. 110%, because I worked in food for the last four years.

It wouldn’t be the Jersey Shore without: Shoobies.

Best thing for kids: Lucy the Elephant.

Surfing or fishing? Surfing.

Sunrise or sunset: A beautiful sunrise if you can get up.

Shore pet peeve: Bad drivers.

The Shore could be improved if: Everyone ate local.

Bob Fowler of Bargaintown writes:

There was a foreboding edginess as the fisherman hollered “watch the rope.” That was 76 years ago when the man in overhauls and rubber galoshes cautioned a crowd as he and other burly men ran from the ocean edge hauling in a large net of flapping fish on Long Beach Island.

It was a mesmerizing sight to a seven-year-old Philadelphia boy in 1950 staying with his family in a $25-a-week cabin in Harvey Cedars. We were on that beach with purpose and an old Evening Bulletin in which my mother wrapped a sea bass she bought out of the net.

Dad scaled, gutted it, and fed the innards to the scurrying crabs off the small public pier on our bay block. I’m sure we had it for dinner but memory goes only to the novel procurement.

🐟 Thanks Bob! Send us your Shore memory! In 200 words, tell us how the Shore taps into something deep for you, and we will publish them in this space during the summer.

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